Redfish In The Salt Marsh

After unloading the truck when I got home from work Friday afternoon, I decided to make a quick scouting trip out to Peacocks Pocket road in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge to see if I could locate any of the oversize redfish in the salt marsh.

As I entered East Gator Creek road, I noticed that the water levels in the marsh were up.

I only brought along two spinning rods with topwater baits and I forgot my Nikon, so I resigned myself to not catching anything.

The air temperature was 92 degrees and there was a slight wind blowing over the Indian River.  Not great for topwater fishing......

I tossed a Chug Bug around a couple of areas, and as I drove up to a large pond I spotted several large reds in very shallow water.  They were well over the slot limit and looked to be in the 33" to 35" range.

The fish were in a grassy area busting on mullet, so I switched from the Chug Bug to the rod with a 6" blue backed topwater "walk the dog" bait smeared with Pro-Cure Inshore formula and started casting out to the fish.

The fish were just beyond casting range, and I must have made at least a hundred or so casts before I got a tremendous hit from a large sea trout that was in the 30" class.    The fish busted on the bait as soon as it hit the water but somehow didn't get a hook in him.

I continued casting to the reds and got another hit from a smaller redfish that again, didn't get hooked.

I must have been holding my mouth wrong.

Anyway, it was around 6:30 pm when I decided to head home and tend to my neck, which has been giving me problems.  Bone spurs, if you've never had them, are painful as hell.

As I was driving out of the refuge, I saw several sea trout hitting bait in the marsh canal and a school of newly hatched turtles on the surface that I tried to get a pic of with my smart phone.

The only people I saw in the refuge during the time I was fishing, were some out of town folks looking for alligators and waterfowl.  The only fishermen I spotted were on my way out of the refuge and they were just setting up for reds on the Indian River side of the road.

If my neck problem gets better, I may get out early and try for one of those big reds but until next time, Tight Lines.