Catching December Redfish In The Marsh

In addition to Christmas, catching December redfish in the marsh canals of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is one the things I look forward to when I'm not working.

This afternoon after mowing the lawn and fixing some screens in our pool area, Karen and I decided to take Elmo fishing with us in the "swamp".

We didn't get out until about 2:30 pm; this left us only a couple hours of fishing.

We were going to try out  Shiloh Road, but remembered that it was closed for waterfowl hunting so we headed for our favorite spots off of Peacocks Pocket road.

Karen was using s small weighted Precision Tackle Cajun Thunder Float above a 4/0 hook and a jumbo frozen shrimp.

I decided to fish with my favorite well worn gold Bagley spoon.

The powers that be at the Space Center finally mowed the tall grass that lined Peacocks Pocket road, so we stopped at a couple of areas I haven't fished before to toss around the spoon and see if anything was interested.

After briefly stopping at a couple of new spots without getting any hits, we moved to one of our tried and true locations where Karen caught a nice redfish last week.

My first cast hooked me up with a two foot long ladyfish that jumped all over the place before I landed and released it.

After a while I wanted to move on and as Karen was reeling in her bait, she hooked a nice sea trout that we released after taking this short video.  I thought the camera was on auto.

Those two turned out to be the the only fish we caught at that spot, so after a short time we moved past several anglers to another "secret" spot to try our luck.

Again on the first cast I picked up a small sea trout on the spoon which I promptly released.

The fish wasn't much bigger than the spoon I was fishing with.

We moved about 30 yards up the road to a bend in the marsh canal that opened up into a small pond.

I thought the area looked "fishy" so we stopped and started fishing.


About 30 casts later, I hooked a nice 24" slot redfish that hit my spoon just off the point that opened up into the pond.

The fish put up a nice fight and after landing it I took this picture.  

I almost always release the fish I catch and I was planning to release this one but it's gills were injured so I decided to eat it for dinner.

Karen never got a hit so we moved on to our last spot, to fish until dusk.

The wind died down as dusk approached and so did the bite.

Karen missed a sea trout that ate the head off her shrimp and I never got another strike.

Elmo was looking plain miserable and the mosquitoes were starting to attack en mass, so we decided to call it a day.

The sunset was beautiful as usual as you can see from the pics below.

The heron in the one pic scored a nice ladyfish for dinner.

I managed to get it's picture before heading out.

 







On the was home, we drove by the fishing piers to see if anyone was shrimping this evening.

It was about 6:30 pm when we circled the parking area and it look like about fifteen people had their shrimp lights out or were in the process of setting them up.

I might drive down to the pier later on this evening to see how the shrimp are running.

Till next time, Tight Lines!