Peacocks Pocket Redfishing

Peacocks Pocket redfishing this time of the year is really "iffy".

The weather has a lot to do with where the fish are, when they bite and if they bite.

My wife and I didn't get a chance to go fishing this afternoon until well after 3:00 p.m.

After I finished a couple of projects around the house, we packed up Elmo our "wonder dog" and several spinning rods loaded with a variety of artificial baits and headed for the "swamp" looking for redfish.

Karen was having a hard time casting with her old rod, so I picked up an "Ugly Stick" for her and mated it up with her old Okuma Coronado Saltwater Spinning Reel - Model CD-40A .

She was fishing fresh defrosted jumbo shrimp underneath a Precision Tackle Cajun Thunder Float - Green - Terminalrig.

Since just about everyone was waiting to watch the Daytona NASCAR race, we pretty much had the entire area to ourselves.

The only traffic in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge was from visitors enjoying the waterfowl and alligators.

We didn't see a single person today fishing the refuge.

The temperature was 68 degrees and the weather was balmy. It looked like rain but except for a few drops, it never happened.

We spotted several gators, lots of spoonbills, a flock of white pelicans and the usual array of waterfowl that is indigenous to the area.

I took a few pics of this gator which had to be at least nine feel long.

Since we got to the refuge late, we only fished a couple of areas where Karen could dunk her shrimp and have a chance of picking up a red.

I walked the unimproved road casting a variety of lures and only had two strikes all the time we were out.

I tried my Bagly gold spoon, a Johnson gold spoon, a curly tail grub, a top water Zara Spook Jr. and even a D.O.A.Terroreyz with no luck.

I spotted five redfish and a few smaller trout but they just weren't interested in what I was throwing at them.

We moved to what was to be our last stop of the day; a place we call "bobcat bay".

I fished all six rods and never got a hit.

Karen tossed out her rig into a small cove and fished almost until dark with only a hit from a small trout.

As we were about to leave, she wanted to try the "swamp" side with a last ditch effort. And, it paid off!

I was walking back to the truck from a culvert I was fishing when I heard hear yell that she was hooked up to a nice red.

I pulled the Boca Grip from the dash of the truck and after a brief fight, lipped the redfish onto the bank. The water was under a foot deep and the fish couldn't put up much of a battle.

 

Karen spotted the fish's wake coming down the marsh canal and flipped the shrimp to the middle of the canal.

She said the redfish veered off it's path to eat the shrimp.

I took the 5/0 hook out of the fish's mouth and measured it to see if it was legal.  With a pinched tail, it measured in at just over 29" so I released it to fight another day.

Like I said, Peacocks Pocket redfishing can be "iffy" but today was Karen's day.

It's been a long dry spell for her.

Maybe next week it will be my turn.

Till then, Tight Lines!