Dog Days Of May???

I've always been aware of the Dog Days of August, but the Dog Days of May were apparently upon us this evening.

After my Doctor's appointment, I was told not to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds for another couple of weeks. That pretty much kills any serious fishing, not to mention work that I'm accustomed to doing.

Anyway, I asked Karen if she wanted to take a quick spin around Peacocks Pocket road to see what the fishing conditions were like and she agreed to go if we took Odie and Elmo along.

I realized that with the dogs I wasn't going to get much fishing done so I agreed. I loaded up three spinning rods and we proceeded to drive down to the Indian River.

We went into the easternmost entrance and headed towards Peacocks Pocket kayak launch.  When we drove up to the area, the water was totally flat and there were sporadic ripples of finger mullet on the surface but no sign of sea trout or redfish activity.

I let the dogs out to do their duty while a made several casts with a Chug Bug to no avail.  If there were any fish in the vicinity, they were not hitting top water baits.

We moved along the road and as we passed several bank fishermen, I asked each if they were catching or fishing.  To a man (and woman) they said nothing was hitting.

I drove slowly down the road watching for signs of fish activity and spotted several large redfish tailing in the deeper ponds but they were all too far away to get a cast to them.

We saw three large fish swirling in the marsh canal that were probably gator sea trout but they were spooky and would not hit my Chug Bug.

The air temperature was 90 degrees and there was no wind blowing at all.  The water on both sides of the road was flat and extremely shallow for this time of year.

The Indian River water levels are low and the water was dotted with sea grass out to about 100 yards from the shore.  The pics below depicts the average conditions.

 

The marsh water levels were also extremely low as you can see from these pics.

  

Areas that held fish a couple of months ago are now either high and dry or close to it.  Weeds abound and make casting an artificial bait a chore.  The fish seem to be concentrated in the marsh canals and the deeper ponds.  They are also extremely spooky and savvy to what most fishermen are throwing at them.  

As we continued to slowly drive through Peacocks Pocket road, Karen and I spotted several small sea trout chasing baitfish and a couple of potential Gator Sea Trout that pushed a ton of water and disappeared down the canal.

The areas I caught sea trout and redfish at last week were apparently void of fish today.  The culverts were closed and there was no water running into or out of the marsh areas.

Hopefully over the Memorial Day weekend, I'll be able to spend some quality time trying to fool one of the big ones I spotted Thursday evening.

Till next time, Tight Lines.