Jumping Redfish In The Marsh

When I decided to hit the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge to wet a line this evening, jumping redfish in the marsh was the last thing I expected to see.

In all my years of fishing I never had a redfish actually jump out of the water, but this evening at around 8:15 pm, that's exactly what happened as I was leaving the refuge.

I didn't get on the water until around 6:30 pm this afternoon and I didn't have high expectations of catching anything.  The truth is that I was getting flustered trying to fix a Windows XP operating system problem on my wife's computer and I needed some fresh air to clear my head.

Anyway, I loaded four rods into the back of the truck and headed to East Gator Creek road to check out the possibilities.

Although the water was up from the incessant rains this past week and the culverts were open, no fish were hitting in these areas.  At least they weren't hitting what I was offering.

Since it was late, I headed past some of my usual spots in favor of fishing a couple of marsh ponds with top water baits.

I did stop at two deep water spots in the marsh canal to fish a Creme Paddletail bait and got a strike at the second location, but I didn't get a hookup.

The grass along side of Peacocks Pocket road is so high, I probably could not have landed the fish up the bank anyway.

When I finally got to the large marsh pond that I wanted to fish, there was absolutely no surface activity.

The water surface had a slight chop and there was a mild breeze blowing.  The air temperature was 87 degrees and slowly dropping.

I decided to toss a gold Johnson Sprite spoon around but after numerous casts without any action, I switched to this speckled trout pattern Rapala Skitter Walk.

I started fan casting the area trying to evade the gators that kept following my bait and after a half hour I was about to give up on the lure, but as I was "walking the dog" past a submerged grassy island, a sea trout of at least 30 inches busted on the bait and started peeling off drag.

The big sea trout made three nice runs and as I was trying to lead the fish towards an open spot at the bank, the treble hook pulled out of it's mouth.  I could see where the hook wore a hole in the side of the fish's mouth as it shook off the Skitter Walk.

The grassy bank did it to me again.

I smeared on some more Pro-Cure Inshore Formula and continued walking up the road fan casting to likely looking spots.

This particular area didn't produce any more hits so I moved up to another area where some friends of mine caught a huge gator sea trout last year.

I pulled up to a spot where I could cast without getting tied up in the tall grass and started "walking the dog" with the top water bait.

It took four casts before a redfish hit the Skitter Walk and jumped about three feet into the air.  The fish was well over the slot and came straight out of the water like a shuttle launch when it felt the hook.

In all my years of fishing I have never seen a redfish jump like that.  They always put up a bulldog battle with long runs, but this one was acting like a freshwater Black Bass.

Anyway as the fish started it's run up the marsh canal, the line went slack and the hooks apparently pulled out.

That was the second nice fish of the day that I lost and it was to be my last.

It was getting dark and I was getting tired of being eaten by the bugs so I headed home.

When I got to the house and rinsed off my rods I discovered why the fish kept getting off this particular rig.

I was using 8 pound Cajun Red line with a 12 pound fluorocarbon leader on a 7 1/2 foot medium weight rod and the hooks on the Skitter Walk were not all as sharp as they should have been.

Apparently the jumping redfish in the marsh was never hooked deep enough to enable me to land it.

Fishing a bait with dull hooks on a medium action rod and light line apparently wasn't enough to set the hooks properly.  Anyway, the hooks are being sharpened as I am making this post.

Another Beautiful Sunset

Till next time, Tight Lines.