Fishing The Creeks

Fishing the creeks in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge was always productive during February, but since they have been closed indefinitely, the creeks at Shiloh Road provide a good second choice.

Around 3:30 pm this afternoon, Karen asked me if I wanted to take the "boys" fishing for a while.

It took a microsecond to agree and start packing up my rods for the trip.

We stopped at Mosquito Lagoon Bait and Tackle and picked up some live shrimp and a few mud minnows and headed back to Shiloh Road to fish either the river or the creeks.

The air temperature today was in the low 70s and there was no wind over the water.  The glassy conditions made topwater bait fishing a poor choice and since we had Elmo and Odie along, we parked at a suitable location, pulled out a couple of portable chairs and set out our baits.

I had two Okuma Avenger baitrunner reels set out with mud minnows that were the size of large finger mullet, and Karen was using a Penn Fierce II bait runner spin fishing outfit with light line, a float, and a live shrimp for bait.

There wasn't a lot of activity in the water but Karen and I managed to catch a few large hard head catfish on the shrimp.  The mud minnows were lively, and Odie enjoyed watching them swim around, but evidently the fish just weren't in the mood for them today.

I impatiently sat for over an hour without another bite on the mud minnows, while Karen pulled in two more large catfish and just at dusk hooked into a nice slot redfish.

I took a short video of the action below, click the pic:

I unhooked the red and released it to fight another day.

After catching the redfish, Karen was ready to go home and since the mosquitoes were getting nasty towards dusk, I readily agreed with her.

We packed up our rods, released the rest of the mud minnows and headed home for a crock pot meal I finished yesterday.

Till next time,

Tight Lines.