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The warm winter of 2012 advanced the mosquito season in the Indian River Lagoon. Where I fished yesterday there were so many they turned my pant leg dark with teir bodies and I could feel them bouncing off my swinging  hand as I walked in the dark to where I like to fish. Even though I had bug spray on my face the little biters found any spot I missed. There were thousands and thousands of them.

Despite the bugs I had fun getting a bonnet head shark of about three feet to follow my fly and I had fun with a snook that made short work of my 12-pound leader. It took the snook just two jumps to wear

through it. I stuck to fishing a fly all day and didn’t switch to live bait which would have been more productive. By the time I went home I had caught snook, trout and lady fish. Missing were reds, jacks and bluefish from the catch.

The game was going to be fly fishing for tarpon at night under the bridges around Miami. I’d fished with Dave before and knew that he would be holding a bridge leg while I stood beside him on the bow of his flats skiff at the ready with a 10-weight rod and a sink tip line. The fly would be white, small, only 2 ½ inches, and tied to a  60 lb. floro bite tippet.  The lights on the bridge above would cast a shadow line on the water a few feet in front of us and in this shadow the tarpon would cruise looking for shrimp swept along on the surface. Seeing them out in the light the tarpon would track on them and inhale them as the strong current swept them into the shadow.

Fishing the new or full moon tide like we were when the current is the strongest and fishing is best Dave said that he would “jump” 8-10 tarpon on a normal night. We were both pumped up and ready.

The first stop was the McAurther bridge headed out to Miami Beach. I was ready as we approached, as often the tarpon are right there when you pull up. Only this time they weren’t there yet. We watched for nearly an hour without seeing a fish or hearing the telltale sound of tarpon feeding to our right or left. Dave moved us to the other end of the bridge and we set up again, still no fish. We went back to where we started and began seeing clumps of weeds washing past, a good sign although we couldn’t see any shrimp hanging on them and that was a worry. Maybe they would run late in the falling tide.

Some time after midnight we left that bridge and went to one closer to Key Biscayne. The current was really ripping here and it was tough for Dave to hold on and that was good, he said. Now and then we’d hear a tarpon take a shrimp with that unmistakable sound of something big like a bowling ball being dropped in the water. Dave looked left and I watched right and neither of us saw fish.

Being a guide I could hear the pressure in Dave’s voice as he tried to will some fish and I know how guides feel, how they bleed inside when the fishing is bad. Dave was bleeding and both of us could see that the shrimp that bring the tarpon to the surface to feed just were not there.

About 2:30 in the morning the tide was slowing and the occasional sound of feeding tarpon stopped we wrapped it up. It just didn’t happen.

So how do you feel when you get skunked? For me I felt fine. Having guided for thirty years myself I know that fishermen who measure their fun by the number and size of the fish they catch are going to be unhappy now and then, but those who enjoy the experience, the trying, always win.

I appreciated the spectacle of Miami at night with tall building all lit up. I was in awe of the huge yachts tied up in the Miami marina. And there was the immense size of  cranes that load and unload ships. And there were these birds that sat on pilings watching as intently as we were for shrimp and the good company of a guide working his tail off. I had a real good time.

John and a good trout.

We fished hard yesterday and caught both trout and jacks, but over all it was slow fishing.  Some days are like that.

No, there are no ladyfish around Leland, but I wish there were. One of their nicknames is poor man’s tarpon because over and over they jump high shaking their head and often send the fly back at you. In Florida they get little respect, which means that Floridians don’t know when they have it good. Are they good to eat? I don’t know, but they say they aren’t.

This morning I wanted a lot of high flying action and went to a place where I know the ladies are thick. As I went down a jungle-like hill to the ICW and could see them dimpling far out. Cutting to a sand point and wading out I was in the right position to intercept them and they came to the fly readily. I landed five or six and lost more than that and appreciated what these fish can do. While other species like tarpon, bones, and snook, to mention a few, get the glory, other species don’t get the respect they deserve and ladyfish is one of them.

I use an 8 weight, but a 6 or 7 would work too. If you go just make sure that your bite tippet is 20 pounds and you re-tie on every other fish. Like a snook they have teeth that file through a order in short order.

 

Gator trout earn their name.

I caught a snook this morning. It didn’t fight much, it didn’t jump, it didn’t take line, it just came in – in the cast net that I had thrown at some bait fish. I guess I shouldn’t claim catching a snook if I didn’t catch it on a hook, but…oh forget it.

I had a hard time at first catching small finger mullet, netting bigger ones instead. I selected the smallest, which weren’t all that small at 10 inches or so, and lobbed them out into the area that I had been working with a fly with no luck. On the first cast a big trout popped at the mullet more than several times trying to catch it before it was  finally successful. Because the bait was so big I had to wait a long time for the fish to get the mullet around and going down and was glad I brought a book to read. Tighting up too soon just doesn’t work.

Later, I caught some smaller finger mullet and the trout gobbled them easily. Big snook that also live in the area have such big mouths that a 10 inch mullet is nothing to them. Too bad I didn’t get one of those today.

This fishing is a good job.

While not the kind of trout we catch around Leland, these are pretty good eating and fun to catch on a fly. A six weight rod would work, but I like an eight weight just in case a really big snook or jack eats the bait and heads for the horizon. While its not common to hook really big fish, it is always possible.

I was remembering this morning the time long ago when there was so much bait, alewives, in Lake Michigan that they would form huge balls that would come to the surface driven by huge numbers of salmon underneath them. That was back in the infancy  of the fisherery, before zebra mussels and over-planting of salmon changed things. I remembering telling one of my fellow charter captains that it all could change and he looked at me like I was nuts. Now years later we know that it did change and while we have excellent fishing out of Leland for salmon, it isn’t like the days when you came back tothe dock with 200 pounds of salmon on a half day trip.

And so how did I remember that? Well I just got back from the trip to the Dry Tortugas where we pounded the sapper and grouper and I went out with my fly rod around here. I saw some glass minnows being chased to the surface and put a fly right in the middle  of the action and the photo shows what I caught, a small snapper. One day a hero, the next a….

I can’t start 2012 with salmon fishing news yet, hell, the boat is still in winter storage and it won’t be until May it floats again. However, if you are in the middle of winter desperation and looking for a little fishing news while we all wait for Leland salmon fishing to begin again, follow along here and I try to entertain you with a few winter fishing stories.

I’ll start with last week when I went to the Dry Tortugas for four days. The tortugas are west of Key West and we were about 75 miles from Duval Street fishing on both the atlantic and gulf reefs for grouper and snapper mostly, but there were lots of other fish that showed up too. Our skipper would anchor over a hard bottom reef in 80 feet of water and we’d throw a chum bag over the side with a block of frozen chum which is ground up fish, blood and who knows what. As it thaws little particles of chum drift with the current and pull fish to the boat like the smell of a bakery pulls me through the door.

There were six of us on the trip and we dropped baits to the bottom and waited for something to happen. At our first stop we caught many yellowtails and a few mutton snapper. The captain told us to stop keeping the yellowtails unless they were really flags or we’d have our snapper limit in the first hour or two. On a long trip that’s not good.

For four days all we did was fish. When the captain thought we’d fished a spot enough he’d move us to a new place. At night we’d anchor out there in the ocean and those that had the endurance to fish all night could while the other guys grabbed a few hours of sleep. We caught so many red grouper that it was not worth mentioning when one would come over the rail. I picked up several dolphin on a flat line as well as a big king mackerel that an even bigger  shark ate the  tail off at the boat. I hooked quite a few sharks and broke them off as quickly as I could. One, however was hooked in the corner of its mouth and didn’t break the line. I got it to the boat and it looked like a bull shark to me, about 7 feet long and thick through the body. I don’t think I could have wrapped my arms around it if I’d been dumb enough to try.

Some of the other guys like catching amber jacks that weighed forty or fifty pounds. I’ve done that in the past and those reef donkeys pull so hard that you need to go lay down for a long time after you get them in.  The same goes for goliath grouper. I hooked a couple of those and it is like there is a  school bus on the other end of the line swimming away. Its best to break them off too unless you are young and inexperienced.

Mainly we wanted to catch grouper and mutton snapper and we did, lots.

A couple of red grouper are good representatives of the fish we caught.

A mutton snapper.

They say cats have nine lives and so it seems some grouse do too.  It was the fall of 2009 and Sid my year and a half old English setter was in her first year of hunting by herself. We were in a favorite cover in Michigan’s upper peninsula that we call the Coyote Cover named for a late season hunt the year before when it was a foggy and cold with misty rain. A pair of coyotes followed along a two-track trail flanking each side and yipping every now and then to each other. It was eary; they were close but never seen.

Now, a year later, it was sunny and crisp. The leaves were down for the most part and it was a grouse hunting day if there ever was one.  It was Sid’s turn to hunt and we worked to the east between a beaver flooding and the trail. She found birds and while she was doing her best, none were holding for her until we reached a distinctive place where the cover changed. The trees became a little more open and the fur tree thickets slightly more scattered. It was the kind of spot that almost yelled “get ready!” to a grouse hunter.

Sid was just to my right when she locked up in a point only thirty or forty feet away. I moved in front of her and a big red-phase grouse flushed from nearly under my feet and crossed the opening in front of us giving a classic straight away shot, easy, except when I pulled the trigger the shell went “poof” and the shot charge followed by the wad lobbed out the barrel like a kindergarten baseball throw. Obviously there was no powder in that shell and only the pressure of the primer firing cleared the barrel.

The bird showing brilliant color with the afternoon sun behind us disappeared into the thickness.

I saw that same grouse in that spot more times that fall. He never ventured outside his half-acre as far as I could tell. His skill in avoiding being held by the dog or caught in the open beat us every time.

The following year, 2010,  found us back in the Coyote again and I remembered the big red bird and wondered if he had survived. We hunted the cover just like we had the year before moving from west to east and when we got to his home turf he was there. I don’t remember the exact circumstances of how he beat us that day or on a couple of more occasions that followed on other days, but the red bird always won.

On the final hunt of the year I circled the Coyote going counter-clockwise following some pasture land away from the beaver flooding first. Coming from the east was different, not that it should have made a difference. The red grouse heard us and wild-flushed ahead and we followed.  My guess on where he went was correct and again he wild-flushed ahead this time breaking hard to the left, leaving the thickness and going into a more open young aspen area. Birdie, swung wide left and I arced to the right as we entered the aspen stand. Either the grouse had flown a long way and crossed the road to security, or he was here somewhere near.

Birdie’s beeper started sounding in a slightly thicker brushy finger that stretched across in front of me. The bird had to be there. I slowed down and eased forward to the right knowing that the red bird was smart and would walk quickly away from the dog on the left. With Birdie pointing sixty feet away the red bird flushed in the open near me.

This year I hunted the Coyote cover several times and each time I remembered that bird and how good he was at being a grouse. The struggle that wild animals have to survive isn’t all that different that what we go through. Maybe the stakes are higher for the grouse, but then again maybe they aren’t.