What a crazy 2018 shrimping 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. 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. 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.
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 you’re 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. 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.
