Hello all!

 

These forums have been very helpful as I've tried to get back into fishing after nearly a decade off.  I grew up LMB fishing in New England and then South Florida, with some decent success in Coral Springs in the early 2000s.  Now I'm looking for locations where I can bank fish in the Fort Lauderdale area for Bass and other game fish.  I eventually want to get into kayak fishing but that will take some time to save up for so for now I'm looking for good locations to fish from the bank, which in my experience has been tough... I've stopped by a few canals with little luck and went out to Loxahatchee wildlife refuge last weekend before sunrise to fish around the canals there for three to four hours and all I caught was one dink (LMB) with not a single other bite for me or my dad.  There were plenty of fish there, many were even jumping clear out of the water, but few were interested in the Senkos or topwater lures being presented.  Loxahatchee is quite a drive from East Fort Lauderdale, so that was a bit disappointing even though we had fun being outside.  We also tried Southgate canal for a while with not a single bite.  That being said, I'm looking for some decent lakes/ponds in the Fort Lauderdale area to fish for bass/snakeheads/peacocks/anything that will give me a good fight.  Can anyone help?  So far my luck has been pretty spotty.  Canals seem to be pretty mucky/weedy and hard to access near me so now I'm looking for lakes and ponds with a chance of good fish.  

 

I will also say a few years back I spent upwards of six months fishing obsessively off the Hillsboro inlet for Snook with ZERO luck.  I know they were there, I saw them often, but I never managed to hook into one.  I suspect they're highly pressured in that area or I am just not doing something right... which is why I aim to get a kayak and hopefully improve my chances.  Any tips on inshore saltwater spots/techniques in the area would also be welcome.  I'm itchin' for success!  Thanks in advance.

If you have an older Garmin GPS, their maps used to have EXCELLENT waterway details and I have found some of the best honey holes in and around industrial parks and commercial strip centers in Broward and Palm Beach counties in So. Flo.

 

Unfortunately the most recent maps (sometime after 2011) Garmin lost most of the waterway areas of most interest to me so I bucked up and bought a 7 year old GPS on Feebay to use. The recent OSM maps are better than the new Garmin samples if you have a newer Garmin but they're not quite as good as the old Garmin maps were.

 

Since you're near the Hillsboro inlet, go west of there past (west of) the tpke, and there are scads of lakes that are easily reachable on foot. Also these lakes "generally" do not have snakeheads in them (yet) so LMB and Peacocks are still there in abundance. Any canal or lake that connects to water that ultimately leads to snakehead territory will have a vastly depleted population of bass in my experience.

 

Anyway... On foot the large canals like the Stranahan, Hillsboro are heavily fished and are hard to get a good sized fish on.

 

There are lots of snook moving about the Hillsboro and believe it or not the inlet area really doesn't get much foot or boat fishing (see below the HEAVY traffic comment) because access is limited to basically one spot on the north east side of the HBI and the ditch.

 

If shrimp were running you likely won't catch anything, the fish are gorged. if shrimp were not running and you did not have live shrimp or decent looking shrimp lure you were starting at a disadvantage.

 

The HBI has HEAVY boat traffic, from big boats (powered and sail) with skippers who don't know how to handle their boat. You couldn't pay me enough to navigate to or fish there with a paddle, unless you could safely get to and sat anchored in the HBI cove on the south side well out of the channel.