Jim's luck runs out - for now

Wanted to try Jonathan Dickinson Park one more time this year, so I headed up there yesterday. Conditions were similar to what they were a week ago or so, with one big difference.  Instead of an outgoing tide, I'd have an incoming tide.   But I figured as long as the water was moving in one direction or the other, the fish I wanted to catch, called Jack Crevalle, or just "jacks," would be out looking for mullet being pulled along by the moving water.

When I arrived at 10:30 or so, the tide was pretty much at bottom, with the roots of the mangroves along the shoreline exposed, and no flow whatsoever.  At the boat ramp I met a fellow kayaker who also was just about to launch his boat.  He said he'd been at John D. McArthur Park in north Palm Beach recently and had seen very large jacks, in the 20 pound range, chasing mullet.  He'd not been to Jonathan Dickinson before and I told him he'd also likely find jacks here as well, but probably as big as he'd seen at McArthur.

I didn't expect much to be happening for the first couple hours, not until the tide changed direction and water began flowing in from the ocean.  That proved to be the case.  Around 12:30 I did notice a bit of movement in the tide and it was around then that the kayaker I'd talked to earlier paddled nearby.  Just as he was asking me if I'd had any luck, he had a strike from what proved to be a jack, which he was able to reel in and release at the side of his kayak.

I was happy to see him hook a fish but it proved to be false encouragement.  I don't know why but the incoming tide never did pick up much speed.  I could see the water rising up the mangrove roots but the current was almost imperceptible.  You would think the speed of the water coming in would be similar to what it was flowing out.  But to judge from my observation yesterday, apparently not.  I do know that high and low tides in a body of water differ according to the time of the lunar cycle in which they occur.  There is a higher tidal differential at the full and new moon than during the the rest of the cycle. Yesterday I happened to see the moon in the afternoon sky and it was half full.   So possibly the slow movement of the water coming in had to do with where we were then in the lunar cycle.  If I'd stuck around for a second change of tide, the outflow might have been just as torpid as the inflow.

An hour or so later I noticed my fellow kayaker lashing his boat to the top of his car at the ramp and then pulling away.  The fish I'd seen him catch may have been his only action of the day.

I stuck it out for another couple hours but never got a single strike in four hours of pedaling up and down the Loxahatchee River.  I called it quits a little before three o'clock.

This was my final fishing trip of 2013.  Too bad the year had to end with a skunk.  But I can't complain about my luck here in Florida over the past few weeks.   When you have a good day on the water, you think you've finally figured out something about why the fish were biting.   Comes another day when you don't even get a bite and you're left scratching your head again.  But that's fishing.

To read more of my writing about fishing, check out TRUSTING THE RIVER on Amazon.com.  It's also now available as a downloadable audio book on Audible.com.

Hope to see you on the water.

Riverbend Park 12/9-13

Since I did pretty well at Riverbend Park last week, I decided to go back there again today.  Weather conditions were quite different.  Last week, the sky was overcast all day and there was virtually no wind.  Today it was bright and sunny and there was a pretty good breeze coming up from the southeast.

Today I managed to find my way back to Cowpen Lake without any wrong turns, for a change.  I realize now that there are two quick left turns to take, once you pass under the first foot bridge on Old River Slough.

Last week it took me most of the day to realize that small surface poppers would catch fish.  So today, that's what I started out with.  However, the fish weren't interested.   (Naturally.)  Maybe they couldn't see the popper well, due to the somewhat wind-roiled surface of the lake.  Or maybe (probably) there was a different reason altogether why they wouldn't hit anything on the surface.

I spent the first hour throwing small poppers with the fly rod and went back to it at various times of the day. But in fact I caught nothing on the fly rod at all, not even when I switched to a big, hairy streamer that is supposed to look like a bait fish.

Whenever I switched to spinning tackle I caught fish almost immediately.  I used the same plastic fluke-worm that caught that five pound bass last Friday.  No five pounders today but several fish in the 15-17 inch range.

Around three o'clock I spotted a large gator sunning himself along the shoreline of the small island in the middle of the lake.  I picked up my camera and began shooting video of him and he definitely didn't like that.  He turned toward me and slipped into the water, heading in my direction.  I doubt he  had hostile intent but I pedaled on out of there anyway, just in case.  Later I had the unusual experience of hooking a turtle in the butt.  I knew I had something heavy on the line when I first felt the tug.  I thought I might have hooked a rock but it seemed to be trying to get away from me.  Once I reeled it up to the surface I saw what it was.  I was able to reach down with my pliers and pull the hook out easily. No doubt it was a less amusing experience for that turtle than it was for me.

I'm sure I would have caught more fish had I used spinning tackle all day.  But I like the challenge of the fly rod.  It's also fun to see a fish come up and swallow a popper you've been slowly twitching along the surface.

We'll be leaving Florida for a few weeks soon.  For the moment, there's plenty of water back in the cypress swamp there at Riverbend Park.  I'm sure I'll give it a try again when we return in January.

Had some good news this morning before I left the house.  Got an email from audible.com alerting me that my audio book TRUSTING THE RIVER is now for sale on their website.  I spent many hours recording, editing and mastering the tracks that make up this audio book.  I'd never done anything quite like this before and not until this morning was I sure that all that effort didn't turn out to be a colossal waste of time.  Audible has strict standards for audio that they put their name on and I doubted for a long time that I was going to be able to meet them.  Audible allows a free first download for anyone interested in audio books.  If you're an angler and like to listen to something fishing-related on your car stereo on the long drive to a fishing spot, give it a try.

Once again Blogger isn't going to accept the video file for this outing (perhaps the file is too big, since I processed it in HD), but it will be available on youtube:   http://youtu.be/uObnBGyVHzQ

West Atlantic Park, 12-6-13

     Sometimes you need a Plan B.
     Yesterday I intended to fish salt water up at the Snook Islands in Lake Worth, about 15 miles north of Delray Beach.  These islands are man-made.  I think they're called the "Snook Islands," not because there are many snook around them but because the government agency that created them thought (or hoped) that snook might eventually be attracted to these ovals of sand, rock and gravel that were dumped in Lake Worth and then planted with mangroves.  I've fished them several times in the past and haven't done particularly well.  But I've seen videos of fish, including snook, caught there in recent years, so I know my not-very-good luck there may be an anomaly.  Anyway, now that I'm learning something about the importance of tides in salt water fishing, I thought I'd apply that knowledge and give that spot another chance.
    I checked the tides before leaving home and saw that high tide was around noon, meaning that there'd be slack water an hour before and an hour afterward, when probably there wouldn't be much action.  It seemed best to arrive in the early afternoon, when the water would begin to move.
   I left home around 12:30 and got to the boat ramp around 1:15.  I was so focused on getting my kayak in the water and paying $10 bucks to park my trailer in a nearby lot (and so avoid a ticket from the police officer who was parked in the mostly empty lot)  that I didn't really notice the conditions out on Lake Worth itself.
   When I last tried this spot a major marine construction project was underway on the south side of the Lake Avenue bridge.  This was back in the spring and I hoped that by now the project would have been completed.  In fact, I found that yesterday a large quadrant of water on the south side of the bridge was cordoned off to boat traffic.  Instead of hugging the western shoreline, as I usually do, to avoid the sometimes rough seas out in the middle of Lake Worth,  I would have to pedal almost halfway across it, so that I could then pass beneath the bridge and head up toward the Snook Islands.  Between the boat traffic up and down the Intracoastal Waterway, of which Lake Worth is part, and a 15-20 mph breeze coming in off the nearby ocean from the southeast, there was a pretty substantial chop on the water--more than I thought prudent to be out in a 12 foot kayak.  I'd only gotten out a few hundred yards from the boat ramp before I made a 180 and headed back to shore.  I was disappointed and a little frustrated, especially about the ten bucks I'd just wasted on a parking spot I'd only needed for 20 minutes.  But better safe than sorry.
   Once I re-trailered the kayak, I considered alternatives.   The nearest salt water destinations were too far away, given that it was already almost 2 p.m., with sunset at this time of year only a few hours away.
   It seemed my choices were the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge in  Boynton Beach, or the small lake at West Delray Park.  I opted for the latter mostly because its shape provides a bit better protection from the afternoon breezes than does the long and narrow canal at Loxahatchee.
  I arrived at West Delray around 2:45 and figured I had a little over two hours to fish, before I'd need to be packing up before the park gates closed.  I started out with the fly rod, throwing small poppers as I'd done earlier in the week at Riverbend Park (see previous blog entry.)  A few fish were hitting the surface along a shoreline that was protected from the wind.  But none were interested in my popper.
  I then pedaled across the lake to the western shoreline, which is lined with sawgrass and where I know some pretty big bass lurk and even some snakeheads, having caught one there last spring.   I changed over to spinning tackle and a plastic worm.  That usually does the trick.  Not yesterday.  I added a slip sinker to my rig to get the worm down deeper.  All that did was allow my hook to catch and snag bottom structure.
  Eventually I went to a different kind of worm with a thicker body and tail than the "trick" worms I usually poke through the point of my hooks.  I believe it's called a "fluke" worm.  It's got a bit more weight than the trick worm and you don't need to add lead to get it down in the water column pretty quickly.  A bass grabbed it on the first cast but let it go when I tried to set the hook.  But this was encouraging.
  I stuck with the fluke worm for a while and then I had a solid strike a few feet from the sawgrass shoreline, close to an island in the middle of the small lake.  This fish immediately went for the sawgrass, where my line could get tangled and allow the fish to break free.  Fortunately for me, since I'd thought I'd be fishing salt water, I had brought my heavier line and reel with me.  I tightened down the drag and refused to let the fish get into the sawgrass, as another fish had done a couple weeks ago when I was using my lighter-weight reel and line.
  I cranked the fish toward the surface and sensed it about to jump.  But it was too big and heavy to elevate out of the water.  I pulled it in beside the kayak and lifted it by hand up out of the water. Here in Florida, bass of the size of this one are not uncommon.   I don't have a scale with me on the kayak, so I don't know how heavy this one was.  But my tape measure had it as 21 inches long. A conversion chart you can find on the internet says a typical 21 inch bass measures between 5 and 6 pounds.  All I know is that when I pulled it out of the water, it felt as solid as a brick in my hand.  If it was a female, its weight may have been augmented by a belly full of eggs that she would be depositing a month or two from now.
  The bass  had swallowed the hook and fluke worm too deep to extricate it safely with my pliers, so I just snipped the line and spent several minutes reviving it alongside the kayak.  Eventually, its huge mouth clamped down on my hand as I held it and so I let it go.
    I went back to the fly rod for a little while after that with no more luck than I'd had earlier.  Then it was time to head back home.

To read more of my writing about fishing, check out my e-book TRUSTING THE RIVER, which you can download at amazon.com, or my soon-to-be available audio book of the same title on audible.com.

Thanks for reading my blog.  I hope to see you on the water.  Leave a comment if you can so I'll know someone is actually reading these posts.
 

Catching jacks at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, 12-4-13

Wanted to try some salt water fishing yesterday.  Weather and tide looked good for Jonathan Dickinson State Park.  I had had a bit of luck there a few weeks ago, so that's where I went.

Arrived at the boat ramp around 10:30, just a few minutes after high tide.  The end of the dock next to the ramp was actually submerged - that's how high the tide was.  I started out pedaling around mangrove shorelines just downstream of the launch.  I was throwing a gold spoon since the sun was strong and would really make that lure flash in the murky water.  The tide stayed slack for about an hour or so after I put in.  I wasn't seeing much mullet action on the surface and nothing was interested in my glittering spoon below it.  Around noon the tide began to move out a bit.  I came to an area where a lot of fish were swirling on the surface.  They were probably mullet or some other kind of bait fish but I thought maybe some predators would be lurking beneath them.  I threw the spoon many times through the swirls without a strike - enough to know nothing was interested in it.  I snipped off the spoon and tied on a Mirrodine crankbait, which had caught some jacks the last time I fished that area. That didn't work either.

The outgoing tide picked up and I pedaled upstream against it, toward the boat ramp.  I was trolling the Mirrodine more than casting it.  I knew that pedaling upstream against the tide would give it plenty of movement.   I hooked my first jack not far from a sign in the water that announces to boaters that they are entering JD Park and a no-wake zone.  This jack was about a pound or two.  I caught a second one a few minutes later that was about twice the size of the first one.  Those jacks are strong!  The second one nearly bent the end of my rod beneath my kayak.  Pretty soon I had a third and then a fourth.  At that point I switched to a fly rod to see if I could entice a strike on that.  I started out with a Deceiver pattern.  After about twenty minutes I hadn't had a strike.  I switched over to a Clouser Minnow, which has a bit more weight and might sink down further than the Deceiver.  Sure enough, I hooked a jack that gave me all I could handle.  I took a video of that fish when I got it into the kayak, before releasing it.  I hooked another jack on the fly rod a few minutes later but it came off.

The outgoing tide slowed down a bit after three o'clock and so did the action.  I eventually switched back to spinning tackle.  I hooked one more jack on the Mirrodine, which was much smaller than the others.  It's finally sinking in to me that you need moving water to get action in salt water, especially in these tidal estuaries.  The tide flowing in or out must move the baitfish, which in turn whets the appetite of predator fish.

By four o'clock I could see that the action was over for a while, so I got my kayak back on the trailer and headed home.

You're supposed to be able to upload video to this site but all I get are error messages.  To see the video, check out my youtube site:  http://youtu.be/1vDBe5vm-Mc

To read more of my writing, search for TRUSTING THE RIVER on Amazon.com.

Hope to see you out on the water

Riverbend Park fishing, 12/20-2013

Went up to Riverbend Park near Jupiter, Florida yesterday.  First time I've been there in quite a while. The river that "bends" through the park is the Loxahatchee at its northern end, close to where it feeds into the ocean.  The Loxhatchee itself up there actually has some pretty good fishing - last year I caught a small tarpon not far from the canoe/kayak rental launch.  But I like to take my kayak back into what I call the cypress swamp, which sits off to the side of the river.  It consists of a series of small lakes and what are called "sloughs." I've had good luck on one of these lakes called Cowpen and intended to fish it yesterday.   During the latter part of the spring and for much of the summer this area is inaccessible due to low water.  But after the rainy season it all fills back up and you can get back into areas that hold some pretty nice largemouth bass.  It's rained a lot here recently so I thought I'd be OK.  But before leaving home in the morning, I called the kayak/canoe rental place and was assured there was plenty of water back there now.

I pulled into the kayak launch area around 10 a.m.  It was a bit cool, the sky was overcast and there was no wind, which was pretty unusual for this time of year, as storms up north tend to stir things up down here.  I took the water's temperature - 70 degrees, pretty cool for south Florida.  Bass seem to like the cooler temperatures at this time of year because it tells them they need to start feeding in preparation for nest building and spawning, which starts to occur in a few weeks.  As I slid my kayak into the water I was thinking today ought to be pretty good for fishing.  Of course, you never really know about that until you get out on the water and start casting.

I pedaled my Hobie Pro Angler around what's called the "picnic loop" and got out onto the main Loxahatchee.  Then it was just a short cruise down to the spot where you pull over to shore, get out of the kayak and haul it up and over a berm that separates the river from the cypress swamp.  I'm glad I bought the two-wheeled cart as an accessory for my Pro Angler.  It fits into slots behind my seat and I can lift it out and fit it under the kayak to help portage it from the trailer to the water or up and over barriers, such as that dirt berm between the Lox and the cypress swamp.

Once over the berm and back in the kayak I saw that there was two or three feet of water beneath me. However, in that first slough there are spots where cypress stumps, or "knees" as they're called, protrude from the water.  These could damage the Pro Angler's Mirage Drive pedal system, which extends below the kayak for about 18 inches.  So while passing through the sloughs I generally pull the Mirage Drive up out of its well and use a conventional paddle to propel myself along.

Once you get back into those sloughs, finding your way through them can be a challenge.  I've got a map from the Park Service, which shows how to find your way to various places back in the cypress swamp.  However, only some of the sloughs are visible on the map.  I suppose these are the largest ones, but once you get back among them, it's hard to tell those on the map from those that aren't.  I've been to Cowpen Lake at least half a dozen times and always make several wrong turns before I finally find my way back there.  Yesterday was no exception.  I checked the map before I set off and saw clearly that I needed to turn off Old River Run Slough to the left just after passing beneath the first foot bridge that I came to.  Well, I did that, but still managed to get lost for about 30 minutes, until I found my way back to the slough that led to Cowpen Lake.

I thought by then the sun would have burned through the clouds, as it typically does here by mid-morning.  That never happened - the sky stayed overcast all day long.  But maybe the lack of sunshine also contributed to the lack of wind, which for me was a positive.  It's much easier to fly cast and maneuver a small boat as a fishing platform when you're not being blown hither and yon.  In my experience, windless days here in south Florida between November and May are pretty rare.

I started off throwing a surface popper with my fly rod.  I had a couple hits from what looked like bluegill, whose mouths were too small to swallow the size 4 popper I was using.  I was pretty sure there were bass along the weedy shoreline where I was casting; they just weren't at all interested in my popper.  They must have been aware of this bug-sized object gurgling along on the surface above them but they just ignored it.

So after an hour or so I switched to spinning tackle and a black plastic worm, which I've found will catch bass anywhere.  I pedaled back into a small cove off the main lake where last year at this time I caught a five pound largemouth.  I didn't pull in any fish that big yesterday but within a few minutes of switching to the worm I had my first bass of the day.  Two more followed quickly after that one.

Assured that there were actually fish in the water where I was casting, and that they would eat, I went back to the fly-rod.  I've found that bass in that lake become more active as the day wears on, possibly because the water begins to warm from the sun.  That never did happen yesterday and I gave up on the fly rod a second time and went back to the worm.

By this point I was fishing the main lake and I noticed lots of fish--possibly bluegill--rising in the open water between a small island and the western shoreline of the lake. I decided it was time for the fly rod again.  I threw my popper in that area and didn't raise a fish.  I thought:  if these are bluegill, maybe I should downsize my fly so they can get it in their mouths.  Sometimes I'd rather catch bluegill on a fly rod than bass on spinning tackle.   I snipped off the size 4 and tied on a size 8 (with fishing flies, a larger number means a smaller fly).  Well, I caught three fish in five minutes - two bass and a bluegill. Clearly, they wanted something smaller than what I'd been throwing.

I stayed with that small popper for the rest of the afternoon.  I caught the biggest fish of the day on it, when I worked the popper slowly over an area where the tips of some submerged grass protruded from the water. I wasn't catching fish on every cast but on every cast there was a possibility that a fish would attack it, which is all you really need.

As we're now getting to that time of year when each day gets shorter than the previous one, I noted around three o'clock that already I was starting to lose the light, as the sun never had managed to dissipate the clouds.  Having gotten lost that morning on my way to Cowpen, I was a little concerned that the same thing might happen on the way back to the kayak launch.  The Park itself closes at sunset (around 5:30), when the gates are locked shut until the following morning, and anyone still in the Park would have a tough time getting out.  I still had two and a half hours to find my way to my vehicle, but as the afternoon wore on I started thinking more and more about heading back.  Around 3:50 a bass came up and ate my popper and I decided then that it would be a good idea to finish the day with a fish caught on what would be my last cast.

For some reason, I've never gotten lost on that maze of sloughs when I'm leaving Cowpen Lake (although I do tend to worry about it).  The way back to the Loxahatchee always seems obvious on the return journey.  I timed the trip back:  40 minutes from Cowpen to the kayak launch, including another hump up and over the berm between the swamp and the river.

I'll take a day like yesterday anytime.  Nothing huge, not fish on every cast, but enough action to keep me hopeful.  Most of the fish I caught had come on the fly rod, and all of those had hit a surface fly, which is always a lot of fun.  One park worker had buzzed around Cowpen in a jon boat with a trolling motor, doing I know not what.   He was the only person I saw on the water all day.

I shot some video of yesterday's trip and am trying to include it with this blog post but it doesn't seem to be uploading.  If it doesn't show up here, you can view it on youtube at:    http://youtu.be/t1NPPnmMgP8

To see more of my writing about fishing, check out my e-book TRUSTING THE RIVER, available for Kindle on Amazon.com.  Here's the link to that:

http://www.amazon.com/TRUSTING-THE-RIVER-Jim-Witham-ebook/dp/B00EBWELOE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386086241&sr=8-1&keywords=trusting+the+river