Friday The 13th Fishing Trip

A Friday the 13th fishing trip is only bad if you believe in superstition and bad omens.

Even though today is Friday the 13th.the fishing was relatively good in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

My wife and I grabbed Elmo and the fishing gear as soon as I got home from work and we headed for an area where I caught a couple of nice gator trout last week.

Karen was dead set on catching a redfish and I was mostly after sea trout,  so we decided to head for her favorite redfish spot while briefly stopping to sample some areas where I had caught sea trout in the past.

It was about 6:00 pm before we got to the salt marsh and the air temperature was still hovering around the 86 degree mark. 

A pleasant breeze was blowing which rippled the surface of the marsh canal just enough to give the fish a false sense of security and still allow for easy casting.

I grabbed a Berkley Fire Tiger paddle tail bait on one of my light 10# spinning rods at our first stop and immediately started getting short strikes from what I thought were small sea trout.

After several misses I finally hooked up with a small ladyfish.  The fish was about 14" long and jumped several times before I shook it off at the bank.

A few casts later in the same general area, I hooked up with a nice slot sized sea trout that I promptly released after a brief battle.

Walking down the road and casting to the opposite bank at likely looking spots produced four more sea trout and three more ladyfish, all withing a thirty yard stretch of where I caught the first trout.

Karen was not getting any bites on the shrimp she had dangling underneath her "Billy Bay" float so after a couple more misses and another small sea trout we moved off to another area.

This spot produced a slot sea trout on the very first cast to the bank in the narrow marsh canal.

The fish made a couple of small runs before I took it's picture and released it.

I walked the canal casting to likely looking spots but that was the only fish I hooked. 

I missed a couple of light strikes that were probably small sea trout but since Karen was still not getting any hits, we decided to move on to her favorite spot.

When we got to her "spot", she flipped her shrimp close to the bank and I started walking the bank of the canal casting into small cuts and flooded sea grass areas.

The wind was dying down and the sun was setting so this stretch of canal didn't have the rippled water that produced trout in the other areas I fished.

I had only one small tap in this area so I backtracked and started fishing the other direction from where Karen was located.

I fished slow with the same paddle tail bait but never got another bite in this area.

Meanwhile, Karen said she had a fish on so I quickly walked to her spot to help and found she had hooked this stingray.

She pulled the ray onto the bank while I got the pliers to unhook the fish.

I clipped the barb off the ray just to play it safe and since the fish swallowed the hook, I clipped the hook off and tossed the ray back into the canal.

At least Karen didn't get skunked!

It was getting late and we decided we both had enough fun for one day so we headed back home.

For a Friday the 13th fishing trip, we didn't do so bad.

The final tally for me was 6 sea trout and 4 ladyfish.  For Karen, 1 stingray. All in an hour and a half.

Till next time, Tight Lines!