Salt Marsh Sea Trout

Salt marsh sea trout are generally much more difficult to catch than those in the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon.

In the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, the sea trout get a lot of fishing pressure and visitor traffic from people all around the country who enjoy taking pics of the wildlife.

In a word, the fish are savvy.

Karen and I didn't even think about fishing today until about 6:30 pm when the afternoon thundershowers started rolling through the area.

We loaded up Elmo (our wonder dog) and several rods with various artificial lures and headed for the "swamp" (as my wife affectionately calls it).

The temperature was in the low 80s when we got to Peacocks Pocket road and there was virtually no wind on the water.

 

I drove slowly into the refuge looking for any sign of fish but other than some finger mullet in the marsh canal, I didn't spot anything of any size until about half way through Peacocks Pocket road.

The water in this area was dead calm and except for the occasional fish busting the surface feeding on finger mullet, the surface looked like a mirror.

 

 

Karen baited a fresh dead shrimp on a 5/0 hook on one rod, and the other with a Cajun Thunder float over a jumbo shrimp.

I started out blind casting a Berkley Fire Tiger paddle tail bait on a light spinning rod with 10# line to likely looking spots in the marsh canal.

In the next hour I missed six sea trout and caught two smaller fish on the paddle tail bait and on a freshwater Chug Bug.

The one big sea trout I hooked off the tip of a grassy island was in the 25" range but it shook out the paddle tail lure on the second jump.

The two sea trout I managed to hook were so small, I could have used it for bait.

 

There were several huge redfish in the salt marsh pond adjacent to the canal busting bait but they were way too far off to make any sort of decent presentation to.

Karen lobbed her baits in between two small grass islands where the reds sometimes use as a corridor to the deeper marsh canal.

She had one pickup but missed whatever the fish was.

Salt marsh sea trout sometimes feed all night long, especially during full moon periods but this evening the fish quit hitting just as the sun was setting.

The mosquitoes weren't bad this evening but the gnats were killer.  When they swarm on you, it feels like your skin is on fire and they seem to thrive on insect repellant.

Elmo started whining and Karen and I both were getting the hell bitten out of us, so we decided to call it a day.

 

The sunset was awesome as you can see by the pics and even though we didn't pickup a redfish this evening, the salt marsh sea trout were a lot of fun.

Till next time, Tight Lines.