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.