Slow Mosquito Lagoon And Indian River Fishing

Hopefully the slow Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River fishing conditions we encountered this evening will not continue through the weekend.

I didn't get into town until about 5:30 this afternoon and after unloading the truck my wife and Elmo were ready to hit the water for some late fishing.

We hadn't been down Bio Lab road in a while so we decided to try out the Mosquito Lagoon fishing first.

The water level was down considerably and in some places more than I have ever seen. I pulled out my trusty Nikon and started taking pics of the shallow water boat launch and other scenery.

Today in order to wade fish this area, you had to navigate some pretty foul smelling dead vegetation before getting into the crystal clear shallow water.

Karen and I scouted the water for schools of fish or signs of singles that we could cast to, but gave up after a while.

The west side of Bio Lab road was dried up except for the deeper trough that runs along side the road. The only thing visible there were loads of waterfowl dining on what they dine on and a very large alligator trying to look like a log in shallow water that wasn't deep enough to cover it's back.

I quickly made a decision to drive over to Peacock's Pocket road on the Indian River Lagoon where I believed we would have better luck.

The road was relatively uninhabited. We only saw five vehicles all the time we were there.

The water on the Indian River side of the road was extremely shallow and the marsh side wasn't much better to fish.

Despite the conditions, Karen and I stopped in several areas to fish likely looking spots with not even a tap.

I fished gold spoons, jigs, D.O.A. CAL jerkbaits and even a Rapala top water bait. Karen fished large frozen heads on shrimp and got a couple of light bites but no fish until our last stop.

We were starting to get eaten alive by mosquitoes, so we decided to move on to "bobcat bay" where we believed the water would be deeper.

When we got to the cove, we saw several wakes which I made several unsuccessful casts to. Karen flipped off two baits trying to cast out to the wakes so I helped her out and cast the last shrimp closer to where the fish were feeding.

After just a few minutes she hooked into a nice slot sized redfish that put up an exceptionally good fight.

I was going to take a short video of the action but my camera wasn't set up for it; so I just took some pics of her fish before she released it. The fish was lucky; I would have eaten it.

The "skeeters" were apparently calling all their relatives for dinner and we were on the menu, so instead of trying to catch another redfish, we decided to grab a sub for dinner and head for home.

I'm glad Karen caught the redfish to break her slump. I on the other hand remained fishless for the day.

Oh well, Tomorrow is another day.

Tight Lines!