New Smyrna Beach Area - Indian River Lagoon - Mosquito Lagoon Fishing Report

December 18, 2019

Things have certainly started to change up within the past week here in New Smyrna Beach as we’ve had a couple days lately where temps didn’t even make it to 60 degrees. This will kick the fishing winter transition into high gear over the remainder of the year. Mosquito Lagoon should have some good sight casting for smaller redfish and black drum on shallow flats. Deeper holes around New Smyrna Beach and Ponce Inlet should have good bites for for snook and speckled trout. Fishing never slows down in Florida, we just move to different depths and areas as water temps and levels fluctuate.

This past several weeks it’s been all about the big trophy size redfish that school up in areas near Ponce Inlet for their annual spawn. It’s the best bite possible along the east coast of Florida every fall; so it makes little sense trying to grind out bites doing something else. To that end, that’s all the pictures you are gonna see in this report, ha ha ha. The past 6 weeks or so we’ve been hitting Ponce Inlet daily as well as several staging areas in the ICW around New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater. Yet again this fall was another epic trophy redfish bite. Almost every trip i did had 10-15 hook-ups with numerous redfish landed in the 20-35 pound range. That run has basically ended for the year and these fish will widely scatter until early next spring. So now we’ll shift gears and start to take advantage of smaller 4-10 pound redfish moving into the shallow waters of Mosquito Lagoon. Increasing cold fronts will drop our water levels and put a chill in the water which in turn should have redfish moving shallow to warm up and find food. Sight casting with live shrimp and a variety of lures will produce good results. As we get towards the end of December and into January we should start to see the biggest redfish schools of the year in Mosquito Lagoon with some phenomenal days of catching around the cold fronts.

This recent colder weather is sure to get snook on the move as they migrate their way to deeper holes to ride out the winter. But it also means that we are now in my favorite stretch of months to find them stacked up by the hundreds. The nice thing is these holes are typically quite protected which means even on the ugliest of weather days we can still have a good bite. Historically November and December produce days of 20-30 snook caught per day. Live shrimp, soft plastic baits, and small plugs all work really well this time of year.

We should be finding speckled trout fired up in the Mosquito Lagoon and North Indian River Lagoon area over the next few weeks as they try to take advantage of the plethora of finger mullet migrating through the area. The colder weather we’ve been experiencing should be pushing the big trout into the shallows. We’ll find a variety of sizes, but most are in the 18-25” range. Soft plastics and small plugs also should produce good results this time of year.

Only two days left open for November. Then we are back to busy time of year as December and January are slammed busy with holiday travelers and those escaping to Florida for a winter warm up. Days for both are filling rapidly with only a dozen dates remaining open in each month.  Don’t wait till last minute to schedule! I take short notice trips if I have availability. Text me, call me at 386-212-4931 or even send an email to secure a date. Read my fishing charter page to view the top reasons why you should book your trip with me today. I look forward to fishing with you soon…