troutman561
07-23-2011, 07:28 PM
EDIT: If a mod looks at this, please fix the title to "Decent Lagoon day, at least by my standards, plus a friends first red! 7/23/11 " I screwed up when I first posted..
Got up early this morning to head down to the Lagoon to get on some reds before it got too hot. My friend Max and I were greeted by a busy ramp because of what I am assuming was a tournament. Anyhow, we launched and got to our spot on the west side of the lagoon before sunrise. Immediately we see a red tailing, but he was not interested. As we got closer to the grass flat itself, we had another red making a B-line for us, but he also just swam on. So we began working up and down the edge with our new penny jerk shads (Max with DOA, myself with Gulp on red jig heads). Max caught a couple of lady fish before we saw a school of about 5-6 red fish coming at us from behind. I quickly turned the boat around and I cast my lure in front of the fish. I hooked up on one and quickly handed Max the rod as he has never caught a red before. She put up a good fight and in a few minutes we had a nice 26in red in the boat!
http://i54.tinypic.com/rk6d8l.jpg
We snapped a quick pic, measured it out at 26in, and it was back in the water swimming off strong. After this, we kept seeing a bunch of tailing red fish schools consisting of about 5-10 fish that wouldn't bite anything. As we chased the various schools around, it seemed that they all met up and ended up forming one large school of 30-40 fish. At one point they all ended up sitting in about 3 ft of water that we did not see until we were right on top of them, but they didn't even seem to mind the boat which was a shock to me. We finally got a decent angle on the school so I cast my jerk shad out and let it sit in front of them. After I did that, I put that rod between my knees and grabbed a gold spoon to cast. Right as I was about to throw the spoon out the jerk shad got slammed and the fight was on. The red then put on a series of impressive runs and strong fighting as I battled it on my 7.5ft light action rod. We eventually got her to the boat, snapped a quick pic, measured it out at 32in, and off she went after 30 seconds of reviving.
http://i51.tinypic.com/2wn5o2d.jpg
Now I will explain the reason why I say this was a decent day by my standards. When I first moved to Port Orange to attend the Chiropractic College I fished the lagoon heavily as I heard it was the best place to catch reds. I spent a year and a half using live shrimp trying to catch fish. Out of the many hours I spent, I caught 3 reds, a snook, many tiny trout, and some black drum. For the time I put in, I got very little in return. So after a year and a half I gave up on the lagoon. Well, fast forward to about 10 months later. My last 4 trips have yielded multiple reds, decent trout, flounder, and many lady fish. Plus, these red's today were the first I caught sight casting to them, its not as easy as they make it seem on TV:banghead. Anyway, I will stop rambling on and sum it up to the fact that since I started using artificial bait the last 4 trips my success has increased.. I should have listened to everyone on this board years ago...
Got up early this morning to head down to the Lagoon to get on some reds before it got too hot. My friend Max and I were greeted by a busy ramp because of what I am assuming was a tournament. Anyhow, we launched and got to our spot on the west side of the lagoon before sunrise. Immediately we see a red tailing, but he was not interested. As we got closer to the grass flat itself, we had another red making a B-line for us, but he also just swam on. So we began working up and down the edge with our new penny jerk shads (Max with DOA, myself with Gulp on red jig heads). Max caught a couple of lady fish before we saw a school of about 5-6 red fish coming at us from behind. I quickly turned the boat around and I cast my lure in front of the fish. I hooked up on one and quickly handed Max the rod as he has never caught a red before. She put up a good fight and in a few minutes we had a nice 26in red in the boat!
http://i54.tinypic.com/rk6d8l.jpg
We snapped a quick pic, measured it out at 26in, and it was back in the water swimming off strong. After this, we kept seeing a bunch of tailing red fish schools consisting of about 5-10 fish that wouldn't bite anything. As we chased the various schools around, it seemed that they all met up and ended up forming one large school of 30-40 fish. At one point they all ended up sitting in about 3 ft of water that we did not see until we were right on top of them, but they didn't even seem to mind the boat which was a shock to me. We finally got a decent angle on the school so I cast my jerk shad out and let it sit in front of them. After I did that, I put that rod between my knees and grabbed a gold spoon to cast. Right as I was about to throw the spoon out the jerk shad got slammed and the fight was on. The red then put on a series of impressive runs and strong fighting as I battled it on my 7.5ft light action rod. We eventually got her to the boat, snapped a quick pic, measured it out at 32in, and off she went after 30 seconds of reviving.
http://i51.tinypic.com/2wn5o2d.jpg
Now I will explain the reason why I say this was a decent day by my standards. When I first moved to Port Orange to attend the Chiropractic College I fished the lagoon heavily as I heard it was the best place to catch reds. I spent a year and a half using live shrimp trying to catch fish. Out of the many hours I spent, I caught 3 reds, a snook, many tiny trout, and some black drum. For the time I put in, I got very little in return. So after a year and a half I gave up on the lagoon. Well, fast forward to about 10 months later. My last 4 trips have yielded multiple reds, decent trout, flounder, and many lady fish. Plus, these red's today were the first I caught sight casting to them, its not as easy as they make it seem on TV:banghead. Anyway, I will stop rambling on and sum it up to the fact that since I started using artificial bait the last 4 trips my success has increased.. I should have listened to everyone on this board years ago...