Walking The Pocket

When I took Elmo and Odie for a ride on Wednesday afternoon, I spent a little time fishing at the entrance to Peacocks Pocket Road but walking the Pocket was impossible with them along, so I decided to put it off until this afternoon.

When I finally decided to head out, it was around 3:30p.m. and the air temperature was a balmy 73 degrees.

There were strong wind gusts out of the northeast and even the wind surfers were putting their gear up.  When I finally got to the barricade at Peacocks Pocket,  I was almost sorry I decided to go fishing.   The wind chill made the temperature feel like 60 degrees, and it probably was.
 
I didn't bring along a backpack, so I hooked a small box of replacement lures to my belt hook, grabbed a rod with a Chug Bug and a second with a gold Johnson's Sprite spoon, and started walking the Pocket.

I started fishing with the gold Spoon mainly because it was easier to handle in the wind, as I cast into several areas to find fish.

The fishing along the road was tough to impossible in most areas.  The heavy growth along the side of the road was high making casting extremely limited. 

 Even then if you did hook up with a fish, landing it was almost impossible unless you had a lot of luck on your side.

The water in the marsh canal was low and the shallow ponds that used to be there, were not.   But despite the conditions, I still managed to hook up with three slot size redfish in the 20 to 22 inch range, and land two of them.

 

I also missed hookups with at least four other fish that were probably reds.

I was the only person fishing the area and it was obvious that nobody had been there in quite some time.

The grass was high, there were no human footprints anywhere, and the fish were hitting the Johnson Sprite spoon like they never saw one before.   It was almost like fishing a pristine wilderness area, but without the wilderness.

I walked a few miles up the road casting where I could without getting snagged and took some pics of several areas that because of erosion, made the road impassable to vehicle traffic.

I hope that management will eventually repair the roads, but I'm skeptical at this point.

Anyway, I jumped a 10 foot gator that was sunning itself along the bank but as I reached for my cell phone to take a pic, he quickly disappeared into the canal.

When the wind picked up and it started getting colder, I decided to turn around and head back to the truck.  It was close to 6:00 p.m. when I got to the truck and stowed my gear, and I felt like it was much colder than the low 60s.

As I headed out of the refuge, I took a couple of pics of the beautiful sunset.  I'll never get tired of our sunsets.

Till next time, Tight Lines and bent rods.