redfish

A redfish with two fresh hooks in its mouth which broke off and then ate the next bait in the water.

This week I took a trip south to Sebastian for some big snook. There were two spots that I was really looking forward to try, but it took some time getting there because we got sidetracked by a big school of big tarpon on the way down. It was an amazing site. There were tarpon rolling and blowing up mullet all around the boat, huge floating redfish and blackdrum, a big school of jack, and two sharks with one about 7 feet (either blacktips or bull sharks). Nothing ate croakers, mullet, or artificial shrimp except for big jack, of course. After about 45 minutes of trying to catch these fish, it was obvious that they weren’t going to eat anything on our line.

Once we got to Sebastian, the first spot was pretty disappointing. I rarely fish anywhere near the inlet so I don’t know where and when to fish relative to the tides which is probably why that spot was bad. We only saw one snook and got no hits under docks.

The second spot was a completely different story. There were overslot snook everywhere. The first three or four docks each had about a dozen huge snook. I couldn’t believe it and still can’t, but we didn’t get a single bite on live croakers or mullet. On the way back we tried for triple tail on the markers but there was nothing doing.

The next day I tried the canals around Satellite. The redfish were the most aggressive I have seen them, eating twice in a row even after breaking off two minutes before and eating a foot from the boat multiple times. My dad and I landed about six all around twenty inches, the biggest being twenty-three. After that I went out into the Banana River with my friend and we managed to land a 30 inch redfish on a live croaker. The snook were not in the central Indian River in our area like they have been. I caught three smaller snook, and hooked one which was easily over slot but broke off on some barbed wire.

Attached is a photo of a redfish with two fresh hooks in its mouth which broke off and then ate the next bait in the water.