The Dog Days Of August in July?

With the weather in the mid 90s and very little wind, my wife wanted to go fishing at one of her favorite spots in the Peacock Pocket area of the northern Indian River Lagoon.

On Friday, we hit a heavily fished area near the canoe launch and had some success. I picked up a couple of small trout and a baby redfish that barely ate my CAL DOA bait.

My wife caught a few catfish and missed either a redfish or black drum that took off with her dead shrimp and then dropped it.

You can always tell when a red hits a bait. They normally go from zero to 40 mph in about the length of a rod.

Anyway, we hoped to have some better luck Saturday afternoon.

Toting our regular array of fishing rods and lures; we headed off about mid afternoon for the "swamp" as my wife calls it.

Before going to her spot, I decided to try a couple of places we haven't fished in a long time; so we headed for Bio Lab road on the Mosquito Lagoon and a part of the Indian River Lagoon that the Boy Scouts use for their jamborees.

The Mosquito Lagoon was extremely shallow and the only other person we saw, was in a kayak heading for the canoe launch.



We scouted the area for telltale signs of fish and found none, so we decided to head for the other spot on the Indian River instead.



The water was relatively calm and whatever fish that were there, were stealing our baits with ease. They had to be either small trout or pinfish, but after an hour or so of this nonsense, we headed towards our final destination past "catfish creek" road.

Karen plopped down with her usual Cajun Thunder rig and shrimp; and I took off down the road with a rod rigged with a DOA white paddle tail bait and a green jig head.

I spotted several swirls that I thought were trout but didn't get any hits until about 7:00 pm.

Something was busting baitfish in very shallow water, so I flipped my lure on the bank and pulled it into the fray.

Almost immediately I hooked up to a nice slot sized redfish of about 26" that put up a great fight against my 8# line. I landed the fish and then spent a good bit of time reviving her in the shallow oxygen depleted waters of the marsh canal before letting her go.

My wife missed a nice redfish and landed a catfish a short time later.

Meanwhile, I kept casting at swirls until I picked up a baby redfish that was no larger than my bait.

My wife picked up a couple of trout and I finally gave up casting because of my hurt shoulder.

As the afternoon thunderstorms started doing their thing, we decided to head for home so I could put another ice pack on my shoulder.

The July weather for the past few days is more like the dog days of August, but at least the fish are still biting!

Till next time; Tight Lines!