Dog Days Topwater Fishing

Dog days topwater fishing can be productive when conditions are favorable and apparently this evening they were.

Fishing Peacocks Pocket Road is one of my favorite pastimes when I get off work in time to enjoy the evening bite.

East Gator Creek Flats

This evening when I drove into East Gator Creek Road the air temperature was 93 degrees and there was almost no wind to speak of.  Not exactly great conditions for topwater fishing, but I decided to focus on tossing Chug Bugs and SkitterWalks until either I caught something or the bugs bled me dry.

Fortunately, I didn't have to endure the latter until I was ready to head home.

When I drove past the first set of culverts at the junction of Peacocks Pocket Road, I decided to test out a Chug Bug to see if anything was interested.   It took five casts before I hooked, landed and released a nice ladyfish that jumped all over the place before giving up the fight.

It was a great start and I had high hopes of duplicating the result so I headed to one of my favorite deep water ponds where I knew some nice sea trout were prowling around the drop offs.

The pond was flat in some areas and had a slight ripple in others.  I started casting close to the bank and gradually extended my casts outward towards the choppier water.

I spent a lot of time fan casting the area and finally got a hit from a nice sea trout.  The fish nailed the plug right out of the water but didn't get hooked.

I continued casting the area and was about to move on up the road when a nice 17" sea trout nailed the Chartreuse/Metallic Silver Chug Bug. 

The fish put up a respectable fight before I shimmied down the bank to land it.

I took a couple of pics and released the fish to grow into a "gator".

Several more casts into the same area produced another smaller sea trout that I also returned to the marsh canal.

It was getting late so I moved up to another pond that I occasionally fish and started fan casting to likely looking areas.

The bugs were getting to me and after making several casts I was about to give up and head for home but a Snook nailed the Chug Bug close to a submerged grassy island.

The fish caught me by surprise and hooked itself before I had a chance to set the hooks.  At first I thought I had hooked a ladyfish but after the second jump when I saw the telltale lateral line along it's side, I had no doubt that it was definitely a nice Snook.

The fish jumped two more times and started to head towards deeper water in the marsh canal when the hooks pulled out.

Some guys on the other side of the pond were watching the battle and were more upset that I lost the fish than I was.

I made several more casts before moving on up the road.

As I passed an area called the "duck blind" I noticed a couple sight casting the Indian River shallows for reds or sea trout.

Indian River Sight Casting

Their boat was in a foot of water and they were fishing the exact spot where I picked up a redfish a couple of weeks ago.

I took a couple of pics before moving on, but the bugs were becoming particularly viscous as it got closer to dusk and I wasn't equipped with bug spray.  Dog days topwater fishing can be a blast but not when you're covered with mosquitoes.

As I headed for home I took a couple of pics of the beautiful sunset.  Enjoy.

 

Till next time, Tight Lines.