Peacocks Pocket Road Closure

The Peacocks Pocket road closure was a total surprise for me this past weekend.

When I got back to town, the first thing Karen and I did was to take our two "best friends" for a scouting trip to see how the locals were doing with the redfish and sea trout.

When we got to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and saw that the barriers were up, I was not a happy camper.  We drove down towards Peacocks Pocket kayak launch hoping that the gate was open, but it too was chained and closed.

Since the weather was great, we decided to see if any of the other areas in the refuge were open to fishing and vehicle traffic.  We drove towards L Pond Road and as usual it too was chained, so we took a ride towards Haulover Canal and managed to check out most of the unimproved roads leading to the Indian River around Dummit Cove.

We found a couple of people fishing at the Boy Scout camping area but they weren't having any luck.

I pretty much resigned myself to a fishless afternoon, so Karen and I decided to head over to Bairs Cove boat launch.

When we got there, we were happy to see that a large group of sea manatees were in the cove playing around.  I stopped the truck and took a video of their antics before moving on to check out some other potential fishing areas.

We crossed Haulover Canal bridge and checked out the fishermen who were bank fishing on the side opposite the boat launch.  The three guys I spoke with were catching sting rays, catfish, and one had a redfish on which he lost at the bank.

I wished them all good luck and headed towards Patillo Creek and Shiloh Road to see if anybody was fishing that area.

We only saw three fishermen fishing and wading the flats south of the deeper canal and I didn't bother them to find out if they were fishing or catching.  Instead, we let the dogs out to do their "duty" while I cast a topwater XPS walk the dog bait to see if I could stir up a sea trout or two.

After thirty casts or so, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to catch any fish this afternoon.

We drove up to Shiloh Road where again, another barrier was blocking vehicle traffic.

I took several pictures of the areas we scouted out and headed to the hacienda for dinner.

When I got home, I called the Fish and Wildlife people to see why the roads were blocked off to vehicle traffic.

The third lady I spoke with told me that Peacocks Pocket Road would be closed until May 15th. because of road repairs.   She said it could be opened earlier but that it was doubtful.

I asked her about the possibility of Shiloh Road and L. Pond Road being opened, and was told that both roads were closed indefinitely.  The funding was not available to repair the unimproved roads and is not likely to be available anytime in the near future.

She told me that both roads could be fished by hiking or biking, but vehicles were prohibited.

I politely thanked her for the information and hung up wondering what is being done with the revenues from our license fees.  With the national debt heading towards 20 trillion dollars and government waste in the billions, I wonder why nobody in our government can't scrape up enough money to fix a couple of great fishing access roads.

Till next time, Tight Lines.