This blog was set up in February for me to post fishing reports and here it is the end of December and I never posted one. My apologies to all who went looking for a report and didn’t find any... My New Years resolution is to keep it up to date.
I thought I would start my new fishing reports with a quick summary of the outstanding fishing we had in 09.
In Jan and Feb we do a lot of fishing for redfish. My specialty is sight fishing and we had a lot of great days. On both sides of the New and Full moon with low incoming water, we were able to find all the tailing redfish we wanted. The colder the weather the better. When we had high water and good sun, the fish cooperated by moving up over the sand and we had great sight fishing. We were lucky that our cold fronts seemed to coincide with the moon tides and the wind blew out of the North and East which really helps the sight fishing. I like fishing these conditions. Once the wind starts to blow south before a cold front starts the fish school up and head for more traditional holding areas and its time to switch tactical and bring out the bait. Sight fishing schools of redfish with artificial can be tough. You’re lucky if you can catch 2 fish on artificial or fly before you blow the school. This is not always the case. Some days they just stay in “their happy spot” and you can get a bite on every cast, but I still feel you will have more success when they spread out on the flat and you can make a presentation to single fish. The fish are spread out to eat and you just keep working down the flat and throwing at new fish all the time.
In March as the weather starts to warm we get Tarpon on the mind. I spent a few days in the upper bay looking for laid up fish but with limited success. It was a shame because we were doing a photo shoot for an article on fly fishing for Tarpon and I got to be the angler. Fly fishing the upper bay for early season Tarpon can be real hit or miss and we just missed. By the second week of March we turned our attention to the Everglades. We make day trips down to the Ten Thousand Islands to look for sleepers. (laid up Tarpon) We had a few good trips and a couple of blanks but we stopped going down by the first week of April because we found laid up fish here.
This past April was the best April I’ve had for laid up fish with a few days providing more the 20 shots. Our first tarpon caught on fly this year was April 10th.
We started to look for migrating Tarpon the last week in April and found them, however it was only for a day. We didn’t see another push of fish for 10 days. By the second week of May the fishing was fairly consistent. It was nice to be fishing the beach in May before most people new the Tarpon were there. We lost all of May 08 to southwest winds. The weather stayed fishable for the rest of May but it seemed just as things were going good, the wind started to blow west. I only fished the beach 3 times in June and only managed 4 bites and two released fish. What a shame, it was just too rough. We went back to fishing laid up fish, with limited success. The water had warmed enough that the fish were lying on the bottom and with the dirty water from the west wind it made them tough to see before you were on top of them. We managed to catch a few fish blind casting bait busters and caught several fish drifting Pinfish but dreamed of east winds.
In July the wind finally came around to the east and we were back on the beach. For the first two weeks of July the migration was still going strong and we were throwing at fish most of the day, though they were tough to feed. This was due to the weather allowing everyone who wanted to fish the beach to do so and the fish were getting run over a lot. This is a real sore subject for me, enough said.
By the first of August the crowds were down and the fish were still there. These were mostly single or small pods but they ate. We had several days with multiple bites.
One day, near the end of August we were 3 for 5 by 11:30 (you can’t really start seeing them until 9:00) and we should have caught 8 or 10 fish that day but we broke off our last fish at boat side and lost the last all black Toad in the box. We threw at fish for the next 3 hours and had 5 or 6 long follows but none of them opened their mouths.My fault, I should have had more black Toads but we had gone through several in the past few days and I was too tired to tie more. The all black Toad is not a normal pattern for me, or I should say that in years past it hadn’t been a regular pattern. It seems that every year they eat something just a little better and this year it was the all Black Toad.
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We fished the beach until the third week of September. We left the tarpon to spend some time looking for permit. I’ve been working on developing some consistent fly opportunity for permit and I am making progress. You need to put in your time. We finished off our tarpon season by catching some big fish in the passes on Pinfish and some small and medium size fish in canals on artificial.
In October we went back to Red fishing. I took a vacation in the middle of October to go to the keys for a week of fly fishing for permit. We had several shots at permit with the fly but finally decided to catch one on a crab to break the ice. It was a good fish around 25lbs, caught sight fishing in 2 feet of water. I managed to break off the only permit we hooked on fly. We caught a couple of Bonefish and several baby Tarpon to 20lbs on the fly for the week.
The Redfish fishing this fall has been good. I’ve had more bait trips then usual and we’ve caught Redfish, Shook, Mackerel, Snapper, Grouper and some Cobia.
November was good for tailing Redfish but the sun wasn’t out very much which made the sight fishing, once the water got high, not that great.
December the tailing fish slowed down. It has been a mystery to me. Finding the fish hasn’t been a problem but they are not sticking their tails up like they should. I would say that on average, I’m lucky to see 30 tails a day. One positive from this frustration is I’m having people do more blind casting and the numbers of big trout have really increased. The biggest trout this month has been 27 and half inches and I’d say we’re getting at least 5 trout over 22” a day.
So, there you have it, a quick summary of the 09 season. All in all I’m pretty satisfied. While we’re on the subject of 09 I should probably thank some people. I am very fortunate to have good friends to help out. They are all in the business, and I would highly recommend them all.
First a big thanks to Capt. Paul Hawkins. We get a chance to fun fish together and discuss strategy. He is a great fisherman and I have learned a lot from him. (Though he would never admit it, I think he’s learned a lot from me as well). Capt Earle Waters of Homosassa. Earle installed my stern mounted trolling motors for me a couple or years ago and even came down from Homosassa this year to trouble shoot a problem I was having to keep me fishing. He too, is a great fisherman, stands behind his product, and is a truly committed to the sport of salt water fly fishing. Justin of Mobile Marine who kept me fishing when I couldn’t fix something on my boat myself. Capt.’s Tim Drummond and Dan Bumgarner for their advice on finding species of fish that I do not stay on top of while following the Redfish. To my brother Tim who is my fun fishing partner. Fishing with Tim allows me to do a lot of scouting which keeps me on fresh fish and he’s one hell of a cast with the fly rod .Capt Jim Lucas for help with the website which is a work in progress. Lastly, to all my fisherman this year, who for the most part made the casts when they needed to and helped make this year another success
Happy New Year to all.
P.S. Look for Wednesday Nov 30th and Thursday Nov. 31 reports in the near future.
Good fishing
Capt Dave Dant
