As the sun set, my friend Braden and his dad, Dan, joined my dad and I to go night fishing. We had been fishing on a charter in Sebastian Inlet all day looking for bull reds but the only thing we caught were jack crevalle and a small snook. We knew this was our last chance to catch what we were looking for. We found a great corner spot on the rocky shoreline overlooking the bay of the inlet. We rigged up cut bait on some big BKK circle hooks and launched them out as far as we could. As we waited for something to bite we heard blue heron calls echoing across the inlet and the sound of occasional blow-ups. To pass the time, Braden and I grabbed some flash lights and started exploring the cracks and crevices between the rocks in search of small fish or crabs.
After a few minutes, we noticed that something was tapping on one of the rods. Dan said, “Oh, we got something on!” as the drag started to pull. I was worried it was a stingray, the way it was running, but once Dan picked up the rod, I suspected it was a redfish. As Dan was fighting it he struggled to keep it away from the depth post as it zig-zagged to and from the rocks. Once it got close enough, we were very excited to see that it was exactly what we came here for, a bull red. Braden quickly went to grab the lip-gripper so that we could pull this monster fish on shore. It was so heavy, Braden could barely pick it up. We set it down to measure it and I ran my hand across its smooth shimmering scales. As Braden extended the tape measure, I made sure to straighten the tail as he yelled, “Whoa, it’s 40 inches!”
After we took a few awesome pictures, we gently released it back into the water. We all watched as it swam off into the darkness. Braden and I couldn’t stop talking about how exciting it was to finally catch a bull red.
