This past week has followed the pattern that's been in place now for most of the summer. Good fishing at night locally in Biscayne Bay and good fishing along the saltwater coast of the Everglades during the daytime. I'll let the pics do most of the reporting...
I enjoyed having skilled fly angler Amador Rodriquez aboard for two nights this past week. A visiting fly angler from Chile, he picked up a 9wt that first night and was jumping fish almost immediately. My usual night trip starts as the sun goes down and lasts five hours (just enough time to cover the falling tide my style of night-time sight fishing requires). That first night, Friday, was a bit difficult since there was quite a bit of boat traffic around the bridges we fished and it limited our shots at fish. Amador still jumped five fish up to about 30lbs, working two of them to the boat. Here's a few pics telling the story...
The second night was during the weekday so there were very few other boats around at all. The weather that night might have had something to do with it since we only had a few hours when we weren't hiding under a bridge somewhere waiting for heavy rains to clear. That night our gear was the only problem- we had fish tearing up our leaders, one nicely hooked fish that managed to badly snarl a fly reel (don't know how the drag on the reel was at zero) - but things got interesting as we worked hard to sort it out. Amador fought that fish almost completely without the fly reel, finally working it to the boat... It took me almost 20 minutes to sort out the reel afterwards (removed the line, cut the backing, removed the tangled remnants, then re-built the backing loop, re-loaded the fly line.... and still had to do another leader to get ready for the next encounter.
Amador still went on to jump a few fish and I'm betting he's ready for round three...
Yesterday it was back to Flamingo where the agenda was to provide a seven year old boy his first taste of the 'Glades.... Since action was the target we fished out front with a late start instead of my usual long run to the west just before dawn. We started that day catching a few baits. The boy's dad was able to hook a nice medium tarpon while we were bait fishing and he got a half dozen jumps out of the fish before it slipped the hook. From there we hit a few areas where not much was happening, finally finding some very nice redfish. Here's a pic of our first one, right at 26"....
Since we'd also hooked and fought a few sharks by then our young angler was a bit hesitant when it was his turn with a redfish. He did a great job with a little coaching - but getting him to even stand near his fish took a bit of doing....
Everyone caught redfish yesterday (and they brought home dinner...). I'd say that redfish will be in great numbers near Flamingo for the rest of the summer for anyone wanting to tangle with them. Whether you're up hunting them in very shallow flats, or just soaking baits in nearby channels the reds will be there.... and the night scene locally will be going strong...
Tight lines
Bob LeMay
(954) 435-5666