Hunt For Reds In October

The Hunt for Reds in October fishing contest ended today, which is why I waited until later in the afternoon to fish the marsh.

My wife was doing her thing today and didn't want to go fishing with me, so I packed up a few rods and headed for the "swamp" to get in a little redfish fishing.

When I entered Peacocks Pocket road the air temperature was 83 degrees and there was a mild wind blowing over the Indian River.

I decided to fish the marsh canal today in an effort to pick up a cruising red, so I opted for fishing gold spoons and my favorite Chug Bug.

I started fishing with a gold Johnson The Original Sprite Spoon and quickly picked up a couple of slot sea trout and a ladyfish.

I switched over to a weedless silver spoon that I had on my other rod and quickly picked up another ladyfish that was in the 20" range.

As the wind started to die down, I "jump fished" the marsh canal with a baby bass pattern STORM Rattlin Chug Bug.

I picked up a couple of small sea trout on the Chug Bug and bumped into a reader of this website, Craig Bates.

He was also fishing the canal using a black and silver Chug Bug.

I stopped to shoot the breeze with him a bit and discovered that he lives in the Orlando area and is a bass fisherman.

He showed me a pic of an over slot sized redfish that he caught in the Indian River some time ago, north of one of the islands. I asked him to send me an email with the pic and told him I would post it on the site.

I moved on and started blind casting an area where I picked up redfish a few weeks ago and after several casts to the opposite bank I was rewarded with a slot sized redfish that hit the Chug Bug right on the bank.

The fish made a fast run and turned directly into a bush at the bank where it got hung up. I gave the fish some slack but it just sloshed around until it finally shook the hooks loose.

Since this was my last baby bass pattern Chug Bug,, I took off my shoes and waded out to untangle the lure from the brush hoping that an alligator didn't think I was for dinner.

I retied my Chug Bug and drove past where Craig was fishing and stopped at another spot where I briefly hooked up with another red.

The fish wasn't hooked well and the Chug Bug pulled out at the beginning of the run. From the size of the wake it pushed, it looked like a nice oversize red.

Undaunted, I continued down Peacocks Pocket road and stopped at another spot where my wife had caught her 36" redfish a couple of years ago.

A few casts with the Chug Bug produced another slot size sea trout and a ladyfish, but no redfish.

Meanwhile, Craig passed me and parked at a spot where I knew some big reds frequently cruise out from a small marsh pond into the deeper canal.

As I was packing it in for the evening, I drove up to where he was fishing and saw he had a nice slot size redfish.

I asked him if I could take his pic and he agreed so here are the results for the evening.

 

He said he had to "horse" the red past a gator that was eyeballing the fish as he was landing it.

I gave him my pliers to get the hooks out of the redfish just as my wife called to see when I was coming home.

I probably could have picked up a red at another section that I fish regularly, but I was getting bitten by no see-ums so I decided to hit the road and head for home.

October is one of the better months for catching redfish in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and my wife and I will probably be out again next week to try our luck.

The "Hunt for Reds in October" was over for this year's contestants, but not for me.

Till next time, Tight Lines!