Another Windy Sunday On The Indian River

Well it's been another windy Sunday on the Indian River and I can't hook a fish to save my life.

Saturday afternoon my wife and I took Elmo our "wonder dog" to the refuge to scope out the fishing prospects.

We fished for about two hours without any success.

I missed six fish and hooked two but both got off.  The sea trout were nailing my lures but I kept missing them.

The one good trout I hooked up with, I thought was a snag and like a novice, I jerked the hook out of it's paper thin mouth.

The "near gator trout" was so heavy that I could only pull it's head out of the water.

Karen didn't have much success with her dead shrimp rig.  She was after big redfish but the sea trout were eating the heads off the jumbo shrimp she was using and she never got a hookup with a red all afternoon.

On Sunday, I didn't even bother to get out until about 2:30 pm.  The westerly wind was blowing enough to make casting a real pain and feeling a bite next to impossible.

The air temperature hit 91degrees but with the wind, it didn't feel like it.

I entered the refuge from east gator creek road to see if there was any activity in the area.  The water was extremely clear and there were no finger mullet in the area.

I crossed a culvert into Peacocks Pocket road and cast netted enough medium sized silver mullet for bait, just in case.

There was a serious brush fire going on around the Mosquito Lagoon.  It was probably a controlled burn but as you can see by the pics, they sure picked a hell of a day to do it.

  

There was a lot of activity in the refuge today, primarily bird watchers taking pics of the spoonbills, egrets, herons, pelicans, etc.  I didn't see many fishermen except for several wading the Indian River.

Spending another windy Sunday on the Indian River wasn't exactly what I envisioned when I left the house but I decided to give it shot anyway.

I used a hammered silver spoon that my wife gave me for my birthday, a couple of gold spoons, Creme swimbaits, DOA CAL jerkbaits, a topwater chug bug and even the live finger mullet without getting a single bite.

I was casting my favorite Bagley gold spoon when Ron, a fellow fisherman who fishes the area as frequently as I do stopped by to see how I was doing.

I told him I couldn't hook a fish if my life depended on it and found out that he caught a nice slot redfish on a dead finger mullet just up the road from where I was fishing on the river side.

We swapped information for awhile and I got his approval to take these pics of his catch.

 

We parted ways and I continued to where he said he caught his red but after about 20 minutes of fishing with live finger mullet and casting a few lures, I decided to give it up and head for home.

It was about 5:30 pm and I was getting hungry so I packed it up and headed out of the refuge.

When I hit the Max Brewer Memorial Parkway (SR 402), I thought there was an accident up the road. 

There were several cars parked along side the road but as I got closer, I realized they had pulled over to take pictures of a huge flock of white pelicans.

 

 

I decided to pull over and take a few pics of the flock for posterity.  As I was taking these pictures I ran up on a green vine snake that was doing it's best to blend into the brush so I took a few pics of him for posterity too.

 

Next time instead of another windy Sunday on the Indian River, I think I'll head over to Haulover Canal and drop a finger mullet into the channel to pickup a bull redfish.

Till next time, Tight Lines.