An unusual catch with unusual friends
From August until October or so I had the opportunity to fish with a guy named Brad form out of state. He was born and raised and Colorado, but came down here for a few months to compete for a spot to be an AC-130 pilot which was pretty cool if you ask me. While he was down here he was looking for someone to show him the ropes and help put him on some fish. Austin ran into him first at Jerry B’s but soon put me in contact with him. While he was down here we caught quite a few reds and some black drum as well.
On one of our trips we went into the Lighthouse Lakes and got on quite a few reds, they were every where and doing what I like to call crawling. Crawling is when the water is just shallow enough for them to not swim great so they use their pectoral fins to drag them a long the bottom, it looks as if they were crawling when you see them coming your way. This type of redfishing is easy because all you have to do is throw a small surface fly, #4 gurglers or VIPs, 1′ in front of them and start popping it. They won’t always take immediately, but if they don’t it makes for an exciting take. They’ll follow it for 20′ sometimes and you can see the wake the entire time, right when they are fixing to eat they’ll lift their heads out of the water and crush your fly from above. The reason they do this is because their mouths are on bottom and to eat something on the surface they have too.
Around the same time a friend of Adam’s came down his name is Eric but we call him EGG. He to is a long rodder who targets trout frequently but lives in Northern California. While he was down I was working quite a bit and didn’t have the time to fish with him like I would have. Adam tried to put him on fish as did Austin but didn’t have any luck. While fishing with Adam they did run into a few tailing fish but chances were nil. One of the few shots that EGG got he hit the 26″+ fish right on the head. Conditions were less than ideal with rain and overcast the entire time he was here.
On one of this last days we decided to put the fly rods down and do some bow fishing for stingray. that day we all shot at least one and had a good time. As Austin and I rounded a corner in my boat and started poling up the shore we saw what had to be a 45″ red cruising the flats, with only a bow rigged we had no choice but to leave the fish and watch it work the shoreline. After a couple of hours of all of us taking turns poling the boat and shooting some rays the sun broke the clouds and I decided to see if I can’t find EGG some fish in this time. We cast to a slick at first and he caught a few trout, nothing of real good size but he had fun. I set up another drift only to have my trolling motor run out of battery half around the slick, I poled us closer to the slick and let us drift. He picked up a few more but it was time to go home. On the way in there is a drain and some pot holes on the backside of an island, as we approached I slowed the boat and told him to start hitting pot holes with a deep fly and we’ll see what happens. On his 3rd cast he picks up a 19″ redfish, his first. I could sleep easy.
The next day I had to myself, I ran out to jetties and it was the tail end of tarpon season. I didn’t expect to see much but went out any ways. After some time of throwing my tarpon fly I hook into a good fighting fish for it’s size. I bring it to the rocks and see it’s a Lookdown, it was only second but much bigger than the first I caught with lot more fight. It just goes to show that when throwing a general baitfish pattern down here there is no telling what you may catch. Sorry for the long post.
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