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Everglades National Park - Flamingo
Capt. Bob LeMay
December 20, 2005
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
It's been a busy week, with trips that ranged from Biscayne Bay, to Everglades City, then to Flamingo...
First the good news...Flamingo has finally re-opened. Those of us that fish it have been locked out since just before hurricane Wilma two months ago. I'll go into detail about it later in this report, but it's truly a homecoming for this guide. In the past ten years that's been my favorite place year 'round and today was no exception.
Biscayne Bay right now is full of bait with everything from small to large threadfin herring, pilchards, etc. available each day. In some cases bait sets up along tide lines and stays in one area for hours at a time. This is a great time of year to fill your livewell with baits, then set up with a chumbag just inside one of the ocean inlets and fish livies in a chum slick. We caught jacks, runners, mackeral, and trout doing just that in north Bay last week. It's a daily routine now. Later this week it will be time to scout the bridges in the Bay for night tarpon action. It's that time of year again when small tarpon feed on shrimp right at the surface. If you know where to look you can "count noses" and prepare to fish the bridges that are currently holding most of the fish. It's a real advantage to have scouted them out beforehand... At night we'll fish them with fly rods and light spinning gear. A 40lb "baby" tarpon on an 8wt fly rod is all you can handle.
On the other side of the state Everglades City showed some pretty good action on Sunday with mackeral, bluefish, pompano, speckled trout, sheephead, and ladyfish everywhere... To spice things up a bit we also found some jacks that were in the 10lb range just in from the Gulf. They hit tipped jigs but I suspect they'd have hit anything we tossed at them. I must admit, though, that all day long I was anticipating being finally able to return to Flamingo.
Today was a scouting trip to Flamingo with a long run through the interior out to the Gulf coast to check out a few spots and see what's changed. First off running through Coot, Whitewater, and Oyster Bays was fairly routine. I saw some new snags, but noted that the necessary markers are still in place. The first spot in Whitewater was holding trout and ladyfish that hit on every cast. The second spot that I tried had all of their big brothers... The ladies were "ocean sized" and the trout were all solid slot fish. They ate jigs, spoons, plugs, and flies without hesitation. After a few minutes I left them biting and moved further west toward the coast. As I approached the west side of Oyster Bay the storm damage became more obvious (Whitewater Bay did not look to have been changed much). As you neared the coast along Ponce de Leon Bay the mangroves looked like there'd been a war there. Everywhere the trees were standing dead without leaves or cover. In all the years I've been running the area I've never seen this kind of damage. In most places you could look 200 to 300 feet into the jungle where before you couldn't see 10 feet... The points that I checked used to have lots of downed trees laying in the water. Now the downed trees are all just gone leaving dramatically bare shorelines... There will be lots of new things to learn. I had to be quite careful running along the coast to stay at least a quarter mile off of the beach to avoid numerous downed trees.
The good news is that none of the oyster bars that I checked seemed to have changed. On one I caught and released slot sized redfish, sheepshead, speckled trout and one small snook... The fishing seems to be unaffected along the bars, downed tree areas will have to be re-learned... Today I noted that lots of other guides were on scouting trips. In a couple of cases there were two guides per boat... All of us are getting ready for the winter season out of Flamingo. At present only the inside ramp is in operation. The outside will follow as soon as it's dredged out. It will take a while but Flamingo is back in operation!
Tight Lines
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