Post Thanksgiving Day Fishing On The Indian River

Thanksgiving Day was bleak and post Thanksgiving Day fishing was almost as bad.

I've been taking care of my wife for the past few days so I haven't been able to do any fishing however, this afternoon I took a couple hour break to scoot around Catfish Creek on the Indian River to see if I could stir up a bite or two.

I entered the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge via East Gator Creek road to see if there was any action in the shallows.

The wind was blowing steady and the air temperature was dropping from 79 degrees as I entered to 65 degrees when I left the area.

There was a front coming trough and it started raining as I entered Catfish Creek Loop.

Today I only brought along three rods.  One with a DOA Shrimp, one with a Nemeire Red Ripper gold spoon and one with a Carolina rigged jerk bait.

The majority of the time I fished with the Red Ripper spoon to try and locate some fish.  Unfortunately I had no takers so I changed over to the jerk bait.

After several casts to likely looking spots with that bait I realized if there were any fish in the area, they were not hitting minnow imitations.

When I spotted a small school of black drum in the area below, I finally changed over to the root beer colored D.O.A. Shrimp Lure smeared up with some shrimp scented Pro-Cure .

After several casts I finally got a hit and lost either a drum or a redfish.  The fish nailed the bait but I snatched the bait away from it before it was solidly hooked.

I made several more half hearted casts to the general area not really expecting anything but to my surprise I hooked up to nice oversize redfish.

At first I thought I had a snag but the fish started it's run and kept on going.  I thought it was a big drum but after several runs I finally got it close enough to see it was a big red.

I got the Boca Grip from the truck as I was fighting the fish and finally lipped the red onto the bank.

The Stanley tape put the fish right at 32".

I quickly released the red just as it started to rain again.  It started as a light mist and gradually got to pneumonia like weather.

I decided that one fish was enough so I headed out of Catfish Creek and came upon these two fishermen.

They were sitting in their truck waiting out the rain and had set out at least four rods.

I asked them how they were doing and they said they just had a double header.  The one guy said he caught a 25 incher and the other a 27 1/2 inch fish.

When I asked about what bait they were using, he told me they were using the shrimp they caught last night on the fishing pier.

Evidently the shrimp are finally running.

Anyway, I took a few pics of the nasty weather and headed home to see how my wife Karen was doing.

The pain pills she was taking pretty much knocked her out but I didn't want to leave the house too long.

Hopefully, after she gets well we can go out with a pail of shrimp and nail a few more.

Shrimp is the bait of choice right now for almost everything.

Till next time,

Tight Lines.