Quickly Find Fish In New Waters [Homosassa Fishing Report]
- By: Luke Simonds
- on
Fishing new water can be intimidating.
When you’ve never been somewhere before, it’s easy to waste hours fishing the wrong areas.
In this Homosassa fishing report, I’ll show you exactly how I use Smart Fishing Spots and what I’m looking for on the water to quickly narrow down productive areas and find redfish, snook, and trout.
Along the way, you’ll also see the results of a black vs. white lure color test… and one umbrella experiment that definitely didn’t go as planned.
July’s FREE Tackle Tester is Black Ice, the same color used in this video. Insider members can choose from three different lure profiles. Grab Yours Here.
Featured Gear:
Plug Setup:
- Rod: Slot Machine 7’6″ Medium
- Reel: Otis 2500
- Line: 10 lb Daiwa J-Braid 8 Grand
- Leader: 15 lb Ande Mono
- Bite Tippet: 30 lb Ande Mono
- Lure: Prawn USA Jr
Paddletail Setup:
- Rod: Slot Machine 7’6″ Medium
- Reel: Otis 2500
- Line: 8 lb Daiwa J-Braid 8 Grand
- Leader: 12 lb Ande Mono
- Bite Tippet: 30 lb Ande Mono
- Lure 1: Mulligan 4″ – Slam Shady rigged on 3/0 Hoss Helix Hook 1/8oz
- Lure 2: Mulligan 4″ – Black Ice rigged on 3/0 Hoss Helix Hook 1/8oz
Featured Software:
Other:
- Boat: 22′ Micro Draft
- Sunglasses: Smith – Guide’s Choice
How To Find Fish Fast In New Water
Fishing new water doesn’t have to be a guessing game.
The key is identifying high-percentage areas before you ever make your first cast. Look for points, creek mouths, oyster bars, and shorelines with moving water. Then pay attention to how the wind, current, and tide position bait and feeding fish.
The faster you eliminate unproductive water, the faster you’ll start catching fish.
How Smart Fishing Spots Helps You Find Fish Faster
One of the biggest challenges in a new area is deciding where to start.
Smart Fishing Spots helps narrow your search by highlighting areas that match the current conditions. Instead of randomly working shorelines, you can focus your time on locations with the highest probability of holding fish.
It’s also a great tool for safely navigating unfamiliar creeks and keeping track of productive areas for future trips.
Does Lure Color Really Matter?
To make this trip more interesting, I alternated between black and white lures throughout the day.
The result was simple. Both colors caught fish.
What mattered far more was putting the lure in the right place, fishing the correct depth, and using a natural presentation. Once you’re around feeding fish, color becomes much less important than location and retrieve.
Why Every Angler Should Keep A Catch Log
Every trip teaches you something.
Recording where you caught fish along with the tide, wind, weather, and season helps you recognize patterns that would otherwise be easy to miss. Those patterns make every future trip more productive because you’re building on real experience instead of starting over.
Over time, your catch log becomes one of the most valuable fishing tools you own.
Final Thoughts
Having a tool like Smart Fishing Spots can dramatically shorten the learning curve when you’re exploring new water.
It helps you focus on the highest-percentage areas so you can spend less time searching and more time catching redfish, seatrout, snook, and flounder.
Best of all, you don’t need live bait. These fish are more than willing to eat artificial lures when they’re presented in the right spot with the right retrieve.
This color experiment was also another reminder that we tend to overthink lure color. Even with two completely different colors, the results were nearly identical.
Instead of worrying about color, focus on finding productive water first.
Then choose a lure that resembles your target’s natural prey and can effectively fish the depth and structure you’re targeting.
That’s what consistently puts more fish in the boat.
Questions? Or have any tips on fishing new water? Comment below!
Related categories:
STOP WASTING TIME ON THE WATER!
Do what the “SMART ANGLERS” are doing and join the Insider Club.
Here’s what you’ll receive today when you join:
- Weekly fishing reports and TRENDS revealing exactly where you should fish ever trip
- Weekly “spot dissection” videos that walk you through all the best spots in your area
- Exclusive fishing tips from the PROS you can’t find anywhere else
- Everything you need to start catching fish more consistently (regardless if you fish out of a boat, kayak, or land).
STOP WASTING TIME ON THE WATER!
Do what the “SMART ANGLERS” are doing and join the Insider Club.
Here’s what you’ll receive today when you join:
- Weekly fishing reports and TRENDS revealing exactly where you should fish every trip
- Weekly “spot dissection” videos that walk you through all the best spots in your area
- Exclusive fishing tips from the PROS you can’t find anywhere else
- Everything you need to start catching fish more consistently (regardless if you fish out of a boat, kayak, or land).
When fishing weedless do you have set the hook side ways
I feel like the hook sets are best when I keep my rod tip low since it keeps more line in the water vs moving up into the air. But the difference is surely very small, so I’m sure it’s ok either way… whichever is most comfortable to you for getting a quick hookset will surely be best.
How do you download the app on windows computer. By the way I use the app on my phone all the time. Nice catches.
It’s actually easier to just use the web version of the platform when using it on your computer. Here’s a link: https://sfs.saltstrong.com
i mean my favorite part was seeing the trifecta of calamity that happened to you too – not bc it happened per se, but you were kind enough to share the ‘umbrella+ incident’. idk how many times i am out there and all of a sudden i am in the same pickle – maybe line is hung, boat going the wrong way on current, also a rod or my Pepsi or something else decided to “jump into” the the dang water at that very moment as well… iow, exactly what you had happen. amazing to me every.single.time. that the ‘series of unfortunate fishing events’ cascade and stack at the worst possible moment. (we are fishing so it cant be that terrible but ykwim). so i am not the only one, haha. i appreciate you sharing that, and the details of the time spent (first fish 45 mins into trip) – just good stuff.
Haha! It’s nice to see that others can relate to the calamity that sometime show up out of nowhere.
Well considering I have fished northeast florida inshore saltwater waters for going on 24 years now I really don’t have any new waters to explore plus the fact that im kinda a homebody and don’t travel that far to fish the areas I started fishing when I first began fishing inshore saltwater are the same areas I still frequent now but if I was going to fish a new area I would rely on your old techniques you started teaching long before you came up with the smart spots app like the important detail of looking for birds, bait and or boils of fish in shallow areas all you younger guys love relying on computors and phones to tell you where to fish me not so much because I know in past experiences of my own that because computors and phones and or tablets are man-made they are NOT 100 percent reliable the smart spots app included in my experience to be very honest the smart spots app has NOT really helped me in finding good areas to fish I have found that in alot of scenarios when bait and activity of active fish was extremely evident the smart spots app didnot even mark the area and sometimes it would mark it either fair or not at all and vice versa sometimes spots marked great to excellent was actually void of bait activity bo birds nothing and was in actuality a dead zone so in reality yea it may help some but as for me I rely on intel that’s been long time used way before compurors were even invented let alone the saltstrongs smart spots app because in my book just because its either new or easier to use like anything computerized definatly doesn’t make it better and definatly not 100 percent reliable so I rely on what works and has been for many years for me good old common sense and experience on the water not knocking your smart spots app just saying what I have found in using it thanks for your input and all you do😉🤔
I feel like all your points on how to find fish still apply. The Smart Fishing Spots app – to me – is highly useful in looking at areas that “look fishy.” Combined with other environmental factors like the tide,
weather, wind, etc. provides a great one-stop-shop to gauge if an area is even worth visiting. Once there, the reliance moves to the factors you mentioned like the presence of birds, bait, structure, and current. If a spot shown in the SFS app as being highly likely to have fish doesn’t have the other factors present, I move on to my next spot. SFS is useful to me more as a planning tool pre-trip. But I absolutely agree those other factors come into play once I’m out on the water.
Yea I have been a member since 2017 then became a lifer in 2018 but have found out that as for me and I only say what I have experienced because its computerized I have found it to not be as accurate in finding the fish but your also right in that in it’s uses in viewing the tides and wind speed and other factors it is pretty useful I actually now go every other week because of where I now live in middleburg instead of jacksonville because of a longer drive to the saltwater environments and gas prices that I use an app that I got way before saltstrong that has the solonar tables on it called fishing points and have found that every other week are the higher scoring higher fish feeding days and these days also seem to coincide with the better tide tables for the areas I fish thanks for the reply
Great video Luke! My son and I just started fishing Homosassa and we just got and started using the Salt Strong app… and the free tackle for joining,…all we need now is more time!;-)
Hope to see you out there one day.
How cool that you and your son have been fishing there lately! That’s an impressive fishery, so I plan to spend some more time there. Hope to see you and your son out on the water.
Excellent video Thank you
Thanks for making time to post the nice comment Richard!
I would have wound up KONKING myself on the head during the calamity and fell overboard as well; but with 40 other fishing boats in view watching me. LOL
Haha!!!
Great composure as things went sideways! When a little dignity is your only loss you nailed it. Appreciate the info as always!
Haha! I’m glad to see that you enjoyed this video.
Thanks so much Luke! I always appreciate your willingness to try new things, whether they work out or not, and share the results with us!
Thanks for making time to post the nice comment Matt
Thanks
Our pleasure Robert