Another Great Trout Fishing Trip On The Indian River

Today was colder than yesterday and just as gloomy. I had intended to go fishing today with my wife, but she was coming down with something and didn't feel well.

After being pestered to death by my computer cat Morris and Elmo our wonder dog, I decided to get the hell out of the house and try my luck alone.

I figured the mosquitoes shouldn't be to bad, being as cold and windy as it was; so I packed up three rods and made a sneaky departure.

It was windy and cold. The temperature was in the low 50s and there was a moderate chop on the Indian River. In the wind it felt like 40 degrees.

I decided to fish the first entrance to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge off Gator Creek road and stop fishing at the Peacocks Pocket small boat launch.

I had good luck with my DOA jerk bait combo yesterday, so I decided to start with that rod. Because of it's 6" total length, that particular lure usually catches larger fish.

The wind made it almost impossible to cast to the river side of the road, so I concentrated all my efforts on the deeper waters of the marsh side. Since the water was cold and it was late in the afternoon, I figured the fish would be holding in deeper water.

I know from experience where the deep holes are located, so I started with these spots first.

As luck would have it, on my second cast with the DOA jerk bait, I hooked into a nice fat 24" sea trout.

The fish was sluggish and didn't put up much of a fight so I landed it, took it's picture, and promptly released it.

Fishing the same area with an extremely slow retrieve, I managed to catch another sea trout a bit smaller than the first.

I moved on down the road blind casting the DOA jerk bait off the bank into deeper water and landed another sea trout about 22" long.

This one was also nice and fat, so I took it's picture and released it.

The wind continued to blow and I was getting chilled, but since the fish were biting I didn't see any reason to quit fishing.

As I moved into an area I knew held redfish, I switched to my gold Johnson spoon and started peppering the area fan casting.

As I suspected, an over sized redfish hit the spoon but evidently didn't get a barb into him deep enough because it took off like a bat out of hell to parts unknown.

The fish looked to be at least 30" long. Anyway, as I licked my pride I continued fishing the spoon and eventually hooked into another sea trout right on the bank.

The fish was a clone to the other 22" fish, so I took her picture and released her.

To shorten the story; in about a mile stretch of road, I managed to hook and release seven sea trout between 20" and 24" long on the DOA jerk bait and missed at least four more trout and one redfish on the gold spoon.

All the fish were caught on the marsh side of the road with a super slow retrieve right off the bottom.

As it started to get colder, I moved on down the road to leave when I spotted the first otter I have ever seen in the refuge.

I got out of the truck and tried to run ahead of it with my camera to get the video below, but it didn't turn out very good. You can just make out the otter swimming along the far bank.

As I was starting to leave the area, I did manage to get these videos of a crazy heron leading some spoonbills astray .

Just down the road from where these videos were shot, I jumped what I thought was another redfish, but it turned out to be another sea trout.

After a surprisingly snappy battle, I landed the fish, snapped the picture and released it to fight another day.

All in all it was a great day on the Indian River even though I didn't manage to land a redfish for dinner.


Till next time,

Tight Lines!