Tuesday, March 23, 2010

feast or famine




Its been a strange month, cold windy, one nice day, cold windy,coldddddddddd, windy, cold windyyyy no days nice then one day nice.

The problem this month is cold water, sunday the 20th in the park it was 58 degrees and on saturday in the bay it was 64-65. When you find fish on the flats they are not eating, parked in the mud or on the grass they simply swim away from your flys. I found one 60 lb tarpon laid up and Paul an angler from PA made several casts that were perfect but it simply swam away in cold and overcast. He did catch eight smaller tarpon that day in a warmer area in the park (flamingo) but that was it for the day hence the title above. Same for the bay, tarpon in the morning with Carl and John one for ten and then in the north bay only sighting one permit and maybe one bone and seeing many cuda's that ran from our flies.

Fly fishing in salt is a tough deal, in fact the toughest on the planet especially here. Flies have no smell and movement is minimal compared to lures and bait on spin. I can cover an area much faster than a flyrod with spin and wind has little effect on it and lures are vast.

But that's the challenge and when the line comes tight in your hand, its worth the hassle and wait.

Big doings will occur soon, watch the water temps to average 75 and its off to the races.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

March is here but........


Ok March is here, but fishing is slow except for a few bright spots. The last fly tournament in the keys was horrible, the winner caught a few reds and a snook with the majority of anglers catching nothing. Murray key water temp yesterday was 59 DEGREE's!

The water is freezing..... the fish are cold and we need warmth...

Having said that the tarpon fishing has been good on fly and bass fishing has been excellent.

Soon the water will warm and with a bluebird sky tarpon fishing will go crazy along with everything else. Cindy my wife and I went bass fishing a week ago and fishing was incredible. She caught bass after bass on streamer flys and I did the same with Steve Kanters poppers that use big rubber legs with flash and squirrel tail hair for the tail.