October? - More Like August Fishing!

The mid October weather, in central Florida, has lately seemed more like August, and the fish seem to love it.

The Titusville, Fl. weather has been hovering in the mid 90s, with a heat index topping the low hundreds.

Fishing the Indian River this weekend was productive, despite the humid weather, no see ums, and Dracula like mosquitoes that give the Mosquito Lagoon its name.

The mosquitoes get particularly aggressive toward dusk, in and around the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is also the best time to catch a nice redfish or gator trout.

My wife, Elmo (our wonder dog) and yours truly, hit the river Friday and Saturday evening to get in some late fishing.



Saturday was a tournament day for the October Hunt For Reds, however for the amount of fishermen on the water, you'd never know it.

We didn't do to well on Friday, but managed to catch a few on Saturday in an area we call the "duck blind".

The wind was blowing baitfish from the Indian River into a sheltered cove, where the redfish, trout, catfish, rays, and black drum were being chased by a lone dolphin trying for an afternoon meal.



My wife Karen, immediately picked up a nice redfish, some catfish, and a small stingray, all on fresh dead shrimp.



I was playing around with my usual top water lures, having some fun with small trout on one rod, and catching a small redfish on a second.

On another rod that I usually use for jigs; I tied on a #5/0 owner hook, and impaled a large fresh dead shrimp for bait.

I switched to a Johnson gold spoon with a red tag on my third rod, and started throwing it to the many swirls in the cove.

The lone dolphin had stirred up the fish in the cove, and got them moving around a bit.

After a short time, I hooked up to a large black drum that put up a very respectable fight on the 10 lb. line I was using.

About 15 minutes later, I got the bruiser close to shore, where I had planned on getting my wife to take a picture or two for the website.

As I got the drum close to the bank, I tried to multitask, and show Karen how to turn on the camera.

Unfortunately the drum didn't want it's picture taken and he took off for parts unknown along with my gold Johnson spoon.

After that, the action slowed down some, and when the mosquitoes got to the point where even Elmo decided to sit in the car for some relief, we called it a night and went home.

Tight lines to all!