Everglades Fishing Keeps Changing

May 1, 2008
everything keeps changing
Filed under: Ship's Log — Captain Ned Small @ 3:50 pm

We had a great day yesterday. It actually lasted into this morning which really made it a ’spectacular day and a half.’ It came crashing to a halt today at high tide when the wind came in from the east at 20. Still, yesterday was the last of the quarter moon and the tide was just perfect, the wind came in from the northeast all day and the water on the flats was crystal clear, there were reds and snook all over the place. We were on visible fish all day, in ‘going aground’ inches of water.

Today was the first of the new moon, I think, in any case the tide was much higher and the wind stronger, but we saw fish all morning, snook and reds, when the wind struck, we beat feet for the backcountry and found fish there too.

David Wiggins and Ed Neves holding down the foredeck, with many chances over the past few days for sight shooting at tarpon, redfish and snook.

Now the wind is going into the south and everything is changing again.

April 28, 2008
borderline conditions
Filed under: Ship's Log — Captain Ned Small @ 4:23 pm

There are a few tarpon around, the wind, weather and tide are such that you have to make some kind of decision early in the day. The best wind and tide window is short right now and you have to commit to a plan, a route, a species to target early in the morning. Any decision is good, as long as it’s tarpon on fly. We jumped and fought a sixty pounder through seven leaps and nine runs today, then lost it to ah, …err, well, I guess we just lost it. It was great. That was a sleeper David Wiggins hooked in the Choke Hole, a totally layed up sleeper, ten feet off the bow, just a tiny little roll-out cast, two twitches of the purple toad…

We tagged a smaller one too. A fish of maybe 25 pounds, #01566. That one was caught by David’s partner, Ed Neves.

Captain Ned Small
239-695-4993
www.sightfish.com/
sightfish@embarqmail.com