Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

Captain Lee Quick joined me for Research and Development this morning before the twilight of the dawn. We snagged a red and a snook without much trouble and wasted the rest of the morning fringing a school of hot tarpon. The show was so grand, rolling, feeding, blitzing, blowing up on those pilchards three at a time, age classes rolling together, some forty pounders but then a group of galloping females about eighty pounds each that had us in fits.

Bill and I skied off to Lostman’s River this morning an hour before daylight. We are plotting a rendezvous with a big snook who’s home we discovered during redsnook practice. She wasn’t there this morning so we checked a couple of our secret spots. There are a lot of red’s all of a sudden. I mean,  we saw a lot of red’s. One big, loosely organized herd that had at least a hundred redfish in it. This was in shallow water, less than one foot deep, where they were plainly visible. We had numerous chances at both red’s and snook, sight shots with fly rods, and some moments of intense, multiple fish action.

My Pal’s  picked me up an hour before daylight and took me to the Bights. It’s a low rising tide at daylight. We spent the morning sight shooting snook with fly rods. Five snook, and, yours truly greenhorned a red. Two snooks over twenty six inches, none under twenty four.

We skied off at dawn, well, it was an hour before dawn. Steady rain from a tropical storm off shore had us breaking out the foul weather gear as we idled down the river. North of Everglades City we found a few red’s and a snook but the tide was pushed way in due to the storm so we dropped in to Secret Creek for a visit with the local residents.  Doug and I sat in the rain, among the tarpon, for a couple of hours just watching them roll and feed. The show was so enjoyable that neither of us really wanted to disturb the scene by catching one until Doug said “What’s the most bizarre fly you’ve ever caught a tarpon on?”  Now we know the tarpon of Secret Creek won’t eat a Dying Raccoon Fly. Thanks, Doug, for the Bus Drivers Holiday.

Tom Hartman and I left the dock well before dawn this morning so we could reach those southern red’s at daylight. We caught the falling tide and morning offshore wind just right and had a great morning sight shooting red’s on fly. We saw a lot of fish,  some of them were in schools of a half dozen or more and some of those were in the 30″ class. Extremely low tides at noon required some dicey navigation but we managed to stay on the fish all day. Lots of clear water, breezy weather, scudding clouds, diving osprey, jumping leopard rays, porpoise and manatee. There is an interesting tide this week with high water at dawn slowly ebbing to a 0.2 low almost nine hours later. With a little cooperation from the weather this could be ideal for fly fishing and sight fishing in general.