Catching Another 34" Redfish

Well catching another 34" redfish in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge wasn't exactly what I had planned for this afternoon but I'll take it!

My wife and I got "cabin fever" and decided to take Elmo our wonder dog fishing despite the windy overcast conditions.

We left the house a about 3:30 pm and went straight to a spot where we had been catching reds the last few weeks.

The first spot was too windy to fish but we gave it a shot anyway. It was so windy that the Bagley gold spoon I was using was being pulled over the surface on most of my casts.

After realizing that it was useless fishing this area, we moved on to a more sheltered spot up Peacocks Pocket road.

That spot was occupied by another fisherman and his family who had about 6 rods in the water.

I asked him if he had any luck and he said he caught a ladyfish, a 21" redfish, a trout and a turtle all on dead shrimp and cut ladyfish.

Not wanting to infringe on his area, we moved to the next spot where we spent another fruitless 20 minutes there with absolutely no bites. 

Karen wasn't used to casting directly into the wind and I would up unsnarling her spinning reel a couple of times.

The rig she was using was her usual Cajun Thunder pencil float with a dead shrimp underneath but the wind kept dragging the shrimp around creating a lousy presentation.

I finally gave up on artificial lures and switched two spinning rods over to frozen dead shrimp on a 4/0 hook.

We moved to an area we call "snook point" and started fishing a shallow water stretch where the wind wasn't killing us.

I was untangling another birds nest for Karen when she yelled that a redfish was taking my line down the canal.

I ran for the pole and briefly fought the fish but it got off the hook.

After pitching two more shrimp just off the bank in the same area, I hooked up with the 34" redfish in the short video below.

The fish took off like a shot down the canal and I yelled to Karen to get the camera and take a video of the fight.

She refuses to learn how to operate the video on the Nikon, so I took the camera and tried to change the settings while fighting the big redfish at the same time.

As you can see by the unprofessional video, it didn't turn out that well. I couldn't get the fish into frame and missed most of the fight.

Anyway, it is what it is.

As I was landing the red, the hook snapped off at the snell and I got a "wet foot" sliding down the bank trying not to lose the fish.

I finally got Karen to take a picture before releasing the oversize fish.

We could have probably caught a couple more fish in the same area but Karen was aggravated with me giving her orders about not being able to use the camera and I was getting wind chill.

We decided to head for home and call it a day.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be catching another 34" redfish!
Till then, Tight Lines.