Orlando Shad Fishing- Orlando area fishing report 2/5/11
The Report from Spotted Tail 2/5/11
Upcoming Events
On February 22 I'll be speaking to the Florida Fly Fishing Association in Cocoa.
March 5- MINWR Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details.
March 6- Mosquito Lagoon On-the-Water Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details.
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Every day this week saw me on or in the water. Fishing wasn't very good. Actually, fishing was awesome. Catching wasn't very good.
Monday I went scouting on the Mosquito Lagoon in the Mitzi. It was mostly sunny and at first there was no wind. I saw that and headed straight to a big fish spot.
They were there, finning out and tailing sporadically. I donned waders and stalked them on foot. I had two superb casts with a crab fly, casts I was sure would work. Neither did. The fish moved off and rather than use a lot of time on them on a scouting day I went scouting.
I did not see much else.
There were five boats at the south end of Tiger Shoal. I could see one chasing some fish around, but didn't see anyone hook up. I poled the entire way across the flat. All I saw were tailing mergansers, nothing with fins.
I ended up with a small black drum taken on a Son of Clouser and several marginal sized seatrout on a chartreuse DOA Shrimp.
Tuesday afternoon I went to the St. Johns River to try for shad. I walked up to the Econ and started fishing. My six-weight had a floating line. I got one crappie and hooked and lost one other fish.
I hitched a ride back down the river with Bill Mieli. Bill, using a #3 sinktip line and a pair of flies, had gotten nine shad. Ah-HA!
Wednesday David Cushman, a fly caster from Virginia, and his brother-in-law Clark, joined me for a day on the Mosquito Lagoon. It was cloudy and breezy. I was hoping for better luck than on Monday, but no such luck. We scoured the south end of the lagoon and most fish that we saw we saw as they fled. We just couldn't see them. Not that there were many around. It was very thin, numbers-wise.
Clark tossed various spinning lures all day without a strike, and David did no better. He really had only one legitimate shot all day. We were victims of a good, old-fashioned skunking.
Thursday afternoon found me back at the St. Johns, this time with a sink-tip. When I got there Tom Van Horn was there already. We fished together for about three hours. Total tally- two bluegills, one shad. We talked to a guy who had been fly fishing up by the Econ. It was slow up there too.
Friday I went back to the St. Johns. The fish come up the river in waves. If you hit the wave you do very well. Between waves there's not much going on. Some years the waves come one after another and other years there are days between waves. I figured if I kept trying it I was bound to hit one of those waves.
When I got there Ron Presley and Paul McGinnis were staging Ron's boat for launch. I hitched a ride with them up the Econ a ways, then hopped out and fished my way back to the SR 46 bridge.
Ron and Paul tossed tandem rigs with Tiny TerrorEyz from DOA. They got seven shad between them. I was throwing a chartreuse shad fly. I got one bluegill, one redbelly, one crappie, and one shad. I passed several other fly casters along the way and none of them was doing much.
I like the stretch of river between SR 46 and the Econ because it's close to home and you don't need a boat to fish it. But Thursday and Friday at least there were no waves of fish there. You could get one or two but you'd better be prepared to work for them.
Embrace simplicity.
Life is great and I love my work!
Life is short- go fishing!
John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com/
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