Fishing Bio Lab Road

After putting the Christmas turkey in the oven, I had several hours to kill so I decided to try fishing Bio Lab Road.

A cold front is expected to roll in this evening so it was a good time to wet a line.

I thought about bring Elmo and Odie along but I couldn't do any serious fishing and still watch out for them at the same time, so I left them home.

When I left the house, the air temperature was about 78 degrees and the wind was blowing enough to make casting a problem.

As I crossed the A. Max Brewer bridge, the sky to the north of the causeway had several parasails in view.

I usually try out East Gator Creek but today I headed straight for Bio Lab road.

As I past the first set of culverts, I noticed a guy with a crab trap trying to toss a paddletail bait at a large gator.  

I past him up I found the banks of the Mosquito Lagoon pretty active with bank fishermen.

I stopped and asked several anglers how the bite was going and quickly discovered that the black drum were on fire.

The first guy said he caught two small fish in the 15 to 16 inch category; the second couple of anglers caught five fish in the 19 inch category, and a couple of other fishermen said they caught 3 or 4 fish about the same length.

All the black drum were caught on dead or fresh dead shrimp.

I passed the bank fishermen and started casting a topwater Badonk A Donk around a few of the culverts.

I had a couple of hits but no nookups so I continued down the road to fish an area where I picked up a few snook the other day.

When I got to the spot, I noticed a bloated alligator carcass in the area I planned to fish.  I made several casts and never got even a follow up, so I switched to a white Creme paddletail bait that I smeared up with some Pro-Cure gel and walked up to another area where the water was cleaner.

On my first cast around a submerged tree, I had a hit from something but no hookup.  On my second cast to almost the exact location, I hooked into a nice Snook about 25 or 26 inches.  The fish inhaled the plastic bait and made a nice run.  I fought the fish close enough to the bank to see how big it was and as soon as it saw me, it took off like a shot right into the tree branches.

I tried to pressure it out of the stickup but the fish took off again and broke off with my bait.

I tied on another paddletail bait with a clear body and blue/black back and started casting to the same general area.

I had a couple of bumps but no hookups so when I saw something hitting baitfish on the surface, I switched rods and continued casting the  Badonk A Donk  around the mangroves.

I hooked, landed, and released three juvenile tarpon about the same size as the first fish I caught (below) before the bite stopped.

The wind picked up and it started getting chilly, so I packed up my tackle and headed home to see if the turkey was done.

All in all it was a short but fruitful trip.

Not bad for Christmas Eve.

Till next time, Tight LInes and Merry Christmas.