Capt.PeteRowney
02-11-2008, 09:37 AM
Greetings from the Florida Keys. It's been another solid week of fishing. With water temps out back in the mid 70's the snook and reds have been up on the flats big time. While snook tucked into a shoreline can be next to impossible on fly, snook up on the flats and out in the open are another story. While some of this is sightcasting to individual fish, a lot of times it's a matter of dumping casts into potholes to see if anyone is home. Snook will also get on top of rays, so any mudding ray potentially has a gamefish on it. I love finding redfish in the super skinny stuff and they didn't disappoint this week. A fair number of tarpon showed this week. The spanish mackerel fishing in the Gulf has been excellent. As an aside, sight fishing with fly is tough, regardless of the species. Everything has to come together just right to get rewarded with an eat. That said, a lot of time gets invested to reach that goal and sometimes you go home fishless. To give you an example, I fished a couple of days ago and the targeted species were reds and snook. Early mornings there isn't enough light to actually "see" fish so we usually go looking for tailers and pushers. Pulled up on the first spot with slicked out conditions and cloudless skies. Although there were a lot of fish around, they weren't tailing or waking. A lot of times redfish will just sit on the bottom and not being able to see them you simply run them over. My client really wanted to sightfish and not cast blindly so we kept up our search. Finally found one tailer. A decent cast was met by an immediate response from the fish that promptly charged the fly but my angler decided to stop stripping and the hot fish promptly cooled and turned off. Hung around for a little while longer but things were slowing down and decided to move on. Unfortunately, the once bright blue skies were completely clouded over within an hour of the start of our day and the breeze was kicking up. That in itself presents a real challenge when sightfishing. On to next spot, where the day before there were a good number of snook and reds in a very shallow, proteced bay. The water is usually clear and lighter bottom makes it a good place when the light craps out. Guess what? We poled for practically an hour and saw all of one red. Goose egg. Next spot, worked the edge of a bank that can be great on a low dropping tide. With dirtier water and no sun my hope was to find a tail or fish busting bait. Couldn't find any tails but occasionally we'd see mullet spray. I'd pole into the vicinty and wait for another bust or a push, nothing would happen and five mintues later a snook would blow out right at the boat. Frustrating!!! I can't tell you how many times this happened! Decided to move on and work another edge that was a little protected with clearer water. Poled in and was greeted by a few good looking wakes. Fish were occasionally tailing too. With zero viz we'd hone in on a tail but the fish would just disappear. No tail, no push, no nothing. With an hour left in the day, the sun finally came out. This didn't seem to help us though. The fish were super touchy, spooking from the pushpole, the line in the air, or the line landing. Despite the number of shots we had, I would probably say all of two were decent. Not great, decent. These casts were met with refusals. Unfortunately, most of the shots were not on target. False casting too much lets the fish slide by and turns what would have been a leading shot into a cast at the fishes side or worse, their tail. Sometimes you get a reaction bite but this is usually a low percentage hook up. That being said, with zero fish in the boat, we headed back to the dock. Unfortunately, fishing is not easy most of the time. Something is always conspiring against you: the wind, the sun or mood of the fish. The beauty of fly fishing is that we stand in the face of all of these odds and every now and then are rewarded for our efforts. Until next time. -Pete