[Pourbaix22]

Always heard about the big super spooky bull unicorns that everyone has seen before... maybe...but theres a ton of rat reds in the Bay it seems these days as I've been catching them the last two weeks.
They over here looking for better water or moving in due to lack of competition, grass regrowth?
Very curious what people think about this...Have they always been here(recently?), hopefully they stick around and these 15-20" fish are decent size pullers next year.

 

[Pbertell]

They are out there. They tried stocking them years ago and mmy assumption is that they have propagated. A guy that I know used to find the big ones consistently but very toug h to feed. I blew them off a shoreline once - 5 years ago but that is all of the personal experience I have had. Recently a guy had two legal ones in his cooler from the bay. I didn't see it but heard from a good friend. Hopefully they keep growing!! Good to hear you found little ones - great sign....

 

[lemaymiami]

Great to hear about small slot sized reds (probably in south Bay?) since they no longer spawn in Biscayne Bay... I knew guys in the old Tropical Anglers Club that did fish for redfish there when they were kids (just after WWII) but all that went away after flood control (much needed for the urban areas) actually changed Biscayne Bay from an estuary (simply shut down most of the freshwater flow - that was so strong there were actually freshwater springs in the south end of the Bay...).

The big reds you hear about (particularly around the mouths of Black Point and Homestead ramps...) are leftovers from stocking efforts a few years back... Some of them pretty large... Most of the stocking efforts were ended when they learned that small reds put into the Bay were being found a few years later - as far north as Ft. Pierce... Bottom line is that they simply didn't like the conditions in the Bay...

If I were to guess I'd suppose that the combination of hurricane Irma and the deterioration of the north end of Florida Bay.... have pushed the fish up into Biscayne... halleluljah! Hope they stay...

The outfit that would know - one way or the other... would be the Rosenstiel school on Virginia Key. Hoping to hear from them on this issue since they were the ones behind stocking efforts years back... For all you young'uns... the first stocking efforts were in the early eighties... The only reason I know anything about them at all was that the guy in charge came out to the fishing club I belonged to (TAC) and gave us a talk - then updates for a few years on how it all worked out (or didn't....).