JFrischkorn@News-Herald.com
@FieldKorn
MELBOURNE, Fla. — It would appear that even fishes can become moon struck.
At least those fishes that live in Florida's Indian River, which really isn't a river at all. Not in the sense of what we typically think about when it comes to such things as creeks, streams, tributaries and rivers.
The Indian River is a 121-mile-long knife blade of brackish water that has peeled away a slice of the east coast of Florida's mainland.
Scientific folk call it an "estuarine."
The Indian River's salinity typically goes up and down according to how much freshwater washes into the system.
And Indian River fishing guides like Terry Lamielle have to take the river's salinity into account when they prepare for a day on the water. Just as they do by assessing the phase status of the moon.
Alas, on May 5 not only was the moon full, it also was at its closest approach to Earth of the year. With a clear, moonlit sky, the Indian River's fishes no doubt had fed much of the night and likely weren't much in the mood for breakfast.
"It's been an epic year for sea trout fishing," Lamielle said. "But that full moon last night could have hurt things."
It had, too, with the first stop being void of sea trout activity.
The next angling port-of-call was at "Honest John's Canal," a mangrove-encrusted sea of small islands; the spawn made from the dregs of muck dredged up decades ago in order to construct Florida's share of the 3,000-mile-long Intercoastal Waterway. Continued...
This waterway is a trench gouged out of the shallow Indian River so vessels can navigate without running aground on mud flats.
"It's nice and quiet back here," Lamielle said in an almost church-like whisper. "Maybe the fishing's not as good as it once was, but it's still my favorite place to fish."
That favoritism goes back to the latter part of the 1960s, when Lamielle's parents uprooted him from their Canton home and transplanted him to east-central Florida.
"This is where I became a fishing guide," Lamielle gushed as the fishing boat entered the labyrinth of small but heavily forested islands.
Lamielle handed off a spinning outfit rigged with braided line, a stout leader of monofiliment and properly saddled with a wooden top-water bait similar in appearance to a Heddon Torpedo.
For my father-in-law, Lamille pressed into service another spinning outfit and one equipped with a banana-shaped jig body and a soft plastic imitation shrimp.
The object, Lamielle said, was to cast the baits as close as possible to the snag of mangrove roots. The roots of one tree interlock with those of another to produce a chain-link fence of wood into which bait fish flee for security.
Also occupying space within the mangrove root system are snook, sea trout, flounder and even tarpon, which use the web from which to launch their attacks.
After an hour of rifling my top-water popping plug toward the edge of the mangroves, I had not attracted even so much as a follow from a fish.
Meanwhile, my father-in-law had enticed a small skillet-size flounder to strike. That fish was lost just as Lamielle leaned over the boat's gunwale to hoist aboard the fish. Continued...
Swapping out the top-water lure for a shrimp-jig combination of my own, I rebooted my casting toward the mangroves.
As Lamielle coaxed his fishing platform through the integrate network of islands we would cast to the most promising points of angling interest. Pointing toward one overhanging tree Lamielle instructed me to cast my artificial lure to near the base of the mangrove tree. A few short jerks of the rod allowed the imitation shrimp to bounce life-like along the Indian River's mucky bottom.
In short order, I felt a not-so-timid response from a fish that made a good account of itself. All in spite of the fact that it was so flattened as to lead one to believe it was road kill.
It wasn't, of course. Instead it was a flounder, an oval-shaped, dark-colored fish with its two bug-eyes resting above.
However, that was the final fish of the morning. In spite of several more stops within the maze of mangrove islands we could find no more willing biters.
By late morning, the peppery-hot Florida sun had squelched the angling. Our fishing day was at an end.
I surely would have liked to have caught some legal-sized sea trout. I understand that when prepared properly that sea trout make for exceptional eating.
Maybe, but I will say this, Atlantic flounder isn't bad either. On that score I can now speak with both experience and authority.
For information about fishing with Lamielle, contact him at zaracrazy@aol.com, or call him at 321-725-7255 or 321-537-5347. The web site for his "Easy Days" guide service is at http://www.landbigfish.com.
