Fishing Report from Spotted Tail 12/4/07

The heft of the paddle felt good in my hands. My arms enjoyed the cadence of paddling- stretch-dip-pull-recover, stretch-dip-pull-recover. But I get ahead of myself…

To all my subscribers, my apologies for the late report. I was out-of-town, doing “research.”

I have some nice photos this week. See them at http://www.spottedtail.com/ThisWeeksFishingReport.htm

Next, for a little not-without-shame self-promotion-

Gift certificates for guided fishing trips make wonderful gifts for your friends and family members who fish. One phone call to me 407.977.5207 can easily take care of a sticky holiday gift problem. OK, no more crass commercialism.

Tuesday last I went kayak fishing out of River Breeze. The water was still too high for really good kayak fishing. I saw a decent number of fish, frequently by running over them. I had a half dozen good shots and got two slot redfish.

Thursday Capt. Chris Myers invited me out onto the Mosquito Lagoon. Chris knew where the fish were. He did not have a magic wand that would make them eat. We were in fish more or less continuously all day, and had dozens of good shots. I got two reds, he got two trout, and that was it for the day. Beautiful weather, lots of fish around, not much eating happening.

Friday I drove to Everglades National Park. I stopped at Royal Palm and several of the other turn-offs along the road to Flamingo. While the main purpose of the trip was fishing, I wanted to get some photos, too. I shot until sunset, and captured some nice images.

I met Don and Carmen Causey in Flamingo. We had dinner together, them Carmen, a lovely woman, had to get back to Miami. Don and I spent the night in his little RV.
Saturday morning Don took me fishing in the backcountry of the Everglades. We fished out of his canoe. He was explaining the fishing, and the problems he was having using spin tackle for the fishing, when he interrupted himself and said, “There will be some fish up in this slot.” As if to punctuate his sentence an explosion occurred through some rain minnows right in the spot in question.
As we approached I could see the backs of several snook as they slowly cruised through water too shallow to cover them. I tied on a Clouser floating minnow and tossed it in front of one of the fish. When he was almost underneath it I gave it a tiny twitch. The unmistakable, unforgettable sound of a good snook nailing a surface bait followed, and I was on. The scene repeated itself with variations all day long, with a pair of baby tarpon thrown in for good measure.
My tally for the day was a dozen snook between 25 and 30 inches, a pair of baby tarpon, and a number of dink snook that I didn’t bother keeping any kind of tally on. All of the larger snook were on surface flies. It was by far the best snook fishing I’ve ever had.
Don wanted to check out a different area the next day. OK by me! We found numerous snook, but they were all little ones. We also got quite a few really baby tarpon, five pounds or so. As we made our return trip we found some of the larger snook and the fishing became just like the previous day, except my luck was not as good. I had four strikes, hooked two fish. The hook pulled on one and the other one cut me off. So I didn’t get a legal sized fish on the second day. It was still awesome fishing and I want to publicly thank Don for two incredible days.

I stopped at Mark Nichols’s house on the way home and had dinner with he and Mrs. Nichols on Sunday night, a delightful evening with good friends. Monday Mark and I went out looking for pompano in the Indian River Lagoon. We got a variety of fish including jack crevalle, ladyfish, a lookdown, a black drum, and Mark got every angler’s favorite unexpected catch, a toadfish. Some folks call these mother-in-law fish. As I type this I’m wishing I’d gotten a picture of it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to hold it and I doubt if Mark would have either. The wily pompanos eluded us, though.
Mark will soon be introducing a new soft plastic bait which looks like a glass minnow and is easily cast with a fly rod. I cannot wait to get a bag of these things. They will be absolutely deadly on a variety of fish.

So that’s the fishing report this week. I hope it was enjoyable reading!

Remember- Life is short- GO FISHING!

Life is great and I love my work!

John Kumiski
www.spottedtail.com
member Florida Outdoor Writers Association (www.fowa.org), Southeastern Outdoor Press Association (www.seopa.org), Indian River Guides association (www.irga.org)