Your December 2012 Mosquito Lagoon & Indian River Fishing Forecast
Published: Sat, 12/01/12
| Newsletter Issue # 40 Fishing Forecast |
December 1, 2012 | |||||||
Mosquito Lagoon & Indian River Fishing | ||||||||
osquito Lagoon Christmas is right around the corner, and sight fishing for tailing redfish on the flats of the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River this month will be as good as it gets. The water levels are still high in the lagoons, which is normal for this time of year and the water clarity has improved greatly since the algae bloom has dissipated.
Sight fishing for schools of roaming redfish, large gator sea trout and flounder should be exceptional this month.
Since the most recent front passed, the redfish bite on the Indian River Lagoon in particular has been on.
The redfish schools and singles have been running in close to shore, which makes them prime targets for bank fishermen using finger mullet, mud minnows, cut ladyfish chunks, live shrimp and scented jerk baits.
Slot size redfish continue to be productive during the first few hours of daylight and later in the day around 4:00 pm, which is especially true in the Indian River area near Titusville.
As the water temperature drops into the 50's, start looking for sea trout in the deeper winter holes where the water temperatures are a degree or two warmer.
This is also the time to downsize your leader, the size of your lures, and to start using shrimp and crab imitation baits like the DOA Shrimp.
When water temperatures dip down into the 40s and the water levels begin to drop down, redfish will start to gather into larger schools. When winter water temperatures drop, the fish become lethargic so remember to start fishing your baits slower than you normally would and to use lighter lines with longer casts. ___________________________ Playalinda Beach
December is when fishermen start thinking about catching Pompano at the beach and in the river systems. Although Playalinda Beach surf fishermen enjoy a good pompano fishery most of the year, starting
 in December, Indian River fishermen will also have an excellent chance of catching migrating pompano where they congregate in the deeper water around bridge pilings and on the shallow flats.The Port Orange bridge, the two Melbourne Causeway bridges (US 192 and SR 518), the Wabasso Causeway Bridge (SR 510) and the SR 406 bridge at Titusville will all be potential hot spots for pompano this month.
You can catch them on light spinning tackle with small 1/4 to 3/8 oz. yellow or orange colored jigs or with small pieces of cut clam or fiddler crabs if you like using live bait. Some pompano fishermen use tandem jig rigs on light tackle with good results. If you're targeting pompano in the surf, try fishing during an outgoing tide when the surf is relatively calm. If you can time it to an early morning start, all the better. Pompano seem to bite best during the first few hours of the day.
Fish the troughs and drop offs between the sand bars when the water is "clean".
If you're targeting blues in the river system, fish the sand bars, oyster bars and ICW channel drop offs.
Bright colored or silver spoons fished near schools of bait fish will usually get you a hookup.
Right now the blues are averaging 20"
_____________________________
Near Offshore And Offshore
As the cold fronts start to roll through and cool down the water temperatures this month, the fish will start moving around. As long as water temperatures stay above 74 degrees, the kingfish bite should remain
steady.
 Kingfish should be holding on
the inshore wrecks and reefs in around 60 to 100 feet of water.
When weather conditions permit, some prime
locations to target December kingfish are the north end of Pelican Flats
and 8A reef out of Port Canaveral.
Find a weed line or rip in 100 foot of water or better, give
the line a run to the south and look for birds working it or any other floating structure and you may find yourself some dolphin or even a sail.
November, December and January are great for big tripletail if we have a mild winter. When near-shore water temperatures approach the
70-degree mark, start looking for cobia and big tripletail along the Port
Canaveral buoy line, near shore structure and the shallow waters just off the bight of the
Cape.
If you can get past those so called "endangered" Red Snapper, the bottom bite this month should be outstanding for some nice grouper.
Look for them on the 21 and 27 Fathom lines around structure.
 Haulover Canal fishing in December is always good for bull redfish and black drum. The deep canal acts as a super highway for all sorts of game fish between the North Indian River and the Mosquito Lagoon.
As the water temperatures cool, you can expect to see sport shrimpers lining the banks of Haulover Canal dipping shrimp from their anchored boats.
Although shimping is good in the canal almost all year round, the shrimping improves during the cooler months.
Haulover Canal shrimp and those caught in the Titusville area in the Indian River Lagoon are usually run much larger than those caught in the Intercoastal Waterway around Oak Hill.
Sport shrimping is just beginning to gear up on the two new Veterans Memorial Fishing Piers in Titusville.
Although the shrimping had been relatively slow on both of the fishing piers, things have been picking up recently. Shrimpers have been dipping more and larger shrimp during the past few weeks.
 Locals are starting to fill their 5 gallon buckets with jumbo shrimp and although I haven't seen any limits so far, I have seen several shrimpers getting their 5 gallon buckets close to full.
As the temperature continues to cool down, I hope to be passing along some more reliable sport shrimping information to our subscribers.
Until then, Tight Lines To All! | ||||||||
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