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Everglades National Park - Flamingo
Capt. Bob LeMay
September 17, 2003
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Fishing's been great this past week along the coast and up inside nearby rivers. As baitfish schools continue to increase in size, quantity, and variety they've become the key factor each day along with the tides. I spent one full day exploring by myself this week and clocked 97 miles on my GPS, running almost all the way up to Camp Lonesome from the inside ramp at Flamingo. That new Evinrude motor made it possible to do that kind of trip and leave fully one third of a 30 gallon tank at the end of a day... Although this time of year there's not much happening way up inside, the information gained will be of some use late in the fall...Here's an old-timer's trick that comes in handy during the rainy season. As you run into any river from the Gulf periodically stick your hand in the water and taste it. You'll be surprised how quickly the water turns so fresh that there's not even a taste of salt. Once you're in fresh water turn around and hunt that trace of salt that will hold fish.
We found all of our redfish and snook this week around oyster bars, particularly on the lower stages of the tide. Along with good sightfishing shots at snook and reds we even found tailing sheepshead. As the tide moves in to its high we found numbers of fish around river mouths working schools of bait concentrated by the high tide. On one afternoon we watched snook up to about 15lbs behaving like small tarpon, coming airborne as they fed up into the tightly packed bait.
A word about fishing shallow along the coast. During the week it's rare to see another boat in the areas that I like. On the weekends it's another matter. Most of the anglers are courteous and stay well away from boats being poled in skinny waters. One or two, however, can ruin a quiet approach by running on plane much too close to the shoreline. There's lots of tunnel boats today that will run in extremely shallow water, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea... It's rarely necessary, it scares the hell out of the fish, and it's just discourteous when other fisherman are working hard to sneak up on fish along shallow bars. A lot of experienced anglers will try to fish during the week to avoid even seeing another boat because of that kind of behavior. A little courtesy goes a long way.
Big tarpon are still available every day, mostly up inside Gulf rivers now. We had one that was so hungry that he ate the same fly twice, the second strike came as my angler was lifting the fly out of the water right at the boat... Hungry fish!
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