Friday The 13th Reds On The Indian River

This evening on Friday the 13th reds in the Indian River was the last thing I expected.

Driving home from a rough week of work in Georgia, the last thing I planned on doing this evening was to go fishing.

By the time I finished unpacking the truck it was past 6:30 pm, but when my wife asked me if I was going out to the "swamp", I quickly decided to take a spin around Peacocks Pocket road to see what the fishing conditions were looking like for the weekend.

I quickly packed five spinning rods into the bed of the truck, took a cooler full of bottled water and headed out to see what was biting.

Because it was so late, I decided to concentrate on fishing a shallow pond where I usually pick up some sea trout and an occasional redfish.

On the way to the spot, I took some pics of the scenery and got sidetracked by a cruising redfish in the shallow marsh canal that runs along side of the road. 

I just had to stop and see if it was interested in being caught.

Several casts with a gold spoon, a topwater STORM Rattlin Chug Bug and a DOA shrimp smeared with Pro-Cure got yielded only a small ladyfish.  The redfish continued cruising down the canal.

As I was tossing lures, a couple of cars passed me on the way out of the refuge and a fellow angler with a brown kayak strapped to the top of his car stopped to chat with me about the fishing.

I didn't get his name but he said the fishing for the past couple of days was pretty lousy.  He told me that the reds in the marsh ponds were not biting and then briefly talked about all the road closures in the refuge.

North Shiloh Road remains closed to vehicle traffic and will probably continue to stay closed, as is L. Pond Road and others.  We wondered where all our tax dollars were going and why the "powers that be" couldn't just leave the unimproved roads open for us fishermen to navigate at our own risk.

I finally cut off the conversation and headed up the road to fish my favorite pond.

When I got there, the water level was noticeably down and there was absolutely no fish activity.

I made several casts with a Johnson's Sprite gold spoon before switching over to a Chug Bug but got no interest from anything.

I was putting up the rod with the Chug Bug when I heard a fish blast some bait in the Indian River side of the road.

Since the water in the spot was extremely shallow, I decided to try a gold instead of the Johnson Sprite that I usually toss to redfish.  The Tsunami is wider and can be fished shallower and slower without getting hung up on the bottom.

I smeared it up with some Pro-Cure and started blind casting the area.  On the third cast a nice redfish smacked the spoon and started peeling off line from my reel.

I was using 10# Cajun line with a 15# fluorocarbon leader and fortunately had the drag set light.  

The fish took off on a long run towards the middle of the river and I eventually stopped it and started pumping back line.  I had to play the fish carefully because of all the stickups and mangrove roots in the area so I pretty much gave the fish it's head. 

The redfish made four more long runs before I could bring it close enough to the bank to lip it and it took me almost 20 minutes before I finally landed the fish.

The water where I hooked the red was between six inches and a foot deep, and with all the brush, roots and stickups in the spot, I was actually surprised that I landed the redfish.

The oversize red measured in at 30" and after taking a few of these pics, I released it on the other side of the road into the marsh canal to grow into a bigger "bull".

 

 

Since I forgot the bug spray and the gnats were killing me,  I decided to take one more pic of the sunset before calling it a day.

Although I'm not superstitious, catching Friday the 13th reds on the Indian River was the last thing I expected today.

With any kind of luck, tomorrow will be a repeat performance.

Till next time,

Tight Lines.