kayak report

Happy New Years SpaceFish!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, and Happy New Years! Our family had a wonderful Christmas, our two young boys had a great time, which was just magical for my wife and I to see. My 3 year old was given a micro Ugly Stik combo from his great grandmother (Nana) and was able to hook his first fish! I’ll never forget sitting there with him untangling a knot in my micro set up that he made on the walk from the vehicle to the bank of the pond, he is reeling away on his rod and he says to me “Dada I think its broken”, I looked up and saw him struggling to reel and his line moving away from us and helped him reel in a nice fat little Bluegill caught on a breadball. That was by far the most exciting moment of fishing I had all week!

I got out and fished on the Indian River Lagoon twice this week. To be honest, it was a bit of a struggle for me. I was able to catch roughly 20 fish on both trips but nothing of quality. One trip was along the shoreline north of the Eau Gallie River to the causeway and back. I focused on the rocks and docks. I caught a dozen little Snook around the rocks, and hooked into a nice upper to over slot Snook that I was struggling with, I thought I had her in but a missed swipe with the net led to one last run and she was able to get my line around a rock and pop goes the leader. I had another big Snook hit my paddletail under the deeper end of a dock, I was so amped up to pull it out of structure I didn’t pause after the thump before I set the hook. It ended up running away from the piling on its own and on the first head shake my hook and bait came flying out. I went to the drop off on the south side of the causeway looking to target some trout, but ended with only a small juvenile, but I did hook into a few nice Jacks along the mangroves before the series of rocks and docks started again on the way back.

My second trip was in the area north of Long Point Park. I fished around the mangroves and spoil islands. I caught the Trout in the picture above there, and caught 2 more roughly that size. With the post cold front bluebird skies and sunny days, I did a lot of standing and pushing along the shallows trying to spot fish in the shallows or up against the mangroves, in wind protected areas the water was pretty clear and I saw a ton of good sized Snook laid up in the sun, but they were very lethargic and had no interest in biting on anything I threw at them.

All of the Snook, and Jacks I caught were on a 3.5 inch Slam Shady 2.0 Paddle Tail on a ⅛ oz weedless twistlock hook or on a New Penny Gulp! Shrimp rigged on a weedless ned rig jig head made by Big Bites Baits in ¼ oz with a green pumpkin head. The paddle tail was most effective on a slow roll steady retrieve, and the Gulp! Shrimp got bites with a twitch and pause retrieve, the slower the retrieve the better for the Snook. For the Juvie Trout I took the same paddle tail rig and popped the tail off, and cut a little split in the tail turning it into a micro jerk bait. I don’t think this is worth the time and effort if you’re after a bigger Trout, but if you need one to complete a slam this is a tactic that will fire up the schoolies. I used a standard twitch-twitch-pause cadence and they were hitting it on the fall. For my day fishing around Long Point I caught my 3 biggest Trout on the Slam Shady with the same twistlock hook, and used Green Pumpkin Magic Zoom Fluke to try and sight-cast to Reds, but none took it. I did catch a few smaller Trout on this bait, which I had rigged on a 4/0 Gamakatsu worm hook. I like rigging a fluke/jerk shad weightless with fishing in really shallow, and clear water so I don’t spook fish that are already prone to spook off at the first splash with a weight in the water. This weightless and weedless rig also skips extremely well into mangroves, but I don’t use it unless I’m fishing in a foot or so of clear water. The smaller Trout were all caught when skipping into shady spots in the Mangroves hoping a hungry Snook was laid up in there looking to ambush.

With the big weather swing I struggled a bit, the good news is the weather has been great the past few days and I anticipate good fishing opportunities in the week ahead.

I hope everyone had a great Holiday season. Get out there and catch a few this week!

Until next time!