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Everglades National Park - Flamingo
Capt. Bob LeMay
October 29, 2003
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
We've had some outstanding catches this week, both inside Whitewater Bay and out along the Gulf coast. With the first cold fronts swinging through, the water along the coast hasn't been at its best. A few days of northwest wind made things a bit muddy. The water has been clearing slowly the past few days but weather later this week will tell the tale. Mornings now find water temps around 72-74 degrees with afternoons roughly 4 to 5 degrees warmer. With little or no rain for a few days now conditions inside Whitewater continue to improve. Soon salinity will rise enough that bait along the coast will begin to move inland...
On Wednesday I went exploring without an angler and found the best fishing inside with lots of small snook biting at the few spots that I checked. This, of course, was after spending most of the day exploring small creeks south of the Rogers River and finding things very slow there...
Friday, local angler Ron Patella and his young son Ronnie fished with me and we had an outstanding day. It started with Ron connecting with a 13lb snook on 10# spin next to a group of downed trees. He showed great skill with relatively light line. The fish ate a small bucktail and really put on a show before a photo and release. After a few other close encounters with big snook we set up along the coast and presented a bait to what appeared to be a 70lb tarpon in 4' of water. When the fish ate it looked a lot bigger. At the boat it looked a whole lot larger... The fish , almost seven feet long, was estimated at 150lbs. Although I've handled more than 200 big tarpon at the boat this year, on every kind of tackle, this fish was one of the two biggest we've released. An outstanding catch on 20lb spin, it was definitely a big girl... I'm looking forward to the photos. We went on to catch a variety of fish, but nothing like that tarpon. Young Ronnie decided that he'd like to catch something a "bit smaller"...
On Monday Ed and Joe Axelrod from the Chicago area fished with me along the coast. We caught a variety of fish including trout, snook, redfish, and others. Both anglers lost big snook next to downed trees and both had shots at very big redfish that were in the 20lb range. This time of year we occasionally find cruising bull reds that have come in out of the Gulf to forage. They are large enough that its easy to mistake them for cruising sharks... Although we missed our shots at the big reds, Ed did get one of those memorable catches. Working 8# line and a shrimp under an Equalizer he hooked a seven foot gator that had been lying submerged next to the shore.... Fortunately the line was light enough so our toothy friend wasn't bothered very much. We were able to slide him over towards the boat until I could get a hand on the leader. After that the gator did the releasing and I got a shower...
This time of year the fishing's good, the bugs are almost gone, and most days the weather cooperates. We hardly see another boat during the week. I'm looking forward to trying out some new redfish flies in shallow water once the Gulf clears a bit.
Tight Lines
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