Your December 2011 Mosquito Lagoon & Indian River Fishing Forecast
Published: Thu, 12/01/11
| Newsletter Issue #28 Fishing Forecast |
December 1, 2011 | |||||||
Mosquito Lagoon & Indian River Fishing | ||||||||
osquito Lagoon Christmas is just around the corner and soon sight fishing for tailing redfish in both the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River flats will be about as good as it ever gets. The weather has been great and for the past two weeks, when the winds have cooperated, there has been excellent fishing on the clear shallow water lagoon flats for tailing redfish, sea trout and flounder. Redfish are roaming the flats in groups of 10 to 300 feeding on small crabs, shrimp and finger mullet when they can be found. A well positioned 1/4 oz DOA shrimp, Gulp Shrimp or a a 4 inch CAL jerkbait will get you an immediate strike on almost every cast. This past Tuesday, a strong cold front moved through our area and helped clear up the algae bloom that is still causing cloudy water conditions in parts of the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River. When the temperatures drop into the 40s like they did this week and the water levels go down, the redfish will really start schooling. Fish start to get lethargic when the water temperatures drop so remember to start fishing your baits much slower than you would normally and to use lighter lines with longer casts.
Long casts with small diameter lines and slow bait presentation will get you a lot more hookups this time of year. Remember, sea trout are out of season from
November 1st through January 1st on Florida's east coast, so if you
catch one, please handle and release it with extreme care. ___________________________ Playalinda Beach
December is when everybody starts thinking about Pompano in the river and at the beach. Surf fishermen at Playalinda Beach enjoy a good fishery most of the year, but starting  this month, Indian River fishermen will also get a good shot at catching these tasty game fish.The SR 406 bridge at Titusville, the Port Orange bridge, the two Melbourne Causeway bridges (US 192 and SR 518), the Wabasso Causeway Bridge (SR 510) and some other areas in the Indian River are all potential hot spots for pompano this month. The pompano congregate around the bridge pilings in deeper water and can be easily caught by boaters. They can also be caught from the bridges and piers using almost any type of 1/4 to 3/8 oz. yellow or orange colored jig.
Tandem rigs on light tackle are also used by some Pompano fishermen with good results.
_____________________________
Near Offshore And Offshore Concentrations of kingfish shuld be holding on
the inshore reefs and wrecks in 60 to 100 feet of water. When the weather is nice and the seas are
fishable offshore, somel prime
locations to target December kingfish are the north end of Pelican Flats
and 8A reef out of Port Canaveral.
As long as water temperatures stay above 74 degrees, the kingfish bite should remain
steady.
When near-shore waters approach the
70-degree mark, start looking for cobia and tripletail along Port
Canaveral buoy line and the shallow waters just off the bight of the
Cape.
Both of these species hold around floating structure but as the water temperatures warm up in the afternoon, they start to free swim. ____________________________
Port Canaveral and Sebastian Inlets
 Ponce Inlet has been producing some big redfish and some nice snook. The waves are keeping most of the anglers off the rocks but if you can get out there, you have a good chance of hooking up with mangrove snapper, sheepshead, black drum, bluefish or breeder redfish. When ocean conditions are too
rough, good concentrations of breeder redfish will be holding in the
inlet passes of Ponce De Leon, Port Canaveral and Sebastian.
Drifting the passes
during a falling tide and bouncing live pinfish off the bottom will usually get you a hookup.
This technique works great in the
Port Canaveral shipping channel if you concentrate working the edges of the channel.
Snook fishing around Sebastian Inlet will remain steady as long
as the water temperatures stay relatively warm.
Night fishing the slack tides in the channel under the A1A Bridge with live pigfish, pinfish, or croaker will get you a hookup.
The flounder migration has stretched into late December and the larger stragglers
will be moving through the passes all this month.
A sliding sinker rig with at least a 20# test main line and a very short 12 inch leader of at least 20# test will keep mullet or mud minnows on the bottom in the strike zone.  Haulover Canal fishing in December should still be good for breeder bull redfish and black drum.Throughout the upcoming months they will be found moving through the deeper canal waters between the North Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon.
I'm sure that the cooler weather conditions that arrived with the cold front this week will have sport shrimpers out in their boats lining the banks and at the entrance of the canal dipping shrimp.
The shrimp that are caught in the Haulover Canal and around Titusville usually run much larger than those caught in the Intercoastal Waterway around Oak Hill.
Sport shrimpers are just beginning to congregate on the new Veterans Memorial Fishing Piers in Titusville.
So far this month the shrimping has been relatively slow on both of the Max Brewer Causeway fishing piers.
 Most of the local sport shrimpers I talked to were all waiting for a decent cold snap to kick off the shrimp run. Hopefully, this week's cold front will spike the action up a bit.
A couple of years ago during December, the locals were netting jumbo shrimp and getting their 5 gallon bucket limits on a regular basis. So far this year, the shrimpers haven't been out in force and I haven't seen many limits.
I have received several email requests from subscribers looking for underwater shrimp lights. The link at the end of this report should help you out. In the next couple of weeks if the weather continues to cool down, I hope to be passing along some reliable sport shrimping information to our subscribers. I'm even thinking of getting myself some underwater fishing lights for Christmas.
Until then, Tight Lines To All! | ||||||||
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