Luke Rehwoldt, a deputy sheriff from Osceola County fished with me the last two days with some thundering results. The first day, which was actually an evening, we hit the water at about 6pm and fished till 11pm. The snook and tarpon had teamed up on a school of small mehaden on the edge of a backwater flat and were absolutely blowing up the surface. Everytime you tossed a bait into the mix it was crushed. You had less then 3 seconds to get ready because you would have a fish on that quick. The tarpon were crashing the baits so hard that they missed them a few times and just threw the menhaden’s out of the water. You always hear about those epic feeding frenzy’s, well this was one of them. It only lasted about an hour and a half but for that time it was non stop. We hooked 8 tarpon and landed 6 of them, landed 5 snook and broke off 2 in the mangroves and one on a dock piling, and 2 ladyfish. Then as it got dark they just stopped as quick, so we finished out the night catching seatrout, nothing giant just 15 inchers but as fast as you could go. I can’t even count how many were caught, it was just one of those kinda nights.
Luke returned the next day for a morning session, 6:30am to 10:30am, and brought his brother, Tyler, to experience some of the action. We filled our bait well with menhaden in two casts of the net and went to work again. The tarpon were there petty thick but we couldn’t get any to bite and after 45 minutes of nothing I decided were beating a dead horse so we cut our losses on the tarpon for today and began working the mangrove shoreline. It ended up paying off. Over the next few hours we landed 21 snook and lost a few to the ‘groves. It was just another amazing day. Luke and Tyler enjoyed some of the best fishing the Indian River has to offer over a two day period. All fish were caught in less than 4 feet of water and most of them we saw prior to casting to them which made it even better.
Capt.Mike Badarack
www.controversycharters.com
