Capt. Lee Noga
What a crazy shrimping 2018 season. It has brought great joy to residents in Volusia County. But we now have pushed past the best of the season and it is time to hang our nets up. Brevard County had a run at the end of the season of nice sizes. Most of Brevard County were forced to tow to the Volusia County grounds because Brevard was just not giving the shrimp up for 5 months . We can only speculate what shut down Brevard County. The rumors include sewage spills in the wake of Hurricane Irma, dead sea grass etc. We have had spot checks in S. Brevard and reports are few tiny shrimp. They are not expecting much of a season. They are also allegedly reporting sewage odors around their waters (this has not been verified). What we do know is Volusia County season started real late in the season. Folks are still pulling buckets of shrimp out of the water. The run is strong but the sizes are much smaller than a month ago. Volusia enjoyed large shrimp from January to April (5” and up). The bio mass of dinks are in the water but to many shrimpers they could care less about the size. The other thing worth mentioning we had few summer whites come through this season and no reports of Asian tiger shrimp. Will S. Daytona get a summer white shrimp cast net season this year? We are hoping this is the case, last 4 years have been dismal. There remains so much shrimp in Volusia County folks are getting their limit under an hour. Personally, I have retired my nets and have no interest in the smaller 4” or smaller shrimp. I do recommend going out during the moon events (new and full moon) 3 days before, 2 days after if you want a swat at the larger shrimp. The river this season had 3x the amount of boats compared to years past. The amount of shrimp in the water was a blessing considering we had 2 years of Hurricanes that glanced our coast line. June is the beginning of the S. Brevard season which includes Mather’s Bridge, Eau Gallie Bridge as the top popular places. They shrimp from land/concrete with 18 foot dip nets. Brevard is wind driven and not tidal. If your interested in trapping at the base of the Causeways, this is the window of opportunity June-August. We are not looking for the summer whites to show up in S. Daytona until mid July. We are closely monitoring S. Daytona for these river crickets caught by cast net in the day time. We are also watching the N.E region of Jacksonville where the summer whites are more prevalent and a 2 hour tow from Central Florida. Tampa should be starting to warm up in the DeSoto area over the summer. We are predicting a strong season for the N.E. Region. For day to day reports, join our Facebook group, “Florida Shrimping Academy = Tips & Tricks”, over 18K members strong.
Capt. Lee Noga
Academy of shrimping
www.leenoga.com