Another Productive Friday Evening Fishing Trip In The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

My wife and I had another productive fishing trip in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Friday evening.

When I got home from work this evening, I was hoping my wife wanted to go fishing with me.  When I suggested it, she was half way packed and out the door with Elmo before I could even pick out which rods I wanted to bring along.

As usual when we are short on time, we headed for the closest spot which today was Peacocks Pocket road.

I drove into the first entrance off of SR 406 and briefly stopped near the East Gator Creek  road turnoff to play with some ladyfish on top water Chug Bugs.

I hooked a nice ladyfish on every cast I made until I got tired of messing with them.

We passed several of our usual spots to settle on an area where I picked up a redfish last week.

There was a mild breeze which gave the shallows in the marsh a slight chop.  This is perfect for top water baits and I took advantage of the situation to pick up a couple of nice slot size sea trout.

Karen started fishing the marsh pond with a Cajun Thunder float and a frozen jumbo shrimp that I picked up from Wild Ocean Seafood here in town.

She tossed the rig out to where we saw a couple of nice redfish tailing around a grassy island while I walked the banks casting my baby bass patterned Chug Bug to likely looking spots.

I had several hits from small trout before I hooked a big one.  The sea trout blasted my plug as I chugged it away from the opposite bank and swam under some brush along where I was casting.

I managed to steer the fish away from a stickup but as I was trying to figure out where I was going to land the fish, the hook wore a hole in the fragile mouth of the sea trout and it got away.

Undaunted, I continued walking down the road fishing and casting until I hooked into another nice trout.

This time I horsed the trout up the bank, unhooked it and released it to fight another day.

Meanwhile, Karen was getting bored waiting for one of the redfish to pick up her shrimp so she started fishing a Fire Tiger with the other rod.

I keep trying to get her to fish with artificial baits more but she likes to contemplate her existence waiting for fish instead of chasing them like I do. 

However, today after only a few casts she hooked a respectable sea trout and managed to land it without it breaking it off in the brush.

I recorded the event with the camera and returned the fish to the water.

As I continued fishing, Karen was yelling that she had a nice fish on her shrimp.

I quickly ran up the road to see if it was a red and picked up the camera from the truck on the way.

As she got the fish close to the bank, we found that it was a large sting ray.

I got the ray on the bank, took a pic and released it back to the marsh pond.

The top water action slowed down so I changed rods and started fishing with a baby bass pattern paddle tail bait.  I gooed it up with some Pro Cure to see if I could speed up the action and after only a few casts managed to pick up another sea trout.

As I was releasing the fish, Karen yelled that she had another fish on her shrimp rig.

Again it turned out to be a sting ray and again I unhooked the fish and released it.

I was getting tired and so was Karen so we decided to head for the house and dinner.

As I was taking this picture of the beautiful sunset before leaving the refuge, I commented to Karen about us having another productive fishing trip in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

 

Till next time, Tight Lines.