Fishing The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

Although Friday evening wasn't very productive, Saturday afternoon in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge proved to be a bit better.

My wife, Elmo and I headed out to the "swamp" as she calls it to fish for reds that are now prowling the shallows.

In the northern portions of the Indian River, there are 30 to 40 pound bull redfish being caught right now on cut bait, live pigfish, pinfish and finger mullet.

In the marsh canals, the reds prowl the shorelines looking for an easy meal and this is the area we targeted.

I picked up some jumbo head on shrimp from a local source for my wife to fish with and I decided to fish with a variety of lures.

We started at gator creek where on my first cast I spooked a large redfish in about 6" of water.

Several casts later I briefly hooked up with a medium sized sea trout on a Strike King rage tail lure hooked with a weighted jerk bait hook.

I picked and missed a few ladyfish on a new Bagley top water bait before moving on to the area where I caught some nice reds the week before.

The weather was beautiful and we spotted only one other person in the area who was taking advantage of the day taking pictures of the wildlife. He had Virginia tags on his car and was obviously having a great day.

We passed him up and parked at a spot I hoped would hold some reds. It was at a point near two small islands that sheltered the marsh canal from a shallow saltwater pond.

Karen pitched out her shrimp and I walked several yards down the road to fish another location that looked "fishy".

The fishing was slow but I did spot three redfish waking up the marsh canal. One briefly tapped my "Rage Tail" bait but didn't hook up.

Karen had a nice redfish on but it wrapped around a brush stickup and before I could get up the where she was fishing to help her out, the fish got off.

I gave up on my top water bait, changed rods and started fishing with my gold Bagley Red King spoon.

I had two good hits that were probably small trout and finally hooked up with a slot redfish shown below that I promptly returned.

Karen had another hit close to dusk but didn't get a hookup so we decided to call it a day.

Fishing the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is always interesting. We got to see this large "big bird" drying his wings and several alligators looking for dinner.

The scenery this afternoon was simply gorgeous, even with thunderstorms on the horizon and despite not getting the bull redfish we were looking for, it was a great outing.

Till next time, Tight Lines!