Indian River Lagoon Green Eel

Since Peacocks Pocket Road still remains closed in the southern portion of the Indian River Lagoon's Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge; my wife and I decided to try for some redfish or trout off of Shiloh Marsh Road.

We started off very late and only saw two other vehicles in the entire area all the time we were there.

I fished topwater plugs and my wife stayed with dead shrimp under a Cajun Thunder rig.

On the way into the area, I stopped to cast to several surfacing trout, and only managed to hook a dancing ladyfish on my frog colored "chug bug".

To start off the day properly, I managed to get one of the treble hooks past the barb, into my finger as I was unhooking the ladyfish. My wife saved the day by pulling the hook out with a pair of pliers that I keep in the door boot. (Not for this use!)

We stopped at a couple of spots, got no hits and moved on to one of Karen's favorite areas.

I managed to get several hits, but no fish, until a "runt" trout a little bit bigger than my Chug Bug managed to hook itself on the bait.



Several casts later I had a great strike on the top water lure and thought I had a small redfish, but after a short fight; it turned out to be a large catfish.

Karen had several hits and started yelling that she had caught a snake.

I came over to where she was fishing and was surprised to find a very large green eel on the end of her line.

After a sort scuffle, she brought the eel to the bank and we took some pics of the unusual catch for this area.

Here is a short video and some pics that might give you a chuckle!

We continued fishing for a while, trying to hook one of the redfish that came cruising into the shallows just at dusk; but we couldn't get them to hit on anything. They were a bit spooked for some reason.

Anyway, I took a couple of pics of the beautiful sunset, and since we were both tired; we headed for the "barn".



Hopefully, we'll get the Maverick out this weekend.

Tight Lines To All!