Florida Fishing Tips

Fishing for Red Snapper in Florida can be fun and easy if you follow a few general rules. Certainly their are exceptions to almost every rule, but I will share with you the simple methods and techniques that have produced fish for my family every-time we have gone fishing. One of my favorite fish to catch in Florida is Red Snapper. We fish on the east coast along the Indian River Lagoon. The Indian River Lagoon is truly a unique estuary with over 3,000 species of plants and animals. It is considered to be one of the most biologically diverse estuarine systems in all of the Untied States. You can catch over 100 types of fish in the Lagoon it stretches over 150 miles from Ponce de Leon Inlet in the Mosquito Lagoon to Jupiter Inlet near West Palm Beach.

Some of the areas have condos and are highly populated, But the area I am most fond of is between Sebastian Inlet and Ft Pierce Inlet. This area has many docks and a few bridges that I have found to be ideal for catching Red Snapper. While I have tried many baits to catch these fish, I have found that live shrimp works the most consistently. I also use D.O.A. shrimp when I run out of live shrimp or if they are really biting that day. D.O.A. Shrimp are available at most bait shops in the area are quite effective also. Get to the bait shop early because sometimes they run out of live shrimp before noon.

I recommend that you use Red Cajun fishing line also. When I first started fishing the Lagoon I noticed many other fisherman using Red Cajun. They seemed to catch more fish than I did. The line isn't expensive so I switched one pole to the red and kept my wife's pole loaded with the standard blue line. It was only a few until hours until she wanted my pole with the red line and I was saddled with the task of changing her pole to Red Cajun.

So live shrimp and Red Cajun line will increase your chances as far as I am concerned. Next I like to fish the docks, If you have a small boat this is ideal.The lagoon has an average depth of 2 feet. Seems shallow but there are plenty of places that will be deeper. I like to find the canals their are plenty of them up and down the lagoon. These areas seem to attract red snapper and mangrove snapper. I usually find a mouth of one of these canals and fish on an incoming tide. In the early morning and when the sun is going down seem to be good times. Sure I have caught fish on an out going tide in the middle of a hot summer day. But it has always seem to me that incoming tides raising water brought the fish back in to the canals. Fell free to experiment but the few tips that I have mentions have helped tremendously with bring home dinner.