Fishing Heron Bay

This afternoon I decided to get out of the apartment and try to catch a redfish or two at the Heron Bay cutoff on the way to Dauphin Island, Alabama.

I picked up a couple pounds of shrimp at Jemison's Bait-N-Tackle and chatted a bit about the fishing.

I was told that with the windy conditions, the best places to catch reds this afternoon was inside the bay so the obvious choice for me was the bridge at Heron Bay cutoff.

When I crossed the bridge, I spotted several boats fishing inside the bay so I immediately had high expectations.

I pulled into the road next to the bridge and was surprised to see only one other truck parked there.  

Since nobody was fishing around the wooden pilings, I figured that the person in the truck was fishing under the bridge, so I baited up a heavyweight Penn outfit with a large shrimp and a second smaller Penn Fierce II outfit with a small piece of peeled shrimp.

I fished under the bridge once before and knew that the fishing was good there but the rocks can quickly eat up a lot of lead weights.

I immediately started getting bites but the fish kept stealing my baits.  After losing three  or four shrimp, I put on smaller pieces and started catching and releasing Croaker on almost every cast.

After catching 6 or 7 Croaker, I was beginning to believe that the reds were in another area but an angler in a boat in the area I was fishing landed two fish, the second of which was a small redfish.

I was taking short videos of the area and got one of him landing the redfish.

As I landed yet another small croaker, the angler under the bridge came back to his truck.  He told me he caught a red on the way back to his spot.

I continued fishing and kept a couple  of croaker for bait.  I put a small one on the heavy duty rod just as the angler came by with his redfish.

I introduced myself and took a couple of pics of his fish which was just the right size for dinner.

I found that the larger "bull" reds have mushy flesh, especially during the summer months.

Anyway, we swapped numbers and  Aubrey showed me pics of some of the other fish he caught in the area.  I asked him to text me a few for this blog.

I assume all the fish were caught on shrimp but I could be wrong.  I do know that they were all caught in the same area in Heron Bay.

About 15 minutes after Aubrey left, I hooked into a big fish on the small Penn outfit that was loaded with 10 pound mono.

I had a small live croaker on that rod and when the fish hit and started running, I never slowed it down.   When I saw that I was almost spooled, I tightened up the drag as much as I could and the line snapped.

I don't know what the fish was but it was big.   Possibly a big red or a shark.

Anyway,  I fished live croaker on the other rod for about another half hour without a bite before I decided to pack it in and head back to the apartment.

Till next time,
Tight Lines.