Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

And another, this one, another Gulfside fish. We only had a couple of hours, Ann had a flight back to Seattle this afternoon. Back to the Snoqualmie, the Yakima and the steelhead. The sea run cutthroats. We had crystal clear water at daylight, water temp 64, and a low falling tide with northeast winds. It was so clear on the outside flats, it felt like walking on air, you could see every detail of the flat and all it’s inhabitants, sheephead, crabs, mullet, stingrays, sawfish, black drum, bullsharks, eagle rays and reds. Sponges and lettuce.

Clear skies, calm winds and redfish. Here’s Ann with another one, this time from the backcountry. Note the difference in color.

After scraping the ice off my windshield at dawn this morning in a 20 knot northerly wind, I rounded up all the clothes I had for the ride over to Circle K. It wasn’t enough. This was the coldest morning of the year. We waited until 9:00 to depart, hoping the wind would abate, it didn’t, and the sun would begin to warm the flats, it wouldn’t. The tide was extremely low, dangerously low, and the wind held it out for two hours before the surge flooded onto the flats. Navigation was dicey, James Bond would have been proud of the work we did, flying over the bars and shallows. There was just no water and it was cold, morning water temperature was 54 degrees and the few places we could reach were fishless. There was one flat though, that I’ve been finding fish on, and once the tide finally began to move we timed our assault perfectly. It flooded so fast the window was only about twenty minutes but that’s all we needed. Ann Heideman, redfish on fly, Everglades Style!

It’s raining this morning, northwest winds at twenty miles per hour, freezing temperatures forecast for tomorrow morning, this could be interesting. The water temps have remained high, I found backcountry temps as high as 78 degrees on Saturday, but the fish are scattered, it takes a lot of poling and running between flats to find them. My guide friends have been complaining about the warm water, wishing for colder temps so they could identify a consistent winter pattern. I guess you have be careful what you wish for. Here’s a few red’s from this week. That’s Bill Mcveigh and Patty Larocca.

Even though the weather has been tough, with nighttime cold temperatures in the fifties and sometimes lower, the redfish have been cooperating. Gulf temperatures are  averaging around sixty degrees, but backcountry temps will reach seventy in the afternoon on a bright sunny day. With the cold morning temps, the fishing has been slow for the first hour or two but when the sun gets high things start happening, the red’s start moving onto the flats to feed and with the tides we’ve had these past few days the sight fishing can be phenomenal. They’re big, too, all the guides are talking about it, how thick these fish are. There’s snook too, lots of small ones, and the chance is always there for a big one although it’s tough to get them to bite at this time of year, still we’ve had chances for them on every trip recently. Capt. Bill and I went on recon to some new areas way down south yesterday, that’s where this beauty came from.