Independence Day Weekend Fishing

Independence Day fishermen were all over the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon this weekend trying their best to land sea trout, redfish or just about anything that was biting.

I was hoping to be one of these fishermen this weekend, but my truck has been in and out of the shop all week and I wasn't willing to take the chance of being stranded in the middle of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge with electrical problems.

I did take an hour to run by one of my favorite fishing spots on Saturday afternoon with a couple of spinning rods, just to get out of the house and toss a few lures around.

I tried fishing the southern flats off of Bio Lab road with topwater baits and a gold spoon but had only limited success.

Being on the Mosquito Lagoon just after noon isn't the best time to cast a lure around.

I waded a grass flat area with some hard bottom and lots of sandy potholes and picked up one barely legal sea trout on a silver Johnson Sprite which I promptly released.

I switched to my other rod rigged with a bass colored Chug Bug that I had stuffed into my waistband and missed a couple of strikes from what looked like decent sized sea trout.

I generally like to sight cast for sea trout and reds but the fishing conditions made that difficult, so I spent the majority of my time blind casting into the potholes that I could spot.

I finally got tired of blind casting and because I still had some concerns that my truck wouldn't start, I started wading back to where I parked the truck.

On the way in I spotted two large sheepshead around some old pilings and spooked a slot size redfish that I didn't expect to see in the shallows during that time of the day.

I noticed that the Mosquito Lagoon is experiencing the same type of algae bloom that we had last summer and that the water isn't as clear as usual.

On the way back home, I took a detour around Peacocks Pocket road just to see what was going on.

There were a lot of people on the road; some fishing and most just driving by and watching the waterfowl or whatever.

Anyway, I didn't spot any actively feeding fish so I aimed for the Hacienda and the coolness of an air conditioned den.

Maybe next week when things calm down a bit on the water I'll give it another shot.

Till then, Tight Lines.