Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

Here’s the address of Jakes blog at Trout Hunter: www.trouthunt.com/blog/view/91

Jake and I are going to fish out of Island Park in August, I’m really looking forward to this, we’re pretty much going on dry fly walkabout in eastern Idaho and western Montana.

We took off on high falling tide this morning with the wind at our backs.  A front is passing and the wind is northeast and a little harsh for this time of year.  I’ve been hoping for an off shore wind so that I could do some poling on the way-outside-flats and I took a chance on it this morning. It was just too rough and windy so we ran inshore and fished the last of the falling on a flat closer to shore and sheltered, a perfect window at the perfect time, there were fish everywhere in about eight inches of water, redfish and snook, stingrays with strings of fish in their trail, sharks, and ridiculous schools of black drum waking all over the place.

The tide blew out and there were a lot of boats out for the holiday, so we ran back north and fished the 10,000 Islands for tarpon. Mike Colt has hooked another one, an even bigger one, closer to a hundred pounds. We lost it under the mangroves in a very tight situation.

We’re working as hard as ever for these fish but we’re also trying to get into a layed back mode of hunting them because it’s getting really hot.

This fish was caught by Mike Colt.  And that’s no lie.

An interesting morning of stalking tarpon,  we jumped around a little and watched a few places,  we saw fish today,  before the wind came up and put ‘em down, we found fish from ten to a hundred and ten. We jumped a couple of smaller ones, thirty pounders, one of those on the first cast of the trip, and then we got this one a couple’a frog leaps  down the road.  Mike Colt, tarpon on fly, Everglades style!

We took a little break from tarpon hunting this morning and went looking for red’s for a couple of hours on the rising tide.  Jake Chutz with a redfish from Chatam Bend.

Here’s Jake Chutz of Island Park Idaho with a little something we picked up tarpon fishing this morning.

There has been so much going on lately it’s been hard to keep up with reports. The tarpon fishing has improved since this last front went through and we have a fresh push of fish including some smaller ones in the thirty pound class.  John McMinn has the foredeck in the photo below,  he and Tom Harding have been trading shots at tarpon over the last few days jumping a few fish every day,  in every size,  from 12 inches in the waybackcountry where we ran during the hard weather,  to a 100 pound fish out front.  I’ve got lots of photo’s and tales to tell, I just need a few more hours in the day.

Joe Chlebowski with a snook we spotted while looking for sleepers.

We had a great day yesterday. It actually lasted into this morning which really made it a ‘spectacular day and a half.’ It came crashing to a halt today at high tide when the wind came in from the east at 20. Still, yesterday was the last of the quarter moon and the tide was just perfect, the wind came in from the northeast all day and the water on the flats was crystal clear, there were reds and snook all over the place. We were on visible fish all day,  in ‘going aground’  inches of water.

Today was the first of the new moon, I think, in any case the tide was much higher and the wind stronger, but we saw fish all morning, snook and reds, when the wind struck, we beat feet for the backcountry and found fish there too.

David Wiggins and Ed Neves holding down the foredeck, with many chances over the past few days for sight shooting at tarpon, redfish and snook.

Now the wind is going into the south and everything is changing again.