Early October Fishing Report
I love the Fall season and although so far it’s been a bit breezy the reds have been chewing. I’ll re-cap the past few trips starting with the Hunt for Reds held on October 5th.
Greg won the essay contest with the Brevard County Boy Scouts and was treated to a fishing trip with Yours Truly on Hunt Day (thanks, Dr. Bill Slomka!). Soaking cut mullet along eastern shorelines in the Indian River produced a nice slot red within a few short minutes of the tournaments official start time. It took mother Nancy a few hours longer to reel in her slot redfish, but we finally succeeded in catching our limit. We also did a good job of terrorizing the local catfish population. LOL! High winds kept us confined to anchoring the boat and soaking baits, though that’s not my preferred method for catching reds.
The following Tuesday Bill & Mike joined me for a short boat ride in 15 mph winds. After a few minutes in our first location the winds cranked up to 25+ mph and we hurried back to the ramp ahead of a major storm. Rescheduling for Friday was a great call…
Thursday Dennis and Jeremy enjoyed their first inshore fishing experience. Well versed in bottom fishing off of Port Canaveral this light tackle stuff was different to say the least. While we didn’t see the “schools of a thousand redfish” that Dennis has read about in the fishing publications the guys did very well indeed.
Blind casting to schools of finger mullet that were forming about 25 yards from eastern shorelines produced 5 redfish in short order. All fish were caught on Exude RT Slugs fished in a twitch-twitch pause retrieve. The bites came on the pauses as is typical with this style of artificial bait.
After the action slowed we moved to a group of big fish that wouldn’t hold still for us and we moved again for more slot fish. We were surprised to find a few fatties with the slot fish and Dennis catches a 43inch red and later Jeremy hooks another big girl that comes unbuttoned.
Friday Bill & Mike come back for round 2 and the weather is much better and so is the fishing. Within 15 minutes of dropping off of plane we are into the redfish in big way. The guys are, however not hooking them. A little coaching and I get them to slow down and the screaming drags begin, for Mike anyway. It’s 5 to 1 in 20 minutes as Mike is landing all of his and Bill’s are coming off. Same rods, reels, line and hooks! The action only stopped because of another boater coming too close and spooking the fish. Oh, well. We caught a few more and a couple of trout to round out the morning. Once again an s-l-o-w moving R T Slug did the job in solid white, smokin’ shad and mangrove red.
Saturday was more of the same, albeit a bit more breeze, a lot more fisherman and far fewer redfish. Still, Rick and Keith had a great time with their handful of reds and trout. We had to cover a little more of the eastern shoreline than the previous few days and play leap-frog with some of the other anglers, but that’s Saturday in the IRL!
The water is a bit dirty y’all either all white or dark colored Slugs are working best for us. Twitch them aggressively one, twice or even three times, but let them pause long between your groups of twitches that the lure can touch the bottom. Virtually all of our bites are coming as the bait is coming in contact with the bottom or after it has rested on the bottom for a split second.
Captain Mark Wright
cell - 321-302-3474
home - 321-264-3474
e-mail: CaptMarkWright@earthlink.net
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