Thanksgiving Day Fishing

Thanksgiving Day turned out to be a bummer for fishing the Indian River marsh areas.

I didn't get a chance to wet a line until very late in the afternoon when the air temperature was down to the high 60s and the wind was whipping up white caps on the river.

Despite these conditions, I decided to try my luck fishing the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge marsh areas to catch a redfish or two.

Although I met several vehicles on the unimproved roads, nobody was fishing except for myself.

Since I left the house in a rush, I only took two rods with me. One with a top water Zara Spook Jr. plug and the other with my favorite beat up gold Bagley spoon.

Because of the windy conditions, I never even bothered with the top water lure.

I "jump fished" several areas and only had four strikes on my gold spoon from redfish.

All of these were just at the bank at the end of my retrieves.

I could have had other hits on the spoon but with the wind blowing as hard as it was, it was next to impossible detecting a strike.

The only way I am positive that the hits I had were redfish was because of their proximity to the bank.

Anyway, it was getting dark and after only an hour and a half of fishing with the temperature dropping, I decided to give up and call it a day.

Fishing on Thanksgiving Day for the past several years has been productive (see the archives) but this year the weather did me in.

Hopefully I'll have a better report for everyone in the upcoming days.

Till then, Tight Lines!