Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

       Captain John Stark and I went on a reconnaissance mission yesterday morning. We left my dock way before daylight and in the absence of the moon, we had to creep along in the darkness. We ran the ditch behind the Chokoloskee causeway and by the time the sky was showing the slightest light of dawn we were through Hurdles and flying south across Sunday Bay and into  the backcountry. Our objective was a tarpon search, there was no wind at all and the water was mirror smooth, when the conditions are that smooth, and all boundaries are indistinct, it feels more like flying than anything else.

       The first few spots we checked weren’t showing any fish but as we pushed further south we began to see a few tarpon, a couple of nice ones in a spot John had seen them in before, nice easy rollers about eighty pounds. But we were looking for something more substantial, we were hoping for a big school, a wad, a bunch that we could really work over and we pushed on.

      We stopped in one spot a few minutes later and immediately saw skipping baits and the unmistakable signs of feeding snook. We broke out the light rods and the small flies and before we left that lake we landed probably twenty snook between 17 and 25 inches and two, jet black, spotted sea trout!

      It was tempting to stay and enjoy the fun, but we were on a mission and decided to move on. We checked a lot of water without much success and as the morning waned and we were losing hope we began to steer for the Gulf and a straight shot back to Everglades. When you’re searching for something it seems you always find it in the last place you look and so it was for us. Tarpon, lots of them, rolling in the stillwater of upper Lostmans River. We spent a couple of hours messing with those fish and finally got one in the air, a sixty pounder that took one of my Black Voodoo flies, ‘tarpon on fly, Everglades style!’

      When we got back to the dock the tripmeter was approaching eighty miles, we were sunburnt,  wasted from the heat, and already planning our next recon!