Mosquito Lagoon

They're using these things that they call sane nets, but they're pretty big in size.

But there's a lot of sane netting that still does go on in the Northern Indian and in the Mosquito Lagoon, which to me, Personally, I would make Mosquito Lagoon from Oak Hill South.

I would make it a no-take zone, period, if it were up to me.

You can't keep anything out of there and use it as a recharge zone like the Northern Banana is with the Manatee Sanctuary.

There's no stipulation where you can't take things that FWC allows you to take.

But it's so hard to get to that it basically acts as a recharge zone for the rest of the Banana River and then the middle of the northern Indian River.

So I'd like to see the Mosquito Lagoon kind of cap the other end of that.

And we'd have two recharge zones.

So it's been the objective to restore as much of the wetland systems that we can get to.

And we've restored 4 or 500 acres in Mosquito Lagoon of dragline ditched areas, and it's almost the same method.

We scrape the vegetation off and place it in the ditch, and then scrape the spoil, the pile, back into the ditch, returning acreage to wetland and restoring the natural hydrology over those areas.

So that's an additional method that we've used to restore wetlands.

That's pretty cool.

You know? I've taken the Hells Bay down to Mosquito Lagoon and, or up to, down to the Everglade P- Park and caught redfish, and trout, and snook.

We've been up to Mosquito Lagoon.

Like, there's just...

It is a cool spot to spend the winter because within two hours there's so many different things to do.

That was pretty cool.

Then we headed on down into Mosquito Lagoon.

Ooh.

And as they say, that's where the trouble started.

Uh-huh.

Well, there was some mischief involved in, in all that.

But we got down in the middle of the night, about midnight, the motor quit in the mos- middle of Mosquito Lagoon.

Well, the Mosquito Lagoon got its name for a [laughs] very good reason.

Anywhere where there's a culvert pipe where they can get out of the main river and into the marsh, they're getting back into the marsh around the National Wildlife Refuge.

So it's actually making things a little tougher up in that particular area of the North Indian River and South Mosquito Lagoon.

The rest of the areas, though, where they can't get into those culvert pipes and get back into those, those salt marshes, it's actually getting better because, you know, the water's coming up, the water's cooling down just a touch.

Mm-hmm.

However, as the water starts to blend a little more, I guess you would say, evaporate off just a little bit and get just a touch saltier, those shallow areas are gonna become much more attractive to the trout because that's where all the bait fish are.

And they're gonna start venturing closer to the banks as well.

So I'm expecting in about three weeks, I'm expecting the banks to be absolutely on fire throughout the Banana, Indian, and Mosquito Lagoons.

You know what's interesting to me, Jim, and I hadn't really even thought about it till you just said it, the upper reaches of the St. Johns used to be completely fresh water.

So, like, bonefish.

Um, even stuff like the Mosquito Lagoon, um, in, you know, northern Florida.

Um, I always make a joke that you can just point your finger in the Mosquito Lagoon and spook fish.

So, um, having something that's anti-reflective, um, kinda helps out with that.

Wow.

I go back and forth, my charters.

I, uh, back and forth from Orlando to Mosquito Lagoon.

It's a 50 miles round trip.

I travel a lot for the Captain's Log TV, filming those episodes.