Fishing report, Miami nights, Everglades days
It's been a few weeks since my last report. Mostly those days were filled with bad weather, numerous cold fronts, and difficult fishing conditions. Every night we fished there were lots of small (and not so small) tarpon for sight fishing with a fly rod. Water temperatures were generally too low for much action. The high point was a solid 60lb fish caught and released on a fairly light (Loomis 8/9 mega) rod by Barry May from Memphis. My last night on the water was the night before the Boat Show opened. We were in fish for almost five hours and only got one bite on the fly... pretty frustrating when we saw over 100 fish from 20 up to around 90lbs right in front of us. Now that the water has warmed considerably the fish should be eating anything in front of them. Of course now I'm booked to fish days so the fish will just have to wait for us....
After a few days of warming weather the backcountry of Everglades National Park out of Flamingo has really turned on. This past weekend my anglers used light spinning gear with bucktail jigs (mostly) to catch a variety of fish from Whitewater Bay all the way out to the Gulf coast. In fact both days we quit counting when we'd caught and released more than 100 fish (usually by about 1Pm...). Here's a species count - speckled trout, snapper, ladyfish, snook, redfish, bluefish, gag grouper, jewfish, jack crevalle, sheepshead, bull sharks (and not one catfish).... The reds and snook were a bit on the small side, mainly because of how we were fishing since we didn't target them exclusively. We did lose a few bites on bait that were probably big snook but never landed one. The trout were in such concentrations that whenever we found them everyone with a rod was hooked up at the same time.
The next week or so should be even better if no cold fronts intrude. Twice this past weekend we got a real indicator of just how hungry the fish can get when it finally warms up. On Saturday one of my anglers reeled in a small (14") trout to the boat that had a two or three pound bluefish right behind him. When I lifted the trout into the boat you could see that the bluefish had completely bitten off his tail.... On Sunday, a small hooked jack crevalle brought a 35lb cobia up to the boat right next to a shoreline on the coast. Although we didn't succeed in feeding him a hook that cobia means there are probably lots of them along the coast now... We'll be looking for them
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Tight Lines
Capt Bob LeMay
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