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

December 30, 2025

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to everyone! What an outstanding 2025! Busiest charter year I’ve had in 20 years! Once again hosted clients and guests from over 30 different states and 2 other countries. Overall our space coast fishery continues to be strong and growing every year despite substantial fishing pressure. Our redfish population continues a very strong comeback with the most fish we’ve had in 12 years. Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River Lagoon historic comeback continues with strong sea grass growth in both lagoons! Our snook population living around Ponce Inlet is now yielding 40” fish after the last decade of relatively mild winters. While redfish will always dominate the scene in these parts of Central Florida, we also caught plenty of speckled trout, black drum and snook on my charters this year. Tarpon, sharks, triple tail, flounder, and some other fish varieties surprised us too! I’m ready for amazing 2026!

Have you checked out my fishing report videos on Youtube? Head over to my Youtube Channel and give them a view. I break down what’s biting for us at the moment and include some photos of clients from the past month. If you want to stay in the loop subscribe to the channel and give them a thumbs up.

The winter fishing scene is taking hold in the shallow waters of Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River Lagoon. Big schools of redfish are up on top of the shallow grass flats tailing or laying up in the potholes. Just this week we’ve seen a few schools of 150+ redfish. It’s been a mild winter thus far, but the water is really clear in most areas and the shallow conditions are making for excellent sight casting opportunities for my anglers using spinning gear or throwing flies.

Black drum are showing up in huge numbers again this winter up shallow on the flats. Fished a few groups recently that have drum schooled up by the hundreds and tailing away in the grass. They’ve been chewing well on live bait, and it’s not uncommon for us to catch 10-20 when we target a big school.

Speckled trout fishing lately for us has meant drifting live bait or throwing soft plastics in deeper sloughs for some 10-20” trout. The best days have been around cold snaps that are pushing them up shallow. Have seen some scattered big gator trout laid up in the shallows but it hasn’t been many and they are few in numbers. When they show up, we'll be posting up with live bait to take our best chances.

Haven’t spent much time trying for snook lately as the best action in the area has been sight casting up on the shallow grass flats in the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River Lagoon (where snook aren’t hanging out this time of year). It’s also been so mild that the spots I target snook during the winter don’t really have much going on. We have some cold weather arriving though that is sure to bunch up snook into big schools. When that happens it’s quite common for me to have charters where we land 20+ snook per day. Many are smaller snook under 24 inches.

January dates are filling up but I have 13 dates still available. February and March are also booking quick as we get into spring breaks and the Daytona 500. Don’t wait till the last minute! Text me or call me at 386-212-4931 or even send me 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…