Variety is the Spice of Life: April Fishing Report from Daytona Beach, Florida

The weather has been beautiful! The water temps are heating up and the fishing has been red hot! All kinds of variety going on in the river. Snook bite has been awesome in the back waters fishing mangrove shorelines and docks. Free lined live shrimp has been working well. Pinfish are good to use around the bridges especially near the tide changes. About an hour into the tide change they start chewing. Both beginning of incoming and outgoing have been productive. I like outgoing better myself. Redfish and flounder have been hanging around the oyster bars so mud minnows are a great choice for both. The inlet has really picked up over the last couple weeks! We’re catching upper slot and over slot redfish using select shrimp and live pinfish. Most of the reds have been in the 30-40” range. 

It seems like the big bluefish we’ve been seeing over the past month or longer are moving out of the inlet with the water warning up. We’ve been catching quite a few 30-35” fish targeting the big reds. There’s been some big snook around the jetties but the bite has been different from one day to the next. Now that the water is up to the mid 70s the tarpon have showed up around the inlet. I haven’t checked at all yet but they’re probably on the beach too. I’ll probably be checking before this report goes out because I’m itching to try! I have noticed a bunch of bait off the beach and some days I’ve found huge schools of spanish mackerel going crazy on them. You can also start expecting bonito off the beach too around these bait pods. It seems like quite a few people have been fishing the nearshore spots off the beach and loading up on good size sand trout and weakfish. I haven’t tried myself but I’ve seen several catches of 20-40 fish with quite a few up to a couple pounds or bigger. 

There’s so many different types of awesome fishing going on right now and we’re getting into the busy season so if you’re planning on doing a charter don’t wait last minute! 

Tight lines!