Steady east and southeast breezes turned my focus to the lagoon system where I caught some nice fish, but it was not easy. The water level is still high, but brown tide blooms have unfortunately come back strong with the rain and heat. The upper Indian River is in worse shape in general than the Banana River, south Brevard, and the Mosquito Lagoon right now. That said, most of those areas are still not great; you can see bottom in 1-2ft for the most part with a few spots much better.\

We sure had to work for it this week! The bait on the beach thinned out a little, but the fish seemed to be absent. We got bait within 30 minutes on Monday, but we found very few fish. We saw one group of bonito and three tarpon roll in total.

This week has to be one for the record books on the space coast! The water is super clear and warm on the beach. This has made getting bait very easy! Cast net pogies off the beach where pelicans are diving or sabiki threadfins off the buoys or out of pods. Both baits are versatile and will get you in on a hot summer bite.

The fishing has improved again after a not so great week. Tarpon are showing up thick in all sizes all over the lagoon system. The bite is best early morning and slowing down towards noon, but they can be caught all day and night. Juvenile tarpon ranging from 1 to 40 pounds are in pretty much every creek or canal on the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon as well as some of them in the Banana River and Sykes Creek.

Earlier this week, the mahi run happened. Multiple well organized weedlines developed from 140ft out to the edge of the Gulf Stream in 250ft. It was flat calm with nice blue water, and there were a ton of mahi. You could see them jumping on the weedlines. There were a lot of peanuts. We caught the majority trolling, but they swam up to the boat a couple times in groups of 2-8 fish usually. That’s where it becomes important to have light spinning rods ready to pitch.

Another solid week is in the books even with gloomy skies as well as some rain and wind I had to contend with. The Space Coast was fortunate to have the brunt of the rain stay down south and inland, but it still has changed things up.

This week was very good in all places! On Monday and Wednesday, I fished the mangroves with live mullet and hooked some tarpon and snook. Unfortunately, I could not get much to stay on the hook or out of the mangroves. Fishing the mangroves is frustrating sometimes.

This week was windy and not as warm as it is sometimes in May. Those winds kept us all off the Atlantic, but it didn’t stop me from fishing inshore…

I was really hoping with summer break starting and impressive reports to get myself on some grouper and mahi. Mother Nature disagreed, and plan B had its ups and downs.

The constant changes in wind and temperature have kept me from dialing in the bite in the Indian River Lagoon. One day, I’ll catch a lot of fish in one spot. The next day, that spot will be dead. The water level is low right now, so that makes the flats really hard to fish unless you find one with deeper water up to the shore.

We still had some nibbles even with the thermocline and massive crowds!

Red snapper are still out there, just took a little bit extra to figure it out.