Alex Bergeron with a beautiful Vermilion Bay redfish.
“On June 9, my childhood friend, Hayden Girouard, and I left from my camp on Boston Canal, Vermilion Bay, around 5:30 a.m. We set our aim for a reef not far out of the pass to catch some speckled trout. I had gone on a solo trip the previous week and caught 25 trout on the same reef. On our arrival you couldn’t miss the large shrimp jumping out of the water just off of the reef. ‘There’s some nice fish under those shrimp,’ I said with a smile. We managed to catch 13 solid trout quick ranging from 16-20 inches. Then they stopped. With the water temperatures heating up in the shallow water and 30 minutes of trying to find a school we decided to target reds further west along the bank. We set off searching for a sign of birds or more shrimp jumping for hopes of another quick trout bite. In the distance we saw two seagulls hitting the water by themselves. ‘Gotta be more trout there,’ I told Hayden as he slowed the boat down. Hayden says, ‘well let’s find out.’ After countless throws and a school of slimy galftop, we saw bull reds hitting the surface and swimming right next to the boat. I threw a Four Horsemen cork out with a Matrix Shad on the bottom. BAM! This monster bull red comes out of the water with that Matrix Shad in his mouth. We were shocked. All the years I’ve fished Vermilion Bay I had never seen a bull red of that size jump out of the water, body and all. After around a 10 minute fight I managed to pull it in and Hayden scooped it up. We caught around four bulls reds of this size that day and they were released to fight another day. We had a blast. It’s nice to have a fight from a bull red every now and then. After searching for smaller reds along the coast it was starting to heat up and we decided to head back to the camp to clean the trout. It was a nice morning on Vermilion Bay!”
