Fishing report, Everglades Gulf coast - Flamingo
Capt. Bob LeMay
October 28, 2008
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
This past week I was booked four days out of Flamingo mostly fly fishing with the second angler backing up with light spinning gear. This was the last gasp before winter's first (our winter's first...) cold front and everything was biting out on the coast, north and south of the Shark River. Each day my fly angler was able to catch and release snook, trout, the occasional redfish, snapper, jacks, mackeral, ladyfish, etc. The first three days the tarpon were just plain missing in the areas we fished. That ended last Saturday when we found very large fish in several river mouths that were gorging on small to medium sized mullet. In some river mouths the mullet schools stretched all the way from one bank to the other with tarpon well over 100lbs doing end over enders over and over. More about that later, but with the current cold front all of those big fish are probably way out in the Gulf now...
On my first day I fished Dennis Potvin (the announcer for the Panthers hockey team), along with Jeff Rodengen. Dennis started catching and releasing snook almost from his first cast with an 8wt fly rod, while Jeff played catch up with a light spinning rod with a small jig. Jeff soon caught up in a hurry. This outstanding redfish measured a bit over the slot limit at 32"...
That fish put up quite a fight on 10lb line, it weighed over 12lbs on the BogaGrip before being released in good condition. We went on to catch and release a lot of fish on both the fly and the spinner but the action slowed late in the day.
The next three days I had Bruce Rueben and David Page aboard and the fishing was all about variety, with the spinning rod scoring well from the beginning and the fly rod lagging a bit. When Bruce did finally hook up it was a strong fish at the exact spot where we'd caught and released the big redfish the day before. That fish broke off quickly, probably on submerged structure, leaving Bruce talking to himself... Finally at a few creek mouths Bruce, using a light fly rod, began to score on almost every cast. His first good fish was a surprise, a very nice spanish mackeral that had worked almost a mile up inside the big river we were in. It hit a Clouser going away and made several long runs before coming to the boat to be released...
David was also keeping busy, here's another nice gag grouper that interrupted a bunch of trout that hit on every cast farther up the river.
We shredded a lot of flies those four days, mostly Clousers and popping bugs. I'll be tying up a bunch when I sit down at the tying bench later this week.
This is pretty much how it went for two days while the tarpon were missing everywhere we looked. The weather was windy, heavy rain had been predicted, but we dodged all of it. We did see some unusual occurrences those first two days. In one small cove we found a group of small to medium sized sharks between four and seven feet long up in very shallow water (their fins and backs were out of the water...) working baitfish schools. As we poled into them we found that there were several sawfish working the schools as well. One came by the skiff several times. At ten feet long it was only a teenager (I've seen them well over 20 feet long...) but still a magnificent specimen in only two feet of water...
On Saturday we ranged almost all the way up to Lostmens River hunting tarpon but found only large numbers of baitfish. We caught and released another great variety of fish along the way, but still no tarpon.... Up on Highland Beach there was bait just off the sand as far as the eye could see up and down the beach with nothing attacking... Underneath the bait were so many small jacks and ladyfish that every cast was a fish. As afternoon wore on we worked our way back to the south, just as the tide began to fall. That was the trigger the big tarpon seemed to be waiting for. Where before we'd seen nothing, now they were in every river. Our first big fish struck without warning up inside a river mouth on David's light spinning rod. The fish ate a small jig and didn't even bother to jump at first, it just swam away without stopping and we had to chase after it. After two minutes it suddenly went airborne, and looked to be well over 100lbs on only 10lb line....
From that point on the big fish took us to school, alternating long runs and great jumps until it finally tired of the game and quickly turned right back at us to slip the jig. Several river mouths to the south and we found what we'd been looking for all day. A small river full of mullet with large tarpon just feeding like it was their last chance. We had big fish all around us, but couldn't buy a strike on a fly or a lure. There were so many small mullet that I could have caught them by hand up against the skiff... it's like that some times. Since it was very late in the day we had to leave them biting... All of those big tarpon will be well offshore out in the Gulf now that the cold front is on us. I'm expecting very cold temperatures tomorrow over at Everglades City. The big tarpon will be back, though, sometime around Christmas up inside Whitewater Bay....
Tomorrow we'll be working any warmer water we can find out of Everglades City, and thinking about those tarpon....
Tight Lines
Bob LeMay
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