First night action this year (Biscayne night tarpon)

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

With a husband and wife team from Columbia aboard we hooked up at an urban ramp north of Miami for a five hour trip last night that would end around midnight locally in Biscayne Bay.  The urban part of the Bay doesn't look like much these days during daytime,  but at night it can be magic with good action around docklights and in the shadows up under the bridges that connect Miami to Miami Beach.  We had an 8, 9, and 10wt onboard with my usual Night Flies...

just a small white tarpon fly tied up pretty full in size 1/0 or 2/0, rigged to a stout 20lb leader with a 40lb flluoro bite tippet

Water temps were very marginal with barely 67 degrees  out by the bridges... None of the docklights we checked were holding much at all and I noted the few fish we found in the lights were just followers - not takers (small snook, the usual dock snappers, etc.).    It was a different story in bridge shadows - and we saw our first small tarpon at the very first bridge we checked.  Usually the small tarpon we find at night are in the 20 to 40lb range - perfect for an 8 or 9wt...   Our first bite came under a big bridge - and the fish was not exactly a small fish - I'd guess it at 50lbs or better (a bit much for the 9wt my angler had in hand).  He hooked up solid on his very first bite and then we just got taken to school by a fish that had a winning strategy...  Instead of running around a bridge piling or racing away from the bridge,  the fish went between the bridge groins (big squares of concrete supporting pilings every 60 t0 80 feet - the length of the bridge) - and that fish ran off a full fly line between three groins with me trying to work across current and between the groins without hitting them (not easy - most of the scars on my old Maverick over many years have been from fishing around bridges at night... ).  That fish finally broke us off and today I'll be checking the line on that rod suspecting we've scuffed up another brand new fly line... During the fight my angler did manage to stay connected long enough that we were within 30 feet of the fish when the leader parted... and we'd traversed two of those groins with the fish going berserk all the while...

 Now if it will just warm up a little bit, the night scene will get really good...

 

We had six bites last night and two hookups with fish my angler was sight-fishing... and that second fish - fought the same way the first one did (and with the same result...).  Great fun... tomorrow we'll be working out of Chokoloskee  down in the Ten Thousand Islands - a bit more than ninety miles from my house.. and so it goes... 

[RickZieger 0]

Nice report. Still have hard water here.

Rick 

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

When weather up north really bites down... My phone seems to work better down here in "paradise"...