Everglades, Flamingo, 6 October

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

No fly fishing in this report... so be forewarned.  However we'll be back in this same area this weekend with fly anglers aboard (finally)... As usual you can do almost all of your fly fishing in the 'glades with only two rods, an 8wt with a floating line and a 10wt with a full intermediate line... That is unless you're wanting to tangle with big tarpon - for those you'll really want a 12wt... 

Finally getting active again (after the way the year's gone so far - very grateful...).  We spent a few days this past week down at Flamingo - and the fish are biting.  There's so much bait along gulf coast shorelines right now that hungry fish can feed 24/7 when they want.  The only downside so far is that the big tarpon have been a bit scarce.  That should change any day now since these next three weeks are their last big feeding opportunity inshore before falling water temps at the end of this month will send them scooting offshore just before Halloween.
 

Find a feeding station right now and every cast will be a redfish or a snook around any creek mouth along the coast.  Water temperatures are still nearly as high as August with low eighties each morning - but not rising much above that given the rain/thundershowers each afternoon.  I don't expect the fish on the coast to start their move inland (the way they do every fall) until water temps begin to fall, so for now, the west coast of the Everglades is where you'll find us most days.  And for those wanting to stay close to Flamingo... the fish in that area are pretty turned on as well.  The other day, a quick stop at a canal mouth had my angler getting hooked up with small snook from his very first cast with a lure on light spinning gear - and we lost count of how many he caught and released...it might have been as many as twenty.  Here's one that paused for a photo before going back where he came from...

At that spot all we used were leadheads with Gulp tails - at other spots a DOA Baitbuster was our second choice... Whether we're tossing lures with spin or plug casting gear or working the fly... I have enough rods on board to simply pick up another rod ready to go since we do get snagged up every now and then... My angler that day was Dave Boyden out of Maryland - and I was working on his Pathfinder.  As I write this he and his buddies are down in the Keys for the rest of their expedition...  Later that day Dave hooked a nice small tarpon around 10 to 12 lbs on that same leadhead / Gulp tail combination at another spot and did a great job of bringing it alongside the boat.  As I reached for my camera -the fish decided to shake free - and that was that... That day we also found a few very nice tripletail that were pushing in around five feet of water against the falling tide (those same fish and lots of them will be found floating at the surface when the tide starts back in...) but missed our shots at them.  Once the crab traps are back in the water (very shortly) all of our inshore tripletail will begin to move offshore a bit and once again be found hanging around those crab pot floats the way they'll do all during the cooler months each year - but they're still to be found, right now, inshore and close by... 

 

Here's another photo or two from this past weekend...

 

Casey with a nice small redfish on a Baitbuster, carefully released... 

 

 

this 30" snook got invited home for dinner...

 

 

The fish were so hungry this past weekend that twice a good redfish or snook never made it to the boat before a medium sized shark turned it into a meal - all in less than three feet of water and close enough that I was reaching for the leader when things went south... Lots and lots of "hungries" right now and it will stay like this as long as conditions allow.... 

 

With good weather the next two or three weeks should get better and better.   This weekend coming up I'll finally be getting some fly anglers and we'll be hunting tarpon among other species... I'm looking forward to it... and for a change I still have lots of open dates for anyone heading this way.

 

"Be a hero... take a kid fishing"