Everett and I did a couple hours on the reef Saturday night with not much luck, got a few hours sleep and met up with Dave to drive a little north for some fly fishing on the beach. The surf was pumping, so was the current. There wasn’t much activity, but we did catch one snook, and got broke off on another. The snook had line wrapped around its head, and through its gills and out its belly, was amazing how strong it still was. We pulled the line through its stomach, and hopefully it will grow strong! Stopped and picked up some McCray’s for lunch on the way home.
Capt. Dave Saddler and I went out for a couple hours Saturday night. We had a bunch of fun sized tarpon and some pretty big snook hanging around the lights. We managed 4 eats on fly, and Dave landed one, which tried its best to jump in the boat on several occasions. We dodged the storms all day and had some fun when a late night break in the clouds allowed us to get out for a bit. We’ll probably be doing more of this kind of fishing, during the week. Its also a lot more pleasant out at night, it has been hotter than hell lately.
My friend Alex just bought a new flats skiff, an East Cape ‘Fury’. I believe they are based out of Orlando. It’s got me kinda wanting to do the same!!! Congrats Al!!
While the winds sucked over the Easter weekend, at least there was good sunny days. But it didn’t have the same feel down at the the usual ‘campground’ this year. Maybe it was the rigged out golf carts with 12″ subs hitting hard all day long, being ‘driven’ by 13 year olds. Or was it the un-manned red solo cup ‘boat races’ that were being held along the beach? Or maybe it was the entire island who thought us gringos to be undercover cops. Could’ve been the guys who wanted us to join them for a grilled barracuda and marlin lunch. Might have been the stories of grilled permit and bonefish burgers back home. Or the fried mullet for breakfast? It was a very interesting trip this year, on land, and on the flats…
Making good time through the Keys on Friday morning, we stopped at World Wide Sportsman for some new boat kicks, and at Florida Keys Outfitters for a few different permit flies. Aside from the annoying gale that was blowing, it was a sweet day in the islands. Managed to check in early, around 10:30 or so and get our gear stuffed into the trailer and the boat tied up at the dock. There was a large family gathering brewing on either side of us. We were openly welcomed by some, and got a few hard-ass looks from others. Very comical and entertaining! They had no idea that Ka$h Flo was in the house. We threw some fly rods in the boat and busted our way through some chop on our way toward the flats. Right away we had a school of bones appear out of nowhere, and float exactly where they should. I made one bad cast, and picked it up and laid it back to them. 3 or 4 strips and I came tight to a nice little bonefish. That happened within 15 minutes of shutting down the outboard. But an hour or so later we hadn’t seen anything else. Re positioned with the wind, working our way around a very good point when 2 nice permit cruised by, stoppped 40 feet from the boat (dead into a 20+ wind) and tailed. Everett gave it a shot, but we ended up wrapped in flyline, and the permit fled. Once around the point, it was a dead zone. Nothing but tiny sharks, maybe 18″ long roaming the flat. On that note, it was time to head in, open a cold one and grill up some steaks…
I felt the trailer listing back and forth in the wind throughout the night, and wondered how ugly the crossing of open water was going to be in the morning. It was pretty ugly, but with full raingear who cares. We started in the same area, on an opposite tide as the day before. Nothing. Everywhere we went, Nothing. We staked out on a notoriously good cuda/shark/permit highway and nothing. Hung a dead cuda over the bow, 12 wt in hand to play with some sharks, Nothing…..So we loaded the baitwell with pinfish, and headed to 3 different bridges. Chummed, and Nothing! except for undersize snapper and grouper. Checked out one last shoal marker which has provided dinner on several occasions, and Nothing!!! Bummed we weren’t going to eat fresh snapper for dinner for the first time in 6 years on this trip, we headed into Big Pine and grabbed some sandwiches, and made the drinks a little stiffer that night.
The wind was just a little lighter on Sunday I guess, and we decided again to start at the original flat, but this time stake out every 100 feet or so and give it a couple minutes. Even took a handful of shrimp, diced them up and put them in the chum bag to soak next to the boat. Nurse sharks and rays showed up first, sniffing out the shrimp. Small blacktips or lemon sharks moved in and it was only a few minutes later that the first school of bonefish ‘floated’ in. Everett was in good position and unrolled a nice line to the charging fish. It wasn’t but a couple of ticks of the fly and he came tight. Butit didn’t stay connected. The hook must have been back in the crusher, and bent out. The sound the hookpoint making contact with those ‘teeth’ was very loud, and Everett’s fly came back at him, bent. He was pretty deflated, but just fed his first bonefish on fly! A few minutes later I set the hook into a bonefish only to have it get spit back at me as well. Mine wasn’t bent, but didn’t stay connected just the same. And on cue, Steve got his shot and was hooked up to a fun little bonefish, this one, landed. We weren’t killin’ it per say, but we were having fun. Once we gave up on the bonefish, Permit point needed another look. As we had hoped, almost to the point, a massive wake was being pushed directly perpendicular to the bow. It was going to be a 90 degree crossing shot, across a stiff 15-20 knt wind. I somehow managed to get the fly to the fish, in what I thought was the right place, and when the fish arrived, I shook the crab fly, waited, stripped, and nothing…But got my heart racing. I stepped down to get a drink, and relieve Everett on the platform. Just another few minutes, and we saw a big fish, in real skinny water, doing some strange things. When we got closer, the fish tailed with half its body out of the water. This was a nice permit. Steve had the shot, and the fly looked as if it was going to land right on its nose, but instead was pushed by the wind and landed closer to its tail. That permit blew off the flat like a rocket! That was it, the shot of the weekend! With the permit waving tails at us, it was time to go home. Next year, Sugarloaf Lodge, Parmers Resort? The RV resort has been good to us for 6 years, but it’s time to get into some fresh spots….
If everything stays as planned we’ll be in the Lower Keys next weekend. It looks like we could have some wind to contend with this year again. But were hoping for good sun, and we already know the water temp is prime…With just one boat this year, gonna throw flies, shrimp, crabs and focus on some Bonefish and Permit while keeping an eye out for Tarpon on the edges. Should be a good weekend…
Well with Laurie off to New York for the weekend what is a man to do………..? Go fishing of course!! So I started off the weekend taking my daughter Laela, my co-corker Alejandro Montoya and his some Emanuel to Stuart to fish for anything that swims so the kids could get a tight line. We got to Stuart at 10:00am and headed to look for some Pompano and have the kids drop some shrimp around the grass flats. We had light winds and an incoming tide so we tried some of the usual spots and saw a few snook, caught a few blue runners for sharks later but we didn’t see much of anything else except a couple sharks cruising and some huge pods of mullet. I decided to anchor up at the edge of the finger channel and let the kids fish when I spotted an Eagle Ray swimming with some fish following and proceeded to throw my Goofy jig in there and a Pompano slammed me instantly. No pasta and butter for Laela, Pomp for dinner! We headed to the target area and anchored up, threw out some lines and tried to get the kids a fish but there wasn’t anything around possibly due to big sharks cruising everywhere. I put out a pompano rig and instantly caught two more and with nothing else going on we decided to put out a couple shark rigs. We pretty much got schooled by some big ass sharks. I lost over 150 yds of braid and 75 yds of mono backing, the shark took everything!! Alejandro got spooled by another big shark in literally 30 seconds, he was down to the arbor before he broke it off. Fortunately for him he got his line back or at least most of it. With 3 Pomps in the box, 5 huge shark break-offs and 2 tired kids we headed back in. The kids had a great time and we’ll do it again hopefully with better results for the little ones.
Monday 4/11/11 I took the day off to burn some vacation time and headed out with the banana man, Jayson “Obi-Wan” Zenobi. This time I told him no Fruit of the Looms underwear or your swimming with Da Bull!! He showed up dressed accordingly and we headed out to grab a few Pomps, look for some snook and reds and maybe land some of those big sharks. We started out at the flat looking aropund but the tide was falling fast and the flat was pretty much exposed by mid morning so we went out front to look for pomps on the beach side. The ocean was pretty much flat except for some nice sized swells breaking on the outer reef and sandbars. The waves looked good size but were probably only in the 2′-4′ range. We drifted and anchored near a couple commercial Pomp boats but the bite never turned on and all we had to show was a 9lb Jack. I decided to head in and be ready when that tide turned around because the bite would be quick and not last too long/ When we rounded the corner the flat was already filling in and we pretty much started seeing Pomps right away. We spooked a few nice snook and hooked one Pomp before heading to the same spot we fished on Saturday. We threw out 3 Pomp rigs and immediately started to hook-up on the Pomps and boated 7 including one that got slammed by a shark right after we hooked it. We also got a Spanish mack and ended going 1 for 2 on sharks. I caught and released about an 80lb Blacktip which almost didn’t happen for two reasons, one of which was because Jayson was scared to reach down and pull the hook out of the sharks jaw which was hooked perfectly in the corner and the other was because my blue runner rode up the line and while fighting the shark another one came along and ate the blue runner of my line. All in all it was a good weekend and Laurie got to relax in NY and I stayed at home, cleaned the house, did the laundry and fished a couple days. No complaints from me!!
