Time for an update

Ok, where to begin? I suppose I'll have to go back to the end of April, with a week bouncing around Florida with Stuart Bradow. We started near Orlando on some very fishy bass water. Stuart's daughter Sarah met up with us for some bigmouth action and proceeded to show the boys how it's done.

Poppers and big hairy topwater bugs were the order of the day, with angry greenfish exploding through the roof to destroy whatever made a lot of noise.
As the sun set, Stuart and I hit the road to the Keys, driving overnight and finally getting in to Big Pine just in time to drop the boat in and cruise the flats in search of whatever we could find.

I'd heard it had been a tough spring, with water temps over the winter being a bit colder than usual. Well, we found out the hard way just how true that was. With three long days spent prowling between Big Pine and Key West, we only spotted a handful of bones and permit, only one of which was even remotely interested in having a look at a fly. Ouch. We did manage a few mangrove snappers around some wrecks, but the big boys just didn't want to play. It was time to change it up. Hitting the road again, we cruised up to the Tampa Bay area and met up with Stuart's brother to chase speckled trout and redfish. At this point the Florida boys were resorting to bait, but I just had to throw flies.

We got into the trout pretty heavy, with some big schools working in the bay. I also managed to pick up a lizardfish and a wee baby jack crevalle for good measure. And by wee, I mean wee.



At this point, you may be asking yourself "Really? That's it?" Well, yeah. That's it. We didn't see a lot of fish. And that's just fine with me. We fished hard and did everything right, and for the most part, the fish just weren't there. What was there was great weather, good friends, cold beers, and a lot of laughs. And that's every bit as important. Which brings us to the next thing....

Ready to Rumble

It's snowing in Pinedale. Again. And it looks like it'll keep doing that more or less all this week. I was planning on heading to Texas to chase reds and bass but unfortunately the trip got canceled and left me stuck in the frozen north. Oh wait, no it didn't. After some last-minute scrambling, a plan was formulated. I'm heading down to Florida to meet up with my buddy Stu for an epic week of chasing whatever swims. The plan for now is to hit up big bass, tailing redfish and some hefty seatrout for a day then blast down to the Keys and get salty. We'll try to find some peacock bass on the way down in some of the freshwater canals in south Fl. Neither of us has targeted them specifically before, so it could be good or a complete disaster. Hopefully it's the former.

We're looking at hitting a few different places in the Keys. It's the beginning of prime time for the big 3 down there: tarpon, bonefish, and permit. There are also a bunch of lesser targeted fish to keep us occupied if the classics aren't cooperating. Snapper, snook, sharks, you name it. My outlook: if it swims in front of me, it gets hit with a fly. We'll end up at mile 0 in Key West and may even head out to the Maraquesas for some less traveled flats before turning around and heading north again to meet up with Stu's brother and a little offshore action in the Gulf.

That's a lot of fishing. And we've got a week to do it, which means we're going to be totally fried by the end of it. My last trip to the Keys was pretty much a blowout, with heavy winds making fishing extremely difficult. The weather outlook this time looks a lot better. Even so, I'll probably be checking the updates all day tomorrow as I'm sitting in airports. One of the big problems with living in the middle of nowhere is the simple fact that "you can't get there from here, ayuh." There's pretty much no way to get a direct flight to anywhere. Oh well. I'll post updates as we go and there will be plenty of pictures and possible video. Stay tuned...