Mosquito Lagoon Redfish

Mon Oct 06, 2008
Popularized on ESPN fishing shows and various fishing circuit tournaments on television, the humble redfish has received a lot of attention in the southeastern United States as a magnificent sportsfish from Texas to Florida's Mosquito Lagoon.

Interest in redfish has not always been so popular, nor has the fishery always been healthy. Prior to the mid 1980's commercial fishing in Florida had all but depleted the stocks of redfish and a complete moratorium was put into place in order to rescue the easily targeted and netted red drum. One Louisiana chef's recipe, blackened redfish had caused such a desire in the restaurant industry, many people faulted that chef alone for almost causing the outright extinction of the species. Within a couple of years, schools of redfish were starting to show up where they hadn't been seen in many years, but the commercial netting industry was in a quandary having to release all redfish entangled in their miles of gill nets once used to catch everything from trout to snook and the remaining redfish.

Not until Florida's constitutional amendment to "BAN THE NETS" came into effect did the redfish totally rebound to their plentiful amounts seen only by turn of the century anglers, before commercial interest became involved. Red drum are now on the rebound and it looks as if the only thing that will keep them from flourishing now is loss of habitat and water quality.

Redfish in the Lagoon Eat Heartily

Redfish feed on various forms of food and can be taken with many of the commercial artificial redfish baits or many of the natural baits collected or purchased locally. Their popularity with anglers is probably because they readily take almost any bait from dead to artificial and they are great to eat and grow quite large. You can often see redfish tailing in the saltwater estuaries and lagoons on Florida's coastlines.  The world record is well over 90 lbs and was caught near Cape Hatteras North Carolina. But Mosquito Lagoon holds the lions share of many of the line class redfish IGFA records to this day. Red drum are aggressive eaters and grow to these large sizes by eating almost anything that's available in their habitat including other gamefish which has been witnessed in the Mosquito Lagoon by many fishing guides and their anglers.