Catching Nice Redfish After The Atlantis Shuttle Launch

The last Atlantis space shuttle flight launched at 2:20 this afternoon without a hitch, and drew the usual huge crowd of spectators. The traffic took almost 2 hours before everyone finally cleared out of the viewing areas.

My wife and I wanted to check out Peacocks Pocket road, to see if it was open for vehicle traffic, and to get in some late fishing before dusk.

We drove past the area and the gate to the road was still padlocked, so we headed up to Shiloh Marsh Road to try our luck.

The weather was gorgeous and a slight wind on the Indian River provided just enough ripples for some potentially great fishing.

On our first stop, Karen chucked out her usual dead shrimp offering under a Billy Bay, "lowcountry lightning" Pop n Gurgle bobber.

I started chucking a Bagly hammered gold spoon, and before I could make my third cast, Karen hooked up to a nice 31" redfish that put up a very respectable fight.

The fish swallowed the 5/0 hook, so I cut the fluorocarbon leader, and released the fish to fight another day after I took some pictures of her catch.

I tried several spoons, jigs, jerkbaits, and finally my favorite topwater plug without even a hit.

Not wanting to get "skunked", I finally broke down and put on a dead shrimp under a Cajun Thunder bobber and started popping away.

I missed a nice redfish on the rig after a brief fight, and thought I had finally hooked into another bruiser red, only to find that it was a medium sized stingray.

The spot where we were fishing was relatively shallow, and near an open culvert.

There were some rocks at the culvert, that was providing cover for schools of baby croaker that were attracting redfish and sea trout.

Unfortunately, they were not having any of what I was offering. Today, I couldn't buy a bite on lures, so I finally put on one of the last dead shrimp we had for bait and just let it soak while I went for my Nikon.

There was a little water moccasin that was having much better luck fishing than I was, so I decided to take some pics of the critter. It was the first time I ever saw a snake catching fish.

Hope you enjoy them, along with the incredible scenery.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get out tomorrow and do better, so until then; Tight Lines to All!