Cue Music: ”Alice Cooper – Schools Out”
First report of the summer! My body still feels like its learning to walk again, as summer is more of a time for mental/physical recovery for teachers rather than vacation. This week I’ve been focusing the majority of my trips close to home, around the south end of the Banana River. The east/west winds have been providing a strong wind current in/out of the residential cuts from the river to the Grand Canal. Combine these winds currents with a lot of bait that has been present in the area and there has been a lot “fishy” action. As long as the water is moving through these cuts I have been having success on artificial lures such as the Spook Jr/Skitter Walk and soft plastics like the Slayer Inc paddle tails.
It seems like anytime this week that I have finally found the fish, the dolphins soon found me. The first day I had success early fishing the cuts, caught a couple of nice speckled trout and mangrove snapper, before an invasion of at least eight dolphins shut down the area. I decided to make what ended up proving to be a costly move — to fish an area near Dragon Point. After a couple of hours of fishing, I only managed another lone mangrove snapper before hanging up the boat for the day.
The second day, I tried the residential canal cuts to the river again but noticed there was no water movement. After fifteen minutes of no blow-ups on my topwater lure, I moved north up the Banana River. I made it to a couple of mangrove-protected canals where I’ve had success at previously, and hits came quickly. Within two casts at the new spot, I hooked into what I at first believed to be a tarpon because it pulled an Air Jordan on me, and Rocket-Manned 3-4 feet out of the water. When I reeled the fish closer to the boat, it flipped out of the water a couple more times and revealed itself to be a really nice snook. Ended up being a solid 24 inch Snook, and a great start to the day.
I made one more move to get out of the wind and found a nice school of speckled trout. Thanks to the heavy cloud cover on the second day, I was able to fish topwater (my favorite) until 8:30 am. I switched to a paddle tail and pitched mangroves/docks till noon, but had no bites. Before the day ended, I did see my first-ever shark in the Banana River. It’s hard to see at the end of the video but it looked like a 2-3 foot baby bull shark. So over the two day fishing period, I saw plenty of dolphins, manatees, and my first shark. No gators in the river this week, so no Florida wildlife grand slam this time.
This summer I plan on trying to fish a lot of new areas of both the Banana and Indian River. I recently purchased a new bait pen, so I will probably have a lot more live bait reports soon. I’m hoping live bait/cut bait will allow me to fish longer into the day.
Pro Tips for the week:
Start EARLY. Even though I’m a teacher by trade, I am not a morning person. Chug a pot of coffee and get out there! The days I woke up at 5:30 am and was at the first spot by 6 am, I had the most success. For me the bite was hot from 6am-8:30am, I fished till 12:30pm in the afternoon each day but caught nothing after 8:30am. The days I slept in and fished in the evening/sunset 6pm-9pm, I was skunked twice.
Nice snook.
6am on summer break? Gross! Let me know when you’ve had enough karaoke and want to put the new trolling motor and bait pen to work with some night drifting at the inlet!
Get it son! Nice job Alex, damn dolphins lol!