Catching Ladyfish For Bait In The Culverts

Catching Ladyfish for bait in the culverts can be a lot of fun, especially when you get topwater action like I had this evening.

I only had an hour or so to fish this evening when I got home from work so I tried to make the best of it.

I loaded four rods into the truck along with a cooler full of ice to keep any bait I caught fresh for tomorrow's fishing trip and headed for East Gator Creek Road.

It was 80 degrees when I left the house and it was drizzling.

When I crossed the L. Max Brewer Memorial bridge I noticed a lot of fishermen on the North banks of SR 402 fishing cut baits, shrimp and finger mullet for redfish.  The amount of fishermen on the banks of the Indian River indicated to me that the fish were biting.

I drove into East Gator Creek road and pulled off to the edge of the road and surveyed the area.

The water was like glass with only an occasional light drizzle disturbing the surface.

I noticed that they mowed the grass banks along the side of the East Gator Creek road and silently hoped that they continued up Peacocks Pocket Road.

Evidently there had been a lot of rain this past week. The culverts were opened to let water from the flats back into the Indian River which made fishing the culverts an option for tomorrow's fishing trip with Karen.

I pulled out the rod with a Chug Bug, smeared it up with some Pro-Cure Baitfish formula and started pitching it into the marsh flats past the culvert.

I turned on my sports cam and put it on my visor to catch any action I might have and I'm glad I did for a change.

Catching Ladyfish for bait in the culverts is a blast with topwater baits, and the first cast hooked me up with the two foot long fish below
.

As you can see the fish jumped all over the place before I finally "horsed" it onto the bank.

I took the camera off after catching the first fish and landed two more Ladyfish of about the same size

before moving up the road to fish a small pond.

In my experience, nothing beats fresh cut Ladyfish chunks for catching redfish.

It was getting late and I didn't have much time left for fishing, so I quickly drove to my next fishing spot passing up several good looking areas that I would normally fish.

When I pulled up to the pond, the water was flat.  Nothing was hitting on the surface and there were only a few swirls around the grassy islands that were obviously made by redfish.

I tossed the Chug Bug around the area and had only one followup and missed a sea trout right on the bank.

After fan casting the area without any hits I decided to move to another area before dusk.

I passed five guys in two truck who were getting ready to leave and asked if they had any luck.  The driver of the second truck said they caught "several" redfish on cut baits and live finger mullet on the Indian River side.

I passed left them and pulled up to the last area I could fish this evening.

I'd like to say that I caught several nice fish but I only had one followup from something big on my Chug Bug just as it began to rain.

I was getting bit by the mosquitoes and some ants that I stepped on so I decided to head for home and call it a day.

Karen and I plan to get out earlier tomorrow afternoon and nail a couple redfish if all goes as planned.

Till next time, Tight Lines.