Capt Bob LeMay

Just posted a piece on another site that might be of interest... about how we toss flies at sharks - of every size from the little ones all the way up to ones that are too big... 

https://forums.floridasportsman.com/discussion/294747/shark-fly#latest

Although I didn't mention it.. .whenever we're working bigger sharks I try to pick places on the edges of large flats with a deep channel less than a hundred feet away - and do my best to make sure there's no downed trees or other nasty snags anywhere nearby.  Once you're hooked up on a big animal you really can't control it until it begins to tire and I've lost more than one good fly line to a shark that made a hard turn around a submerged tree or other object and cut us off...  Nothing in what I wrote speaks to handling sharks at the boat - that's a whole different topic.  I will say that we do our best to remove the fly from any hooked shark with an 18" long de-hooker and never, repeat never, make the slightest attempt to take it out of the water.. Little ones that I can pick up with one hand are the only exception..... and even a tiny little shark is a handful.  The only sharks that have ever drawn blood from me are the little ones so be warned... 

Saw just enough of that to last me forever…. The moment you place a money incentive on winning a tournament… I expect one or two will be trying to gain an advantage by cheating…. 
 

I long ago decided not to fish tournaments since in general they take something I really like -and turn it into something I don’t like at all…

For folks with building skills Florida will be heaven these next two or three years… Unfortunately we’ll also draw more than our share of scam artists and other scoundrels  hoping for chances to rip off anyone from a retiree to the government itself…. and make a quick buck.

Emergency workers and utility workers will be on all the overtime they can stand - while every last resident in our state can expect their homeowner’s insurance to jump again (as if it weren’t high enough…).  Just the price we pay for living here .

Historically all of the boom times here in Florida - came to an abrupt end with terrible hurricanes.. in modern times....  The baddest of them all was the "Labor Day" hurricane in 1935 that killed hundreds and hundreds in the Keys... To this day it's still the hurricane that had the lowest pressure reading on record... This is by way of saying that as bad as Ian was... it could have been a lot worse (if you can even imagine that...).  Of course we live in a well known hurricane area - but you could go years and years without a single strike - or get hit three times in one year... That brings up another small point, that hurricanes come in all sizes and situations so you can never be sure of the size of that dog coming to bite you... 

The one positive thing about them in the modern era is that at least we hear about them well in advance (mostly - but not always...) and can prepare for what can happen to you.  We do have significant numbers of folks living in sub-standard housing though around our state - it's all they can afford - and those new mobile homes look pretty nice until you see what a bad storm can do to one (and here I'm not even talking about hurricanes...).  Every time we get hit with a hurricane there's substantial sentiment to prohibit "mobile homes" down here - but economics will prevent any action... Wish it weren't so.. It's not an accident that the first place TV crews head for after a storm is the local trailer park... 

For anyone considering buying property here (or moving here) the first item I'd suggest you learn about is just how high above sea level.... that property you're considering is...  The next item would be to learn just where, locally, is the nearest public parking area where you could leave a vehicle - so that it's not flooded during the storm.  Always a few public safety outfits (police, fire, etc.) that have to learn that lesson the hard way...

Before I took up guiding (1996) I did a career in law enforcement locally and was my department's representative at all of the local (Miami) disaster preparedness seminars each year as we prepped up for what in my era we just missed - with the exception of hurricane Andrew, a very, very bad one in 1992... Just to illustrate what can happen - that storm,  a small but very strong (a full category five...) hurricane was literally aimed at my city - until an hour or two before landfall changed direction and hit 30 miles to the south of us...   In short, be safe, do your preparations, stay out of "mobile homes" and if you're in a flood zone - when they say to get out - take heed...  One other small point is that October is a very, very bad month for the great storms that come out of Africa.. hope we get missed  -one more time... 

All of Chokoloskee and Everglades City was still under water yesterday  -the photos look pretty grim.  Will post an update as I learn more... 

Here's what I wrote on another thread about how we fared down here in south Florida...

Down here in south Florida we got very lucky and it missed us mostly... except for the storm surge which beat up the lower Keys and the entire area of the coastal Everglades as it passed by. During the storm's passage, the Park (Everglades National Park) had their gates open and I was surprised... After the storm passed, last night they shut down the Park completely, locked the gate (only one road and one gate into the Park - the road to Flamingo....) and won't open again until they can do a full damage assessment... Along with that I've tried today (Thursday) to make a few calls into Everglades City / Chokoloskee , the northwestern boundary of the Park, about thirty miles east of Marco Island and Naples - with no success at all.... I've heard, second hand only, that both the town and the island got flooded.... Not surprising since most of it is very low lying and it doesn't take much to cover it with a storm surge... Will post up when I hear differently... The folks in that area, the Ten Thousand Islands are hardy souls who will get things up and running again as quickly as possible.  Visitors and commercial fishing are their sole source of income and very few, it any can qualify for insurance -if they could even afford it.... Nothing like living in a flood zone that gets hit over and over again.... 

Down here in south Florida we got very lucky and it missed us mostly... except for the storm surge which beat up the lower Keys and the entire area of the coastal Everglades as it passed by. During the storm's passage, the Park (Everglades National Park) had their gates open and I was surprised... After the storm passed, last night they shut down the Park completely, locked the gate (only one road and one gate into the Park - the road to Flamingo....) and won't open again until they can do a full damage assessment... Along with that I've tried today (Thursday) to make a few calls into Everglades City / Chokoloskee , the northwestern boundary of the Park, about thirty miles east of Marco Island and Naples - with no success at all.... I've heard, second hand only, that both the town and the island got flooded.... Not surprising since most of it is very low lying and it doesn't take much to cover it with a storm surge... Will post up when I hear differently... The folks in that area, the Ten Thousand Islands are hardy souls who will get things up and running again as quickly as possible.  Visitors and commercial fishing are their sole source of income and very few, it any can qualify for insurance -if they could even afford it.... Nothing like living in a flood zone that gets hit over and over again.... 

Very surprised to see that Everglades National Park has not locked down for Ian... Usually,  if you even say the word hurricane they lock the gates...figure the storm surge alone will be problematic - particularly for the Everglades City / Chokoloskee area since they're barely above sea level as it is... Looks like south Florida got lucky on this one.. .

  Will report out as soon as I'm able to get back down to Flamingo and / or Chokoloskee for anyone interested.  In the meantime everyone along the Gulf coast of Florida will be doing everything they can to  prep for what looks like bad news coming their way..  Hope everyone stays safe - and after the storm,  once you've sorted out check on your neighbors and assist if needed... Good luck to all.

A quick note… haven’t been able to call up this site for a week or more now. So glad to see it up again …

With the weather being the original topic on this thread I’m happy to report that hurricane Ian looks like it will miss down here around Miami but instead head for Tampa and points north while pretty much ruining the fishing from the Keys all the up to the Panhandle area of our state.

Lucky me… I’ve only lost three trips I had booked out of Everglades City this week.  Hope everyone stays safe and helps out their neighbor after the storm passes …

I'm pretty sure I have a partial box of Keel Hooks - somewhere in my gear (they were stainless, of course, and by Eagle Claw).  If I can find them I'll gladly send them to whoever can use them - gratis.. I remember trying to use them - without a lot of success as a beginning tyer in the mid-seventies -and I was pretty much self taught using what few books I could find (this was long before the explosion in our passion on the saltwater side of things..),  I also remember tying up the Blonde series on standard hooks - then never having any particular success with them myself... Once I was well on my way as a tyer and finally getting an order or two from one shop or other don't believe I ever got a single request for anything done up on a keel hook... 

I’ll settle for a 13 year old with serious computer skills since my grandkids have better skills in that area than I do…

Tried to edit the above post - and once again, although you can call up the edit function - you get a "not allowed" message... frustrating... 

Weather down my way (the Miami area) is still just cooking and it's sure to generate a hurricane or two.. Water temps last night in Biscayne at 8pm were 88 degrees at the surface...  At 1Am this morning we were waters that had only dropped a single degree...  We won't get our first hint of cooler weather usually until the end of the third week of October...  Still,  we did manage a few fish... but not fly fishing - we were tossing small lures into docklights where we could see small bait getting shredded... 

Our snook season just opened but any snook has to be a minimum of 28"...  so this one swam free

This one a bit bigger but still short...

Two attempts to edit the above post - two failures... with a reply stating - this post not accepting any additional info - too much time elapsed to be able to edit (when the elapsed time was actually less than three minutes..). Hope our tech wizards can sort this out.... Frustrating...

Tried yesterday to post a few pics of two patterns I've been working on yesterday - and got the "Forbidden" message... Let's try again and see if maybe this time it works...

Back in the years before fluorocarbon came along, heavy bite tippets with monofilament were problematic (hard to straighten out and prone to allow a clinch knot to make the fly offset and not attractive at all).  One of the “fixes” was to snell that heavy leader to the fly so it had to track straight… that in turn encouraged tyers to provide flies with at least 1/4” of bare shank to accommodate the snell.  Some of the tarpon patterns I’m still drawing royalties on were developed back then (late eighties).  The other “fix” was the leader stretcher that was very popular back then.

 Once fluoro came along none of that was necessary- but tarpon still eat those same flies even if no one is snelling them any more… 

ps- the royalties involved are very small… Come up with a pattern like a Clouser or a Copper John… and things change.

Don't be sorry at all... having to post my entire previous post takes up entirely too much space in my opinion... no matter how nice it is to see someone actually paid attention... 

As a teenager,  in the sixties, I hunted gray squirrels a lot in North Alabama with my trusty Benjamin air rifle - and don't believe I've ever seen a black squirrel.. Fast forward to many years later and both gray and fox squirrel tails were part of my material supplies for both bonefish and tarpon flies... for many years.   Very interesting...  Here are two tarpon flies with one using gray, the other using fox (or red) squirrel tail collars - they're both my version of Stu Apte's "Apte Too" tarpon bugs from years ago - and yes, occasionally having a weedguard on a tarpon fly might be handy...

By the way,  a fellow in the natural materials industry mentioned the other day that squirrel skins and tails were getting very hard to come by in bulk for processing,  dyeing, and packaging for fly shops... Seems that these days the small monies they generate aren't worth much effort the way they were in past years... Don't think I like these days very much... 

I see similar foolishness down in the ‘glades regularly.. The boat ramp I use most days (the interior ramp at Flamingo ) is about 200 feet long - but only about 80 feet of it has docks and it’s where we launch our skiffs and meet our anglers.  The rest of it has an occasional big ‘gator or crocodile hauled out and sunning themselves.  On more than one occasion I’ve seen families with small kids in hand walk within five feet of them as though they weren’t dangerous at all… and I just hold my breath.  Either specie is frighteningly fast on land and if one grabbed a child no one would be able to stop a tragedy from happening at all.  The crocs have a reputation as fish eaters but big ‘gators actually kill a few people in Florida almost every year…

At that ramp.. and that's me in the background ignoring this eleven footer (the American salty gets a lot bigger...) but as mentioned they're supposed to be fish eaters and not particularly dangerous to people.... 

this one's a bit smaller and these are the guys visitors are perfectly willing to get entirely too close to in my opinion...  

Don't have a photo of a big 'gator but they're the ones I'm real careful around - a big one is just plain dangerous - and up for anything it can seize, then drag the victim into the water - and drown it... 

That night scene... was very nearly one of the first kinds of fishing out of a boat down here (way back in the winter of 1972...) for a young man going to school on the GI Bill.  No matter where you are (if you're not way up north...) there's probably some pretty good night time fishing and anyone can find out about it - by simply getting to the water in places where there are bridges, piers, docks, etc.  -and in my early years a boat was a luxury... What I'd say to look for is any place that has docklights or any lights that shine down onto the water (a great spot, locally is where a restaurant is on the water and has a few lights)... diners can watch small tarpon,  snook, and other species feeding while they're having a meal.. Of course places like that frown on fishermen - but at least it gives you an idea of what you're looking for.  Many a motel on the water with a dock of some kind will also have a light or two...  I can remember more than one night when the bed I was paying for didn't get much use since I was out back, rod in hand, as long as the tide (whichever way it was going) held fish.. 

I scout bridges for fish differently these days.  If I want to know a given bridge is holding tarpon, snook or other species I drive from bridge to bridge, park my truck, and simply walk the bridge on the up-tide side (where feeding fish are usually found) - particularly at each light along the bridge.... Stick your head out past the railing and look straight down... If the fish are there - you'll see them in the bridge shadows and get to watch how they feed and exactly where on each bridge they're holding in the existing conditions.  Simple matter the following night to work your skiff into position to take advantage of what you've learned... Locally, there are five bridges that connect Miami (the mainland) out to Miami Beach and one or all of them will hold fish on a given night.  Very handy to have done a bit of scouting in advance when you're not getting booked night after night... 

Works for clousers but each pattern is different and has different requirements.  The fish are our judges if a fly doesn't swim right or hold the profile you want - turn it into a wall ornament (after trying to figure out what needs to change to get a given result...).  That's something I emphasized years ago when I actually ran organized fly tying classes at our local community college (night classes, adult education... but it only lasted a year or two at most... ).  That was very nearly forty years ago... 

Some years ago I worked a bit with foam that I cut out into cylinders of various sizes to make a few poppers (long before I even considered making poppers for fly shops...).  I found a bit of info that pointed me towards any local hobby shop that stocked thin wall brass tubing for model airplane makers.  The tubes they had were about 10" long and in different diameters - perfect for turning into foam cutters.  I set up each one I intended to use and spun it in my rodbuilding lathe... While it was spinning it was a simple matter to lay a file on the free end to sharpen each tube.  Once sharpened,  you simply set up the size tube desired, got it spinning then placed the foam against the sharpened end to cut out your popper blanks.  Any mods needed once I had the blanks were simple cuts with a new single edged razor blade (and if you needed a sharper blade - double edged blades, being thinner, will always cut easier and cleaner than those single edged blades I started out with...).  When I went to pre-shaped foam heads things became a whole lot easier...

I long ago quit using head cement of any kind - instead preferring to use a tiny drop of Krazy Glue on the thread instead - then if "shiny" was needed to coat the thread with Sally Hansen's or some other finish coat once the super glue was dry.  None of my poppers have any second coat ever... any extra finish hinders the way the bug floats and moves on the retrieve... 

A word about poppers for my area in the backcountry of the 'glades... We only use them in very low wind conditions (mostly at dawn or dusk) and I learned the hard way that to get good bites I had to have my anglers make some adjustments... In short we're not making any big pops with them - or working them fast at all - and for the best results I had to have my anglers place the tip of their rods actually in the water - and make sure the rod is pointed directly at the bug with each retrieve eliminating all slack line and any rod action in the retrieve, relying solely on their stripping hand for hooksets.  Ideally I want them making continuous small short strips -only about six inches for each strip - but very sharp  (each strip needs to have the bug make a tiny "blip" sound) and slow down,  don't get in a hurry almost like you were bass fishing.  Having the tip of the rod actually in the water eliminates all slack so each hand strip imparts that same motion to the thing with the hook on it... Lastly I do my best to explain that the first strike will many times be short and if I can get my angler to just keep "blipping" that bug - the second strike won't miss at all...   We have spectacular results with these bugs under the right conditions.  For small tarpon, redfish,  or snook we're working each bug up against mangrove shorelines or as close as possible to any downed trees or other structure where I'm certain fish are holding.  For big speckled trout it's the opposite... we're working that popper across current out away from shorelines then slowly doing those same very short sharp strips as it drifts across places where the trout are holding -then finally swings into a down current presentation...   At any point in the retrieve the bug will get attacked and usually specks will keep after it until they succeed... Since many of our trout spots during warm weather also hold hungry small sharks getting a hooked fish back to my skiff gets interesting... None of the interior sharks are much bigger than about six feet long - but all of them are quite aggressive and will keep trying to eat a hooked fish until you pick it up out of the water next to my skiff...  Great fun, but the sharks will get fed if you're not quick enough once you're hooked up.

Our waters in the interior are dark (like strong tea when clear and cloudy brown when wind and rain make it so.).. I believe our fish have a very small "window" and many times have learned to strike at any indicator that food might be there - and we take advantage of that whenever conditions allow.  Great fun, once a freshwater fly angler learns not to try to "trout set" on a strike instead of strip striking - but that's something we all do at times even guys like me that long ago switched to the salt or brackish places to chase fish... By the way, with popping bugs... only a floating line will do - anything else will just be frustrating... 

As noted above I'm using soft foam popper heads for my SpeedBugs... The heads are by Perfect Popper, and they're available to any shop that does business with Wapsi Fly... 

These are using Mustad 34007 stainless hooks in size #1 (two or three sizes larger than Perfect Popper recommends for this size head- but I'm tying for saltwaters and really need the larger hook.  Unlike freshwater poppers that concentrate on carefully painted heads along with rubber legs, etc.  The SpeedBug is only meant to imitate a struggling  minnow (and of course the foam won't take paint, but will take markers if needed... so they look a bit plain... Don't be deceived these are deadly on snook, tarpon, speckled trout, redfish and any other fish willing to attack easy prey at the surface... 

In use, I run a  double layer of thread (Danville's flat waxed nylon) over the area that the popper will be attached to then fit the pre-shaped slot onto it,  just barely... The next step is to run a bead of thin super glue onto the thread then push down the popper into position and clamp the edges of the slot with a clothes pin to hold them together for about five minutes until the glue sets up rock solid...  The glue I prefer is the original Krazy Glue available widely.  The clothes pins leave a noticeable dent in the popper head but in an hour or so the head returns to its original shape.. Here's a pic or  two of how I'm doing my collars and tails... 

This was the original SpeedBug - so named because of how quickly I could produce them when filling orders for shops

some color variations

Although our weather is awful this time of year (and the heat and humidity will certainly spawn a bad hurricane somewhere…) we are blessed with some first rate night trips on an outgoing tide… After the sun goes down the urban portions of Biscayne Bay and similar areas turn magical - no matter how grubby they look in daylight… Docklights big and small hold snook, tarpon, and other species like they were on stage in the center of a spotlight… I mostly have my fly anglers with an 8 or 9wt rod and we stay at the limits of their casting ability (get too close and the fish get lockjaw…).  A few casts at each light, then we’re either hooked up or moving to another dock light… all while that five hour falling tide is keeping them feeding.  
 

The best part?  As long as it’s not a weekend - we have the water to ourselves….  There’s always a falling tide every night but when I tell someone that on that particular night the tide won’t get started until after midnight… I don’t get many takers.  At least twice every month, for a five day period that falling tide starts near sundown and we’re in business.

I don't know a thing about cutting salmon - but have done a bunch of fish cutting years ago when at times the boats I worked on generated 100 to 300llbs of fish that needed  to be processed (fileted mostly but occasionally steaked out or gutted, scaled and kept whole).  My choice all those years ago was always Forschner stainless butcher knives - and I still have a pair of them today when I'm only occasionally cutting and packaging enough for a meal for my anglers...  i very carefully never keep my fish cutting blades on my skiff - they reside in my truck and only come out as needed.  When I go into shops that carry Russell and/or Forschner (they're comparable in my eyes...) I'm startled by how much they go for now... My fish cutting blades are both curved (scimitar style), the small one is 10" the large one 12" (and it also doubles as a chopping blade since it's heavy enough - I also have a generous sized cleaver but haven't used it in years... I guess my world is a bit different than most who fish freshwaters since occasionally I'm cutting fish that might go 20 or all the way up to 80lbs...