A Great Afternoon Fishing Trip In The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

Well, despite the rolling thunderstorms that hit us this afternoon, my wife and I had a great afternoon fishing trip in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

I had to stop mowing the lawn a couple of times because of the severe lightning but as soon as I finished up I rounded up Elmo and Karen for a trip to the Refuge.

I cast netted about a dozen finger mullet and a few small ladyfish for bait as we entered Peacocks Pocket then headed for where we caught some nice fish the other day.

The thunderstorms stopped but we could see them off of the horizon.

Today we stopped at three spots and caught fish at all three locations.

I picked up a nice 22" sea trout on a finger mullet at the first stop and missed a nice redfish of about the same size.

Karen didn't get a bite and was too busy freaking out because of an alligator that kept following her in the canal.

We moved on down the road to our second spot where I picked up another sea trout a little larger than the first.

The pic below is not good quality because it was taken along with all the other pics on this post with my Nokia cell phone.

In our rush to go fishing, I neglected to take my trusty Nikon along on this trip and true to form, we missed some great photo opportunities.

It was getting close to 8:00 so we moved to our final spot where Karen picked up a nice 32" redfish on a free lined finger mullet.

I heard her yelling as I was releasing another sea trout so I dropped my rod and ran for the boca grip in the truck.

The fish put up a great fight (part of which I captured on the cell phone) and as it finally gave up the battle, I skidded down the bank and gripped the bull redfish onto the bank.

I took these pics of Karen holding the fish and released it back into the canal. It remained motionless for some time but finally swam off into the depths.

I normally revive the fish I release but the alligators were out this afternoon and I didn't want to take a chance of losing my arm.

Since it was getting on towards dusk, we decided to call it a day.

It was definitely a great afternoon fishing trip in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge with no one else around but two other people in the entire preserve.

Till next time, Tight Lines!