Capt.PeteRowney
01-21-2007, 05:53 PM
Well, it's been a fruitful couple of weeks in the Fishing Capital of the World. I can't believe it's almost February and we haven't had a serious cold snap since Thanksgiving. It's almost tarpon time! I can't wait! With this warm weather they'll probably show early and unfortunately, leave early. The past couple of weeks had me doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The warm water has kept the redfish in the skinny stuff and tailing hard early in the day. Unfortunately they weren't in a mood to play. Found a nice bunch of big fish (8 lb. plus) hanging on a favorite shoreline but they were jumpy too. Who said redfish were easy! Sometimes they're as aggravating as bonefish. Speaking of bonefish, the ghost of the flats has been in pretty good numbers oceanside. A lot of these fish are mudding in a couple of feet of water although we did find a number of tailers. I probably sound like a broken record by now but I'll mention it again: practice your casting. Believe it or not it's probably more heartbreaking to me than it is to you, to have a nice group of fish feeding hard forty feet off the bow only blow up because of a horrible cast by an angler that was ill-prepared. I know this may sound harsh because everybody has bad casts but fly fishing for bonefish in the Keys is just about the hardest thing you could do and sometimes you only get limited opportunities. Forget all the TV shows you've seen: it usually takes them a week to film one half hour episode. They wait until optimum conditions ie- good tides, good light and light winds. The reality is the day you have a charter there's a good chance that there will be stiff breeze and the light maybe tough. Forget about the acres of bonefish tailing in glass calm conditions on a bright, cloudless afternoon. Whether it's bonefish, permit or tarpon a good portion of the time you're presenting a fly to fish that appear rapidly and need a quick and accurate cast. If you can put a fly where you want it within fifty feet in any wind you'll be way ahead of the game. Okay, enough preaching. While I didn't snook fish per se, we did manage to get a few out of the mangroves while fishing for snapper. I had Todd and his four year old son Levi last week. Conditions were lousy, spitting rain and 15 knots of wind. Todd just wanted Levi to catch something and he sure did! We threw the chum bag out looking for spanish mackerel and pretty much anything else that would bite. The little guy wanted to do it all by himself. He liked casting and reeling in as fast as he could. I told him to slow it down until he hooked a mack on a cast he made ten feet off the stern! Next cast, pompano! He was actually outfishing his dad! Conditions started getting nasty and we decided to tuck in out of the weather and get some snapper and jacks for the little guy. While we did get some fine snapper, Todd hooked a number of snook and a couple of reds. We managed to get back to the dock just before it started to pour. Talk about a tough kid. As Todd put it, "If I take him out in this stuff, he won't know what bad is." Until next time. -Pete