Capt Bob LeMay

I was one of those vets who came home in 1971 - when we snuck back into the country and did everything possible to avoid wearing the uniform... The current fashion of thanking young folks for their service is a far cry from that era. Not a bad thing at all - but it's not what we experienced at all. I suspect that most of us simply got on with our lives, keeping a low profile. To this day I don't belong to any veteran's groups although I was an Army brat and grew up all over the world before I went in the service myself in 1968. My Dad was a career type and did two tours in Vietnam in '65 and '69 before retiring in 1970...

Our night trips... are never in jungle areas at all (after a lot of years you learn where not to fish..). Instead we're fishing the urban areas (between Miami and Miami Beach in Biscayne bay - or up at Jupiter...) where we're pretty much bug free. All of our night stuff revolves around docklights or in the shadows up under a bridge somewhere. The night scene for us is all about sight-fishing and we're looking at every fish we encounter, mostly... You have to stand off of docklights but in bridge shadows we're working so close to small (20 to 40lb tarpon mostly) that you can almost reach out and touch one with your rod... It was the very first thing I was introduced to - in 1972.... and I'd been doing the night scene for a lot of years before I took up guiding.

Love that brutal winter weather ... it causes my phone to ring down here in paradise where we get all covered up when the weather is below 70 degrees... On the other end of the scale - when summer comes around I don't get too many bookings to fish the 'glades at all... even though the fishing gets better and better all summer long (while the actual jungle conditions get worse and worse...). Thank heavens for night trips.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before... several of my wholesalers have mentioned that covid really messed up some of their local supply sources for things like bucktails, squirrel tails, etc. and that they've been having great difficulty obtaining commercial quantities of natural furs/ tails... Hope this is just a temporary situation. I'd advise anyone to buy those kinds of materials at your local shop these days (if possible) so that you can get a hands on evaluation of exactly what you're buying... Wish it weren't so...

This time of year everything's biting in the 'glades... This snook was caught and released with an 8wt rod and new streamer we've been using.... That fly took at least 20 fish that day.... Tail: old yellowed polar bear Hook: Owner Aki light in size #1 Body: synthetic Body Fur in fl. yellow Eyes: Wapsi presentation lead eyes Weedguard: #4 trolling wire (Malin's stainless, coffee colored. Note... during my years filling fly orders for shops and anyone else who knew what they wanted.. I never used any of my small supply of polar bear for a single fly... Years later, as the hair is almost no longer usable I'm beginning to use a bit of it here or there...

Most of the time I'm a wholesale operator and doing my orders by phone... When there's something on my shopping list that's a critical item (needed to fill an order I'm working on, or needed for my guiding work) I've learned to request a call back after they've pulled the order to find out then if what I need is out of stock, so I can look elsewhere instead of waiting to find out when I receive my goods a few days later (or a week or two later in a few cases... If I have the slightest doubt that they'll call me back I'll make a point of getting the individual's contact info while placing my order and do a call back myself... before the end of their working day to verify that what I'm needing is (or isn't) in that order when it's shipped... This routine, of course, was learned the hard way.... Over the years I've learned that an occasional supplier was not reliable in one way or another - that business was off of my list to purchase from the moment they let me down... Matter of fact I've just found my very first defective fly line in nearly fifty years of fly fishing - after only two days usage and will be contacting the manufacturer directly later on today. Their response will tell me whether I'll be using their lines in the future. I try to keep at least one spare new line for every line size from a 5wt up to a 12wt on hand (in some cases, 8, 9 and 10wt lines - two spares...). The backcountry of the Everglades, all mangrove jungle shorelines... is very hard on fly lines and my floating lines rarely last more than one year for my anglers... Note... Very pleased, that line manufacturer stepped up, requested I send in the line so they could examine it - and will send a replacement.. .They'll be getting more orders from this corner...

We're nearly over-run with juvenile goliath grouper in the backcountry (interior) of the Everglades and nearby areas these days. By juveniles - I mean fish less than fifty pounds. They've been fully protected now for nearly thirty years and as a direct result they've been allowed to increase in population to the point that they're displacing other species... Here's my latest example - a seven pound specimen taken in less than two feet of water while trying to catch a redfish or snook instead... a great catch on an 8wt rod using a Seaducer pattern - but in a very shallow interior shoreline where you'd never expect to see one at all.. Kind of a mixed blessing I guess - but one more example of why my state needs to re-consider its protected status... tougher than an old leather boot and quite aggressive - they're the baddest fish in the 'glades - now if there were just not so many of them... Of course, like always - this specimen was carefully caught and released...

Last night the tarpon took my anglers to school... We jumped a half dozen or more in bridge shadows and docklights using both lures and flies. The fish, a mix of small tarpon in the 20 to 50lb range were up at the surface and feeding - perfect sight-fishing conditions. My father and son anglers (Dad with the fly rod, 15 year old son with light spinning gear) got introduced to the night scene in the usual way - breaking off fish on the strike or hanging on as the fish jumped off after the hook up... Great fun between Miami and Miami Beach... Here's a pic of the flies we used in sized 1/0 and 2/0.... Always in white so my anglers can see where the fly is in relation to the fish at night... The rods I have for night trips are an 8,9, and 10wt (the ten weight is reserved for nights when the bigger fish are in the shadows...). This time of year it's all happening - the backcountry of Everglades National Park for day trips (Flamingo, Chokoloskee, or Goodland to the north, near Marco Island), night trips in Biscayne Bay or up in Jupiter, and peacock bass with other exotics in local canals...

This time of year we're going day after day (nice to have anglers... but be careful what you wish for...) - freshwater, saltwater, day trips, night trips.... when that great flood of visitors heads our way.. By May things begin to slow down (as customers begin to dwindle - the fishing, though, gets better and better...) and in summer - not many want to fish in the jungle with me... In the meantime I come up for air a day here or there... with lots to do - then it's back on the water... Here's a pic from last week of a nice redfish out of Flamingo in Whitewater Bay where the reds have that great mahogany red/brown copper color... carefully released after an encounter with a small leadhead on light spinning gear... Today I'll be sourcing a new stern light for my skiff... Trying to stuff a seven foot wide skiff up a six foot wide creek - has consequences...

Water temps in the 'glades are a bit higher than normal for this time of year... We had 81 degree waters in the afternoon... For those who've never fished tarpon - water temperature is what gets them moving - not time of year or any other factor... The interior of the 'glades is simply warmer than waters out in the Gulf - and that's why Flamingo, Chokoloskee, Goodland and the entire Ten Thousand Islands area gets the first crack at the big fish - before the spawning migration gets going each year..

Finally our weather warmed up a bit - and stayed that way... In the backcountry of the 'glades our waters warmed up 12 degrees in just a few days - and the giant tarpon responded by flooding up into interior bays out of the cooler Gulf waters they've been holding in... On our first of two days the wind was blowing and we only saw a few of the big fish but weren't able to get on them properly. That day I was fishing local angler Bill Myers and his buddy Andrew... We mixed it up with Bill on the fly rod in the bow and Andrew with light spinning gear at the rear and found snook, speckled trout, and redfish along mangrove jungle shorelines for both anglers, at times double hookups. The snook were small, the redfish nice sized, and the trout were numerous but only a few of them were keeper sized.. Here's a pic of a nice redfish that Andrew caught and released. the reds in our interior areas are all this gorgeous red brown color... That day we kept two nice trout for dinner - an 18 and a 19" - both loaded with roe.... It's that time of year when the trout will flood into our area all of them roe laden and fully mature. When the conditions are right - we do really well using popping bugs on fish holding in feeding lane currents with them. The next day I had Chris Frohlich and his Dad Court on board fly fishing for the big tarpon... Chris was the sole angler that day with his Dad along to watch and do a bit of filming if possible. Chris is a very skilled tarpon angler, able to lay out a full 120 foot tarpon line in the right conditions. We found the big fish early on, laid up in a sheltered area in a big open bay , just occasionally rolling in three to five feet of water (and every now and then floating just under or right at the surface, showing only the very tip of a fin here or there.... I was on the pole most of that day and fish after fish - simply ignored our flies.... typical tarpon (you could hear them snoring....). Finally late in the day the fish perked up, began moving around and actually doing a bit of feeding. Chris began to see fish following the fly although still with lockjaw until one, only thirty feet from the skiff did a perfect eat and it was game on... with a fat eighty pound fish (there were a lot of tarpon in that immediate area - some of them really way over one hundred pounds...). I was only able to take one photo of the action (and I'm hoping to get a small video clip from Court...). That one fish, though really made our day... Hooked up solid with an 11wt rod We like to use much bigger tarpon flies than folks in the Keys favor... This pattern a Tarpon Snake variation, was the tarpon food that day... Just nothing like the Everglades... "Be a hero... take a kid fishing..." Bob LeMay (954) 435-5666

This time of year I'm prepping up for the busiest part of my annual bookings down here in south Florida. We go year round here -but these next two or three months will see the most visitors (and keep me busy...). This is one of my go to patterns, specifically when we're working up shallow and sight fishing the the 'glades out of either the interior (backcountry) or the vast shallows of Florida Bay. I do these in every color under the sun - this one is a favorite. I also do them in various sizes - this one a good average size for redfish, speckled trout, snook, and small tarpon (anything under fifty pounds is a "small tarpon:"...). This is a suspending pattern and it's deadly on any fish we encounter with a proper presentation using a strip... pause... strip, retrieve... This version of Chico Fernandez's famous Seaducer is done in grizzly/white and features a wire weedguard (very handy working over grass flats or mangrove jungle shorelines) Hook: Mustad 34007, size #1 (with barb flattened and point triangulated with a 4" mill bastard file) Thread: Danville's flat waxed nylon Fl. Red Tail: Six wide, webby bleached white saddle hackles Body: Two of the same saddles, tied in butt first then palmered forward with as much of the "fluff" left on each saddle as possible Head: One wide, webby, grizzly saddle palmered in as noted above Weedguard: Malin's stainless leader wire, size #4 Eyes: Solid plastic doll eyes, 7mm, with the stem clipped away, secured one at a time using Fletch-Tite, an arrow maker's cement... After each eye is cemented in place it's held tightly with a clothes pin for about five minutes... these eyes are much more durable than the holographic eyes most use...

I use both oil and grease on the various reels I service. The good news for me is that my fly gear (from a 5wt up to a 12wt in size...) rarely need much if anything in the way of lubrication... The oil I prefer is sold for firearms, stuff like Gunslik, Break Free, or Kroil - very light machine oil that doesn't turn into varnish as it ages (the way that terrible 3 in 1 oil does.... I only use a drop or two on handle pivots, and spool shafts. For grease I've been using high temp blue grease available at any automotive store - the tub I've had for more than twenty years now is marked Kendall GT... Once again it's used very sparingly and only on parts that rub together like gears and synthetic carbon drag washers on spin or plug casting reels. I was taught the basics of reel repair and maintenance years and years ago (Reef Tackle, 79th St Miami - in 1972...). For many years I've serviced or repaired not only my own gear - but also my customers... and at times in quantity... These days I've cut way back and only service my own gear since reel parts aren't nearly as available as they were years ago (understatement - these days with many many outfits only making reels offshore... and changing models entirely too quickly....).

We were on the water three days this past week (bad weather claimed my two night bookings). Our first day was local, in the canals west of Ft. Lauderdale, with two anglers aboard switching off between fly and spinning gear. A good day - the very first cast was a nice peacock bass... bit cool that morning but the fishing was pretty warm... For about an hour and a half it was peacock after peacock on both spin and fly gear - along with a few small bass and one nice oscar on the fly. a small yellow and white clouser style fly got this oscar's attention. This peacock also liked that same clouser... Here's a pic of our best peacock that day - in just a five hour trip.. we caught and released 20 to 30 of them... The next day I had the same two anglers - down at Flamingo for some backcountry saltwater action. Both Jim McIntire and his partner Mike from Tennessee had a great day.... Although the waters were too cold for the big tarpon to make an appearance we found snook, trout, and redfish all day long... Early on it was the speckled trout on both lures and flies... We found good numbers of trout in several different spots - this one took a small lure and was carefully released Later that morning Mike scored his best snook ever - a 31" fish... this big girl was caught and released on a lure- just after we missed another one on the fly... the backcountry is heating up... Finally we hit some nice redfish in Whitewater Bay that afternoon... with both Jim and Mike scoring slot sized redfish... note the dark red/brown colors - classic backcountry redfish... with this release Mike had his first backcountry slam (snook, trout, redfish in the same day...). Jim, using the fly rod - had strike after strike, including our best red of the day... come loose after the hook-up before he finally landed this one.. most of our fish on fly that day attacked a pink and white clouser style offering... here's a close-up I suspect I'll be hearing from Jim and Mike again - it was that kind of day... In the coming week the big tarpon should begin to show up in Whitewater (all that's needed is a few days of warmer weather) and they'll be the main attraction as we move into spring (along with everything else....). Just nothing like the Everglades backcountry (and the freshwater canals into the 'glades as well...). Tight lines Bob LeMay (954) 309-9489 cell "Be a hero... take a kid fishing...

In the backcountry we use a variety of patterns in basic white as well as firetiger colors. Most are on hooks that range from a #2 to a 2/0 , occasionally a 3/0. Here's one bug on a 3/0 called the Razor cut mullet.. in basic white. almost all of our flies and bugs sport a wire weedguard as well for working heavy mangrove jungle shorelines... This sample is a bit less than four inches overall.