Night Shrimping On The Indian River Is Still Going Strong

Night shrimping on the Indian River is still going strong in August.

Normally in August the sport shrimping run on the Indian River is over and done with.  However, this year the norms have been redefined by this past winter's severe cold fronts.

It seems like everything has been pushed back a month or so.

Sunday evening I got bored watching the doom and gloom on the boob tube, so I decided to drive down to our new fishing piers and check out the action, if any.

I didn't expect to see many people doing anything but partying at the pavilion but was pleasantly surprised by how many people were on both piers shrimping, catching blue crabs and fishing.

I took these pics of the activity and composed this short video to show the "goings on".

I arrived about 10:00 pm armed with my trusty Nikon and a 7' spinning rod baited with a Rootbeer/Gold D.O.A. Shrimp just in case the trout were biting.

It was windy and there was a little chop on the water.  The shrimpers had their shrimp lights out and the fishermen were doing their thing using mostly live or dead shrimp for bait.

This gentleman in his motorized wheelchair was catching a good number of shrimp and had the bottom of his bucket covered when I got there.

He had only been shrimping since it got dark and expected to net up quite a few more before heading for home.

He told me that he comes to the pier about once a week to shrimp and that this is the first time the shrimp were still running in good numbers through the month of August.

I moved on down the length of the pier taking pictures of all the people enjoying the evenings activities.

One couple even had a crib out there with their kids while shrimping and several others were lounging around on the chairs they brought with them.

I flipped the
D.O.A. Shrimp out a few times around the lights, caught a couple of under size sea trout and missed several more before calling it a night and going home.

On the way out, I took a snippet of this guy's cooler that he was filling up with blue crabs which were drifting by on the surface along with the shrimp.



He told me that he planned to fill it up before leaving.

I wished him well but personally I hate messing with cleaning them.  Especially the smaller ones.

I much prefer soft shelled blue crabs in sandwich form!

I'm happy to be able to report that the night shrimping is still going strong on the Indian River.

Till my next report, Tight Lines.