Redfish are notorious for sticking tight to docks.

I’ll be the first to admit there are prettier places to fish. For soul-stirring scenery, try the mangrove-shadowed rivers of the Everglades. The limitless blue Gulf Stream on a crisp winter day. Shimmering grassflats around the Marquesas Keys.

For just plain fishin’, though, where it’s all about easy access and number of casts per bite, none of those places holds a candle to some old dock on the Indian River Lagoon.

The dock half of that equation is a function of structure. Docks work about like artificial reefs do offshore. They offer shade and ambush points for gamefish, shelter and food for smaller forage species. I suppose the jury is still out on whether such attributes make up for the detrimental impacts of unnatural shade on seagrass beds. Docks change things. We know that for sure. How do such changes fit into the tangled accounting of our remodeling job on the Florida coastline—inlets, drainage canals, bridges, power plant intakes and the like? I don’t have the answer. It’s good for anglers to think about the environment, but in the end we try to catch fish. Docks are good places for that.

Why the Indian River Lagoon? There’s an easy explanation for that one. You have unparalleled variety of saltwater fish: tropical species such as snook and tarpon; familiar temperate types like seatrout and redfish; even reef fish including grouper and mangrove snapper. There’s also straightforward navigation here. The lagoon runs north, the lagoon runs south. You can’t get lost. The Intracoastal Waterway runs right up the middle of the lagoon, passing boat ramps and fisherman-friendly towns: Stuart, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Sebastian, Titusville.

Finding a dock to cast to is simple. Any of them can be productive at some time or another. But after a while you’ll notice characteristics that make some stand out from others.

Months after hurricanes Frances and Jeanne blasted my neck of the woods, only about one in five docks had any planking. The rest were just pilings. One in ten had been rebuilt completely, with signs of angling life in the form of a skiff on a lift, or—mysteriously enough—a yellow bait bucket hanging nearby. Wanna guess where the best fishing was? Yup, the other one in ten—the docks with good shade but no apparent competition from resident fishermen.

Tides are a huge part of dock fishing. And that’s one factor that takes a little thinking. Basically, the farther you get from an ocean inlet, the greater the delay in the tide. Here’s another catch: There are no hard and fast rules about dock fishing on one tide or another. Some sections of the lagoon—particularly on the western shoreline—are shoally and won’t float a needlefish at low tide. Here the top of a rising tide may produce the best action, as fish move toward shore, following bait schools up a dock as if climbing the rungs of a ladder. A relatively long dock that terminates in five or six feet of water may be a good producer around the low tide. You have to experiment some, keeping a personal log of currents and comparing what you find with formal tide predictions for the area. Sooner or later you’ll get dialed in.

This angler hooks a fish while casting uptide, top, and then pressures it safely downcurrent. The 120-mile-long Indian River Lagoon offers countless docks; this is one of many dozens along the 15-mile stretch between Jensen Beach and Fort Pierce.

If you can’t count on experience as your guide, you can at least count on this: A moving tide is far, far better than slack tide. I have seen otherwise fishless docks turn into a cauldron of activity with a pickup in the current, and vice-versa.

How you approach a dock also takes some consideration. Obviously you can’t pull off the side of the road and stroll out on someone’s private dock. By dock fishing I am primarily referring to a boater’s game, one that involves careful and stealthy positioning. In some neighborhoods you can get by with wading out from public parks. Waterfront property owners—as much as some would argue—do not own the water. They own the dock, but not the spaces in between. I’ve had some great days doing the stingray-shuffle from one dock to the next. Down at water level you see the things that make docks so attractive to gamefish—the bone-white barnacles clinging to the pilings; the dark oysters clumped here and there on bottom; a blue crab scuttling among the rank detritus near shore.

A fluttering jerkbait caught this snook’s eye.

For boaters, probably the best approach is via an electric trolling motor. It’s quiet and convenient. I favor the bow-mount types, as you can stand at the bow and fish while running the boat. An extension handle is a nice touch, allowing you to make adjustments in your course without stooping over. A couple of considerations here. One, you’ll have to evaluate how fast the current is moving, and what effect the wind might have on your drift. If the wind is pushing hard toward shore, it’s awfully tough staying in position. That’s where a light anchor, or an electric Power-Pole if the water is shallow enough, really comes in handy. But, the best scenario is light wind, under 10 knots or so, with one exception: Some days in winter, when cold fronts come ripping across the peninsula, you can tuck in tight to the west side of the Indian River, fishing docks in the lee of hard northwest winds.

I often find it’s best to start uptide of a series of docks, drifting most of the way. Unless I have a special dock picked out to fish intensively, I’ll run-and-gun, making a number of prospecting casts while passing through the area. Downtide drift does not mean downtide fishing. As you approach the tip of a dock, make your first few casts across and uptide, working a shoreward arc of about 45 degrees from the axis of your drift. Snook, in particular, are likely to be hanging on the uptide side of the dock, maybe several yards out from the structure. Cast straight for the dock right away and you might land behind the fish, a
recipe for failure.

Using the trolling motor, align the drift so that you don’t run into the dock, but instead pass slowly by the end within casting distance. Resist the urge to get close enough to see fish—unless watching fish tails heading quickly away is your objective.

Generally you should try to use the motor as little as possible, both to preserve battery charge and to avoid spooking fish. If you have to keep the prop turning to maintain position, continuous operation at very low speed is far better than stop-and-go pulses at full power.

There’s always the urge to show off your casting skills. A controlled skip-cast is an impressive thing, where you aim for the water a foot or so out from the dock and bounce your lure into the shadows. With cat-like reflexes and heavy tackle, you’ll land a few fish. But you’ll also lose a few. Some days a lot. It’s an exciting game to play. Once you’ve learned about the “thump,” it’s irresistible. But the point is, you don’t have to be a dead-accurate caster to catch fish at the docks. Sometimes the best fish aren’t right under the structure—and even when they are, they’re liable to move a few feet when you ring the dinner bell.

For the real close work—especially when snook are the main players—I favor braided line in the 20- or 30-pound class, and a rod built to handle it. Leaders, too, need to test out to support heavy loads in an abrasive environment. I was debating a friend the other day on the merits of 40-pound fluorocarbon leader. I conceded that perhaps I’d get fewer bites than he would with less-visible 20-pound, but I maintained that I’d land more, and I backed it up by see-sawing a 24-inch gag grouper out from between two barnacle-encrusted pilings. That day I was experimenting with an 8-foot spinning rod, a departure from the knee-jerk comments of angling experts who’ve long stated that short rods are better for dock fishing. The 8-footer with no-stretch line moved fish with crane-like efficiency.

Be stealthy, relying on the trollingmotor only for occasional position adjustments.

There are lots of ways to fish docks, and drifting along while fan-casting is only one of them. A neat wrinkle is to position yourself down-tide of a dock and cast uptide through the pilings—all the way to the other side—with a slow-sinking jig. It feels dangerous, but if you keep a tight line as you bump the jig with the current, you can gain the upper hand. Fish nearly always take a bait facing into the tide. Casting from directly behind that position, at the strike you’re poised to fight the fish with the current, as opposed to wrestling it uptide to the boat. That can make a huge difference. I’ve found this to be a good approach for redfish, which often hold tight to dock pilings.

This red stuck jig and soft-bait tail.

For heaven’s sake leave the live bait alone. One of the wonders of dock fishing is the tremendous variety of fish that will strike an artificial lure. If you can make your cast, retrieve and quickly reposition it, you can often catch a lot more than you would chucking a clunky bait into the area. There’s more satisfaction and less mess with lures. It’s a riot watching a monster snook clobber a mullet next to a seawall, but if you’re prospecting one dock to the next over the course of a few hours, slinging bait just doesn’t feel right.

There’s often some surface action to be had around docks, but you’ll get the most bites from the greatest variety of fish in the lower half of the water column. A light jig, say about 1⁄8-ounce per 2 feet of depth, is effective. Bucktail or soft-plastic tail, your choice. I tend to favor jigs with wide-gap, tinned hooks in the 4/0 range—sharp but strong enough to hold onto a snook if you have to put the wood to it. I have big ambitions when I fish docks. I like a 3- or 4-inch twin-tail “shad” type tail in light colors—or no color at all. White seems to work as fine as anything, but I’m sure you’ll find one that works better.

The one bait I do like to carry when dock fishing is fresh shrimp. If the snook and redfish action is slow, you can often fill in the gap with sheepshead or snapper. Anchor a little uptide or just off the tip of a dock, and cast a small, tail-hooked shrimp on a No. 1 hook, 20-pound leader and a couple of splitshot. It’s amazing how often those vertical stripes turn into a single black lateral line.

There is no season for dock fishing. The snook bite best when the water temp is over 70. Bluefish seem to be year-round residents on the Indian River, and big seatrout have their own calendar. Sheepshead seem to be most abundant in winter, but that may be more a function of water clarity than anything else. It could be that the sheepies are just easier to see then. Redfish are without question year-round dock inhabitants. Little jacks are a nuisance and now and then a 30-pounder will pulverize a plug and recapture your respect for the species.

The best thing to do is to get out there and look.

FS

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1. Redfish West, Redfish East
2. Sight Fishing Florida Redfish
3. Bridge Brawl Fishing
4. Snook Fishing in Captiva Pass and Redfish Pass
5. Myakka River-Style Snookin’ – Charlotte County