Jumbo snook add excitement for redfish anglers spring and summer.

This first 100 feet or so never has any fish in it,” said Charlie Johnson, with a relaxed attitude that only comes from hundreds of fishing hours in a single location.

It wasn’t really what I wanted to hear.

After shutting the boat down along the edge of the channel and poling several hundred yards into a nondescript cove of mud and mangroves, I felt like we’d done all we could to follow the silent and deadly routine. I was ready to see fish. Redfish in particular.

“Get on up past that point, and we’ll start to see some small schools. In this area they like to sit in the small, sparse patches of dark grass.”

For such a mellow personality, I was startled to see that Johnson takes his fishing so close to heart. He set the hook too early on a circling red that tried repeatedly to grab his fly; Charlie had worried that the point-blank red would spot our boat. I couldn’t believe he was so hard on himself. After all, it was the first fish of the day.

With Charlie muttering about no second chances and a limited number of shots, we slowly inched our way down that shoreline and it only took moments for the next fish to appear.

“Charlie, in tight, just behind the boat,” I said with as much sense of urgency as I could load into a whisper. “He’s facing the mangroves.”

“Got him,” said Charlie, who then cast to the fish’s tail.

I expected a litany of “gosh darns,” or maybe something a little stronger, but before words could surface, the slot-size redfish spun around and lunched on his offering.

“Hmmm...,” said Charlie, beaming over his singing reel. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

Redfish are available throughout the year along the mangrove shorelines.

Neither did I, for that matter, but I would take it just the same. It meant I was back on the pointy end of the boat and Charlie was on the stick. A Vero native, he knows this area very well—and I was ready for someone to show me where the fish hide.

From that small cove we worked north, fishing spoil islands or mud and oyster banks that Johnson picked out in a process that was far from random. If I pointed out a particular location as looking fishy, he knew exactly how much time he’d wasted hunting redfish in that very spot. Or how school trout just ate him up and how he’d wasted a previous morning on fish there, with not one fish pulling line off his reel.

The proximity of the town of Wabasso puts it close enough to Sebastian that many anglers pass it up while heading for Sebastian Inlet, which is good news for local fish hugging the shoreline. Quite often, anglers fishing Sebastian don’t even realize they’re in Wabasso until they see SR510 (Wabasso Causeway) in their path.

Just north of Riomar, a small town on the northern end of Vero Beach, and up past the Grand Harbor development on the western shoreline, the best water comes into play along a stretch of about a mile of mangrove-lined islands, creeks and coves. When the tide gets moving through these areas, it really flushes baitfish that predators ambush.

Some of the best places to fish are sandy cuts through the islands that are less than two feet deep, but have small depressions or holes that allow trout and reds to rest out of the current, yet remain directly in the path of oncoming food. That makes bait an easy target.

These areas can be difficult to fish because of the current’s strength, which can move a boat faster than a trolling motor, especially during strong tides when fishing is best. Approaching the cut from downcurrent and casting upcurrent is a common strategy, but it can limit the angler’s casting area because the boat can’t work its way up the cut. A better method is to fish downcurrent, holding the boat tight to the mangroves, away from where the current is strongest. The boat will still lose ground, but usually at a pace that allows anglers to pepper the spot with enough casts to feel like they’ve taken a good shot.