August 2007- Flamingo in Florida Bay the winds have been light and the water is clear but on the warm side. This week the water temps were 85 and the fishing has been very good the last week. Prior to this the water temps were over 90 and the fishing was only good early in the morning. The water temps will climb soon again until we have a rainy day to cool it back down which can be any day. This week David and Alex Torbert, both very good young anglers, fished with me and caught 16 snook. Six of them on fly which was their first snook on fly, 5 redfish, largest at11 lbs and a tarpon all out of Flamingo. Small Tarpon right now are all over the place. The average size is 12 lbs but there are larger fish in the upper 20s to 30s around these little guys. They are a blast on fly and they’re eating well. Snook can be found around mullets mud’s on the very shallow flats in Florida Bay. Eduardo Arana and Mariano Garcia fished with me on the 18th and caught a nice 11lb snook sitting in a pot hole on a Berkley Gulp shad. This fish would have been perfect on fly! We also caught 6 more snook around some of the islands at Flamingo and could have had more but the big bad sharks started up! Redfish are on the move now from flat to flat. Some days finding them on the beaches and flats can be easy and other days a little more difficult as time is not on our side to check every spot of Florida Bay! But when I find them it can be a fly fisherman’s dream with a good size 7 lber. Merijo Attong caught an 18lb red casting to a moving school of about 25. By Flamingo’s standards, this is a very large red. The nice thing is that there were a lot of these big reds around that day!Biscayne Bay is hot right now with big schools of bones on the outside flats on days the water temps are high, the days the water cools down these fish are pushing to the western shore especially around sun up these bones are a sucker for a small crab. Mark Schmidt from PA caught a 10 lb bone on a shrimp pattern fly I tied myself. The school we fished must have had 50 or more fish in it. Small Tarpon are also cruising the shore line on the outside of Old Rhodes to Key Largo. Keep looking for rolling fish in small schools tight to the trees. Most schools are around 6-8 fish and can be up to 40lbs they are eating D.O.A shrimp and any kind of small white or chartreuse fly And moving water areas in 2-3 foot are finding permit on the outside as well they are eating silver dollar size crabs. A couple of weeks ago we had a chance to go fun fish in the keys and check out a couple of new ideas and areas. As captains we do the poling not the fishing, but this trip we had the chance to fish and I’m glad we did, we caught 6 permit all on crabs the largest was estimated near 40 lbs, these crazy fish were schooling in a strong current which made poling to them a little tough but well worth it! These guys were fighting for the bait like stripe marlin on teasers in Ecuador, 4-5 fish going after a crab each cast, I wish I would have brought more crabs!
Till next time, go have fun and bend a rod!
Capt. Jim Hale
786-255-1788
