Indian River Salt Marsh Fishing

Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River fishing picks up for shoreline fishermen as the weather begins to cool down during the fall and winter months.

This evening after a 6 1/2 hour drive, I had just enough energy left to head out to one of my favorite spots on the northern Indian River Lagoon.

My wife had her "ditty bag" packed along with a small cooler full of dead finger mullet and large frozen shrimp for bait.

I loaded my rods into the truck along with Elmo our famous "wonder dog" and proceeded out to our spot.

On the way into the marsh area, we saw some swirls along the bank that looked to be redfish chasing some bait fish.

I pulled off the side of the unimproved trail and started pitching a gold Johnson spoon that I use to locate redfish and sea trout, while my wife pitched out a dead shrimp to something that was chasing bait in the salt marsh area several yards up the trail from where I was fishing.

About 30 casts later with no hits for either of us, we picked up our stuff and moved to the spot I was originally going to fish before darkness set in.

When I pulled up to the spot, the water was almost dead calm on the river side and the culvert was open pushing water and bait fish into the marsh area.

There were fish swirls on both sides of the road. Some were obviously catfish with a few redfish mixed in with them.

I cut a finger mullet in half and pitched it just outside of the current on the salt marsh side of the road with my Okuma bait runner setup and started casting with my spoon to the swirls on the other side of the road.

My wife stayed with her green Cajun Thunder dead shrimp and bobber rig.

I missed a small redfish on the spoon and my wife immediately caught a small catfish. I unhooked the cat and before I could continue with my fishing, she caught a good sized croaker.

I took a couple of pics of the croaker and started fishing with a top water plug. Even though the water was dead calm, you can sometimes pick up nice trout and occasionally redfish with long casts and slow retrieves.

After several casts with some halfhearted hits by small sea trout and a ladyfish that jumped all over the place before shaking off; I decided to give up the lures and concentrate on bait fishing.

I caught a cat on the cut mullet bait and recast to a different area. About the time I finished my cast, Karen hooked into what she thought was a small redfish.

After a short battle, it turned out to be a nice eating size black drum of about 25" or so.

The fish inhaled the dead shrimp Karen was using, so I cut the line as close to the hook as I could and let the fish go to grow up a bit more.

Occasionally, especially this time of the year, I'll eat black drum.

They have a taste similar to redfish and the same texture, when they are caught during cooler water periods.

But today was the black drum's lucky day.

The mosquitoes were eating us alive, Elmo was whimpering because of the mosquitoes and I didn't rally feel like cleaning fish after driving 6 1/2 hours.

So we called it a day and headed home.

My wife out fished me again!

Till next time, Tight Lines!