So, I was playing around in the water yesterday looking for new fishy spots at low tide when I happened upon this. I was up in the ICW area looking at some piles of oysters that started to look very fishy to me when I saw this thing floating around…yep looks like a redfish to me, an overslot one at that. Some idiot caught this guy and didn’t bother to revive him properly (at least that’s what I thought to myself at first).
So, noticing that he was a pretty healthy sized fish, I decided to get a closer look. Aruugghh!! Gross! What is that in his mouth?! Is that a bunch of little crabs crawling out or what!?! OK, So, I have to get a little closer…wait, that’s not what I think it is. It can’t be!
Sure enough, this 32" redfish had eyes bigger than his stomach. He had tried to take on this large turtle and it was all over from there. The turtle was about 10" long from tail to head and when the redfish tried to consume him, the backside of the shell got stuck in those few little upper teeth that redfish have and the turtle got stuck. The redfish choked to death on his last meal that he never got to enjoy. When I found him the gills were wide open as I’m sure he suffered for a while trying to breath with that large object in his mouth. This actually kind of reminds me of that email sent out a while back with the catfish trying to eat the basketball.
Its a shame such a nice fish had to die, but let this be a lesson to all of us, redfish really aren’t that finacky, they are indeed opportunistic feeders. I know people that have seen reds eat mice up on the flats too. This certainly ranks up there with the strangest things I’ve seen a redfish eat.
I’m gonna go talk to MadMike today about tying me up some turtle flies!
Enjoy the pictures.
DISCLAIMER: I realize that I should not have removed an overslot redfish from the water and possessed a dead overslot fish in my boat, however, I took these photos with the intention of sharing this information with DNR, as I believe it might be