Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

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!