Jan. 29, 2010

The fishing this week was not as productive as I thought it should have been. The Redfish have really thinned out. After discussions with friends and other guides it appears the report is the same everywhere. Even up in Homosassa the Redfish this week were scarce. Capt.Paul Hawkins did have a good day on Redfish in upper Tampa Bay earlier in the week. That was the best report I had heard. It seems like about once a month, for a few days, the Redfish move and become harder to find. You would think that the tide or weather conditions have something to do with it, but I haven't been able to figure it out.
The Trout fishing still is going strong. We caught several fish over 22" this week. The surprise of the week was a school of large Black Drum. We caught two on the way to a another Redfish spot. Both fish were in the 60 lbs range.
As I'm writing this report I got a call about a fresh school of Redfish that have shown up.
Today the wind is blowing south with an approaching cold front. Behind the front we should have clean blue skies and light winds. Look forward to next week. I threw up a new gallery of trout pictures. Enjoy.

Jan 21 2010

It looks like the effects of the cold water are behind us. Everything has returned to normal. The mullet have returned to the flats. Lots of Redfish and big Trout.
The Redfish were a little tough to find this week. As the cold front approached, the fish schooled up and it took some time to find them. The trout fishing has greatly improved. We found a school of big trout up on the sand and were able to sight fish them.
I did get the opportunity to go fun fishing with my friend Capt. Paul Hawkins. We went up to upper Tampa Bay and sight fished Redfish over the sand. It was a beautiful day and I got to stand on the pointy end of the boat. It was a lot of fun. Paul is a great fisherman. He is one of the few guides I will refer trips to. I threw some pictures up of a Redfish we caught sight fishing and one of the big trout

Jan 17 2010 Trout

Jan 17 2010

The Redfish fishing remains good. As the water temperature continued to warm the fish started to spread out on the flats in small schools (4-10 fish) and became more active. The big surprises on Friday was the trout started to become more active. Earlier in the week we were finding large schools of trout in very shallow water, warming themselves, however getting them to bite soft plastics was not very productive. On Friday that changed and we caught a very nice fish on plastics. I think that the Redfish will continue to get more aggressive as more bait ( crabs and shrimp) start to move around again on the flats.

Jan 13, 2010

We went out today to see what the cold weather had done to the fish. Unfortunately did see several species that did not survive. When we launched the boat this morning the water temp was 45 degrees. By mid day it had climbed to 51 degrees on the flats we were fishing. We found lots of schooled up Red fish ( mostly over slot fish). As you can imagine they were pretty lethargic early on, however we did manage to pull the hook on one fish. In the afternoon the fish had become more active and we managed a few more . These fish were slot fish. All the fish came on shrimp today. With the weather forecast to warm up, the fish will become much more active and we should be able to do real well on plastics and flies.

December 31st 2009 - End of 2009!

Dec 31 2009

The last trip of the year didn’t go as well as planned. We had the tides, we had the wind, we even had low clouds but they didn’t tail. With no sun sight fishing was out of the question. Did manage several big trout. One just over 26”. Thought I leave you with a picture of a Redfish we caught last week. Have a great new year.

Capt Dave Dant

December 30, 2009

The goal of today’s trip was to get some video of tailing Redfish and shots with fly rod. The fish didn’t tail well for some reason though they were there. We managed 3 Redfish to 31” and 6 Trout all over 22” on soft plastics. Never pulled out the fly rod and never got any good video of tailers. Found good numbers of Redfish at all except one of our stops. A big problem today was the wind stopped blowing by noon and the fish started to school up, which make skinny water sight fishing tough. Too many refusals to think about.

Capt Dave Dant

2009 Summary Report

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 10^th.

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 30^th and Thursday Nov. 31 reports in the near future.

Good fishing

Capt Dave Dant

Fish ON!

Nice Over Slot Red Fish

Capt Jim with a nice Red Fish

Beautiful Speckled Sea Trout

White Pelicans

White Pelicans

White Pelicans

Capt Dave Dant - Premier Guide

I have not been fishing in Florida other than from my dock since my return to Florida from Alaska in October, so in an effort to help a good friend and one of the best fishing guides in the Tampa Bay area with some marketing and photography, we took a little trip out to the Boca Ciega Bay and Fort Desoto area of Tampa Bay yesterday and as expected (??) had a great day of fishing and some nice pictures of just a couple of the fish we caught.

Honestly, I was a little surprised at our success although I should not have been, because as I mentioned Dave is one of the premier guides in the Tampa Bay area and he picked the time and place based on tides and previous experience, although I am not too sure he considered the weather.

Yesterday was the coldest day we have experienced thus far this winter. When I arrived at the dock in Gulfport the temperature was a brisk 43 degrees with light winds, cold and clear. We departed right on time at 7:00 am and headed to our first spot less than a 15 minute run away and I managed 3 real nice trout on my first 4 casts. We were looking for redfish, but spotted some nice trout, so why not! In another 30 minutes of searching we spotted some tailing redfish and brought a real nice one to the boat and hooked several more which we didn’t photograph. We tried to avoid taking the stressed fish out of the water, so we only took pictures of a couple of the bigger fish.

After working that area for a while, we decided the tide had come in enough to try the Fort Desoto area and off we went for about a 20 minute run and in no time Dave had us on some more big redfish. As the day progressed the temperature rose an unbelievable 30 degrees and by the afternoon we were fishing in a warm bright sunny Florida winter day at about 73 degrees. It was fantastic.

We made sure to stop by and see the beautiful white pelicans which are winter residents and managed a couple nice photos although they spooked a little too quick for any real close shots, but we managed a couple anyway.

Fishing with Dave is a very unique experience. Dave specializes in what is becoming a lost art, Sight Fishing. Which means stalking the fish and casting to a visible fish, sometimes not always clearly visible by the angler, but Dave’s keen vision tells you 6 boat lengths at 2 o’clock and off you go! Too many guides these days rely on trolling motors and best guess practices to catch fish. Dave works hard up on the poling platform hand poling the boat into the ideal position, very quietly, for the best opportunity to make a great cast to the feeding fish.

His specialty is sight fishing for Tarpon in the summer months and tackling them on fly! There are not many guides left in Florida that can say they specialize in this form of Tarpon fishing.

Visit his website and if you are looking for a unique fishing experience book him for a charter to remember.

I think a true professional guide should have at least the following four qualities.

1. Great equipment

2. Work hard for their customers

3. Be a great conversationalist

4. Catch fish based on his customers abilities.

I can honestly say that Dave exceeds all of these characteristics. I had a great day and we had some great conversation about his tarpon season and his plans for the upcoming season. I just wish I could talk him into coming up to Yes Bay for a season. But he doesn’t feel his girlfriend would appreciate his absence and right now wants to focus on building his business in the Tampa Bay market.

I asked Dave to put together a summary report of this past summer’s fishing and you will see it shortly on his blog, which I created last February, but did not bother to give him detailed instruction on working with uploading pictures and keeping it current, which we will be doing very shortly. So stay tuned for more details on his fishing adventures.

Dave’s website: http://www.sightfishtarpon.com/

Dave’s Fishing Report Blog: http://sightfishtarpon.blogspot.com/

Capt Jim Lucas

From St Petersburg, FL

My web site: http://www.captainjimlucas.com/

My Fishing Report and Travel Blog: http://captjimtravelblog.blogspot.com/