Thanks for the kind words FFY! You know the ‘reel’ struggle.. Im back in San Diego now for just a couple months & then I am headed back to Florida to open my fishing lodge back up for Tarpon season & more.. No, I do not miss Yellowtail fishing. Especially with my refrigerator currently stacked full of their fillets and forearms still burning..
CWC harvests, catches & releases them every week..No need to bore the masses with redundant duplicate reports..Pressure is omnipresent..
Its no secret that every fishable day here you can pull 1 up. The same cannot be said about others..
Speaking of Seriolas, those local thirty class+ brutes are tearing up turds on trebles today & even productive for live bait ‘Draggers’ around the good ol’ football field…
They are probably the easiest fish to aquire, especially in LJ, where marine reserves are on the North, East & South putting you right in the productive arena..
I enjoy a challenge on artificials. True formidable adversaries..Don’t get me wrong, pulling’ on any fish is fun to me, even a sabiki full of ‘backs, but dropping a rock on someones head from the balcony above just isn’t as rewarding as a search & destroy, catch & release mission to me.. Especially in those clear shallow Florida waters where everything counts against the angler..I know, I know…I’m preaching’ to the choir when talking tactics with a fellow fly-fisher!…
We racked up quite a few impressive catches in and around these Key islands as well as in the Everglades. A few days into the trek were were already on some juvenile tarpon on the fly with some clousers and crab patterns Dave tied for us. We also racked up well over 6K+ on the ol’ Dodge six-banger roundtrip..We hit almost every body of water along the route, and even some ponds seemed like mirages from a distance from all the Highway-Hypnosis I incurred..It was nice to take my time as I saw fit this round, while also using my trusty google earth app to spot any abandoned empty pools at every fill up and stop along the journey..Once in Florida we located those monster snook while fishing some bridge pilings and fenders at night with the glow 8” StreakZ XL. Fishing this close to barnacle encrusted structure allots you a forty second beast fight at best to an inevitable heartbreak break-off.. I am going to try these electric suckers out now on the Newport Spottys & Calicos next week with Z-Man’s glow-enhanced colors
(IE: Glow, Chartreuse/Glow, Redbone, Nuked Chicken, Nuked Pilchard, and more..)
