January can offer some of the best redfish action of the year. Between the arrival of cold fronts, typically every five days or so, the temperatures climb and the winds subside sending hordes of ravenous reds onto the shallow grass flats to forge for food. Since food on the flats is significantly scarcer during the winter months, our redfish will aggressively attack most bait with abandon. This leads to big numbers of big fish on our charters. The only catch, pardon the pun, is timing the cold fronts. The following is a sampling of January charters.

 David and his son, Christian, recently had a fun fishing trip with Capt. Peter in the Indian River near Titusville.  During this trip the anglers were able to experience some great wintertime fishing, both back in mangrove creeks and up on the shallow flats.  The anglers started the morning off fishing back behind mangrove islands inside deeper creeks.  In these creeks, David and Christian caught at least 15 trout up to 23inches, redfish, and black drum.   Once the sun warmed the water a bit, it was sightfishing time.  Both David and Christian were able to land some good redfish by sight-casting to them.  One of the highlights of the trip was as David was pulling big “bull-red” from a school, Christian hooked up with a red from a different school that was passing by – as seen in the photo, the double was sized just right!

‘This is a big fish! This is a big fish! This is a big fish!” It was all Jim from Delaware could yell as his drag smoked and rod arched over underneath the power of a giant redfish screaming across the shallow grass flats. Jim along with his new fishing buddy Al Iodice of New Hampshire had already fought and boated over a dozen big redfish on the spectacular morning of fishing in the Indian River Lagoon near Titusville, Florida, most weighing between 10 and 15 pounds. However, the beast now being battled was an all-together different class of ‘big’. Before the sudden chaos could completely grip the situation, Capt. Rocky Van Hoose quickly released the hydraulic Power Pole, grabbed his graphic push pole, manned the poling platform and began chasing down the big red beast. Thirty minutes later, after thirty more shouts by Jim and thirty laps spun around the flats boat by Al with landing net in hand and thirty minutes of hard pushing by the captain while interspersing  blurbs of instructions and bursts laughter, the 30 pound, big bronzed beauty was finally aboard. Afterwards, with arms aching, an adrenalin-drained Jim could be heard muttering, “That was a big fish.” (Pictured below are Jim and Al smiling broadly with one really ‘big fish’.)

William Willard escaped the Maryland cold, to enjoy some Florida sun and sightfishing with Capt. Peter.  Most of the trip was spent casting to schools of tailing redfish.  William was able to experience redfishing at its finest, landing close to a dozen reds.  William was also able to experience some good trout fishing during the day back inside mangrove creeks and islands.  Casting live shrimp to schooling trout is always a blast.

“The Jacuzzi will feel mighty good tonight,” said Dave Caplan, Jr. from Merritt Island after a day of battling hard-charging redfish. Fishing with his dad, Dave, Sr. from the Baltimore area, the Caplan boys had a blast with Capt. Rocky as they fished the clear, shallow waters of the Indian River Lagoon in Titusville, Florida. The action was nearly continuous throughout the morning as hungry reds invaded the grass flats to forage before the arrival of yet another cold front. The Caplans caught 12-15 redfish and one super-aggressive trout. The biggest red weighed about 20 pound while the others were not much smaller. Junior had good reason for achy muscles. And, fortunately, there was a warm Jacuzzi waiting for him when he got home. 

Good friend Bobby Clayton had his new son-in-law Patrick in town over the holidays and wanted to introduce him to the joys of fishing. Now Patrick had done little if any fishing in his life and certainly not tangled with anything like the bronzed brutes of the flats known as the redfish. Fishing on a weather-perfect Saturday, the Clayton clan opted for a late morning, gentlemanly-like launch from Kennedy Point Park in Titusville. Unfortunately, nearly every local fisherman had similar thoughts towards spending the holiday and made it to the lush fishing grounds much earlier. Despite the chaotic conditions left in the wake of the Titusville armada, Patrick was, in fact, baptized by fire into the angling fraternity. Pictured below are Patrick and his very first fish … what a way to be introduced to fishing.