The Report from Spotted Tail 2/26/11
Upcoming Events
March 5- MINWR Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details. Last call for the Show and Tell Seminar! Prime slots still available!
March 6- Mosquito Lagoon On-the-Water Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details. Last call!
Fishing success (as frequently happens) was up and down this week.
On Tuesday John Anders and Heather, visitors from Ontario, joined me for a half day on the Mosquito Lagoon. Although it was a beautiful day we didn’t see many fish and the ones we did see were not very cooperative. Heather finally broke the ice with a nice trout that whacked a jerk bait. John got two rat reds on a RipTide Weedless Jig. Sometimes guides will complain that the fish were there and the fishermen couldn’t catch them but Mr. Anders is a tournament fisherman and was very competent. It just wasn’t happnin, mon!
Tuesday night I had a nice visit with the Florida Fly Fishing Association. The program went well. Thanks for having me, gentlemen!
Thursday fly fisher Five O’Clock Bob from Vermont shared the Spotted Tail with me. The weather was crapalacious- cold windy, foggy, overcast. How windy you ask? It hit 25 mph, measured with an anemometer- not exactly prime flycasting weather. Bob had a fine red nail his black bunny booger on the third cast of the day. The fish broke off. It would turn out to be the only bite we got. Amazingly we saw quite a few other fish but it was borderline unfishable. Any fish seen under those conditions, much less caught, was a major victory. The water was real low- I had to get out and push a couple times.
Thursday I had a split half day. In the morning Dan LaRosa and Ron Ten Berge joined me. The weather was awesome. There should have been fish everywhere. There wasn’t, although we certainly saw enough that we should have caught some. The gentlemen had some fine casts, lures right in the fish, both trout and reds. We found them both tailing and laid up on the flats. We had one strike all morning, and did not hook the fish. Yes- the dreaded skunk visited.
The afternoon trip was with old friend Susan Cocking, up from Miami to write a piece about redfishing with the space shuttle going up. We got the skunk off pretty early with a nice trout that fell for a DOA Shrimp.
Then we found a school of redfish and got them on the DOA, the RipTide Weedless Jig, some real (dead) shrimp, and on fly with the redfish worm. I wasn’t keeping tally but we probably got eight or nine.
Then we raced down to watch the shuttle blast off. It went! It was spectacular! Take that you dirty Klingons!
Friday Rod Miller made love to my Yamaha for me while I got new tires for my van and trailer. New tires on the van- it’s almost as good as…, well, no, not that good. But pretty darned good, none the less. And the Yamaha is good for another year now. So let’s go fishing!
Embrace simplicity.
Life is great and I love my work!
Life is short- go fishing!
John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com/
All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2011. All rights are reserved.
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