Chris came down from Michigan to see what Venice had to offer. He soon found out that instead of freezing Temperatures we had high winds to deal with in the winter. With the winds blowing at 20 mph. and higher gusts we set out looking for a few fish. I decided to run down the river and into a pond that should provide us some shelter. We had a below normal tide rising most of the day.

In the first hour we only had one fish strike at a gold spoon near the boat. It was a short strike and did not hook up. After hitting a very fishable area hard I moved to another area where several other boats were fishing. In did not want to interfere with them so I continued on and found my new choice all stirred up and too muddy to fish. The other boats were also struggling with only 1 or 2 fish. I found a corner that had somewhat clear water and we could cast with the wind. This produced our first fish of the day and also his first ever redfish.




For a 31 inch fish this guy was the most lethargic fish I ever saw. It was coming to the boat with only a bounce of the rod and never taking drag. Once near the boat it made a feeble attempt to look like a fish of that size. As it got a bit further from the boat it woke up a bit more but never fulfilled the potential a fish this size has. It was evident this fish was not interested in impressing our northern visitor. Made for a nice picture though.



It was about noon and we only had one good fish in the box. He did not want to wait for the tide to change and the scenery was getting boring. How long can you look at dirty water and canes blowing erratically all the time. I made a drastic move from the south east side to the north west side of Venice. When I arrived at my targeted area it did not take me long before I started thinking of another place to go. I knew I would have to cross some open water to get to a protected place. As I started across I decided to make a U turn and seek protected waters near where I had entered the pond. This place is very shallow and is hardly ever fished. We were at the top of the tide so I ventured there. I have caught some very good fish there but the shallow keep many out of here. I did hot some mud and had to change the approach but it finally paid off. I got to a stand of canes with some water movement and hooked up to a nice keeper redfish. From that fish on it was Chris's turn to catch some nicely colored redfish.



We hit that spot till the sting rays came through. I moved to the stand of canes next to us and we got into the reds and black drum again. We finished with a flurry of good fishing and were able to limit out with 5 nice redfish in the box for the limit. We gave some nice keepers a chance to live and fight again. A long tough day ended well.



Life is Good.

Those reds are good eating. Much better than striper. Nice catching !