Snook and ladyfish

Spent most of yesterday fishing the Indian River west of Hutchinson Island.  Hadn't been there in six or seven weeks.  I had made an attempt to fish there last week but had a minor traffic accident on the drive north and never managed to get the kayak in the water. The trip yesterday went more smoothly.

Arrived a little before eleven at high tide.  I trolled the Mirrodine along the mangrove shoreline on Blind Creek.  A snook darted out from behind one of the mangroves and snatched my lure after I'd only been out there a few minutes.

An hour later I'd had no more action and switched to a fly rod and cast various flies toward the mangroves where Blind Creek narrows before emptying into the Indian River. At one point a snook I'd estimate at between 25 and 30 inches cruised down the center of Blind Creek.  I saw it coming and tried to toss my fly in its path but I was probably a bit late.

Nothing else was interested in the flies I was casting either, so once I got out beyond the mouth of Blind Creek I went back to spinning tackle for a while.  I tried drifting a DOA shrimp under a float across the flat at the mouth of Blind Creek.  It got pretty windy out there.  I was seeing a lot of surface action.  I assumed it was mullet but thought I'd try a popper on my fly rod for a bit, just in case other fish were mixed in with the mullet. I've heard that trout sometimes will show on the surface.  Not long after I switched to the fly rod, something boiled up on my popper but missed it. Then something struck and the fight was on.  It jumped several times.  It looked to be 15 to 20 inches and silvery.  A small tarpon?  By the time I got it close to my kayak, a few minutes later, I had figured out it was a ladyfish.  I've caught them before but they were about half the size of this one and hadn't given much of a fight.

By the time I released the ladyfish, I had drifted close to one of the arms that stick out from the mouth of Blind Creek.  There was a commotion beneath some mangroves overhanging the water.  I saw a bubble line and as I got closer noticed that it was a plume of water draining out from a culvert further back in the mangroves.  I worked my popper around the edges of this plume and could see shapes swimming around in it.  Something rather chunky--a redfish?--came up and smacked the popper.  But as often happens when I see a fish a moment before it attacks a fly, I struck back too soon and ripped the hook from its mouth.  I hung around there a few minutes, trying to interest whatever else might be back there in my popper.  Around this time I noticed a pair of dolphins cruising about fifty yards offshore.  I figured that was it for this spot and decided to move back into Blind Creek.

The tide was moving out by then and I thought I might find more fish hanging around the various culverts along the shoreline of Blind Creek, as water from the mosquito control ponds emptied out of them.  However, none of the culverts showed much of an outflow.  I worked the shorelines with the Mirrodine again back to where I'd launched my kayak earlier.  I arrived there around four o'clock and I wasn't quite ready to call it a day. There's a tide pond on the east side of A1A that might hold fish.  I spent about half an hour there. I switched back to a popper for a few minutes and just before I passed under the A1A bridge on my way back to the launch point, something boiled up on it. Another ladyfish?

All in all, not a bad day.  I've heard ladyfish are fun to catch.  I'd be happy to tangle with them all day if the bigger ones are like the one I caught yesterday. Too bad I didn't recognize what I was seeing sooner than I did.  Well, next time.

Here's some video I shot of the trip:


http://youtu.be/-MwH2TwL6w0

Planning to attend the kayak fishing seminar up in Stuart tomorrow.   Looking forward to meeting some fellow kayak anglers in the area.

My audiobook Trusting The River is available on audible.com. Audible has just sent me 25 free downloads for the entire audiobook which I am free to give to anyone interested.  Contact me via the email in my profile if you would like to download this audiobook at no cost.

Grass carp

Explored a new-to-me canal yesterday along the Palm Beach County/Broward line.  I believe it's called the Hillsboro Canal.  I had read some information about it on the Florida Wildlife Commission website that indicated this canal holds the usual bass and panfish but also possibly some snook and tarpon.

The boat ramp I used to put my kayak in the water is part of a county park.  Very nice boat ramp - gradual decline and soft sand at the bottom of it.  The whole park was quite nice.  The canal is tree-lined along one bank, which gave it a more arboreal feel than Pioneer Canal park in Boynton Beach and the canals I've explored further south in Broward County.  When I arrived, there was a bit of current moving from west to east.  I imagine the South Florida Water Management District was shifting water from the Everglades to the ocean.

I started off throwing a tiny green popper close to the wooded shoreline, trying to slide it under overhanging branches wherever possible.  The canal seemed fairly deep along that shoreline beneath the trees and I let my sink-tip fly line pull the popper down several feet before I'd  cast again.  After half an hour or so the fish weren't responding, so I put on a larger popper that would make a bigger commotion in the water and possibly attract fish lurking around the small boat docks I passed from time to time.  This didn't work either, so I tried a clouser minnow, which has enough weight to get it down nine or ten feet.  I finally did hook a fat bluegill on the clouser.  But there was so much floating weed in the canal that I had to remove several strands of it after almost every cast I made.

As I was pedaling east with the current I passed over a school of enormous grass carp. Some of then had to be in the twenty pound range.  They'd be quite a challenge to catch on a fly rod.  I know some anglers do target this species with specialized techniques.  As their name implies, grass carp are vegetarians and wouldn't be interested in anything I happened to have in my flybox.

After a while I went back to the tiny green popper (TGP), as its small hook sometimes manages to avoid snaring some of that floating grass.  I caught another bluegill or two and a couple small largemouth bass.

Not long before I called it quits for the day I witnessed a phenomenon that a south Florida fishing guide once told me about.  He said that around this tax season each April, ficus trees drop berries in the canals and grass carp will position themselves right below the branches to snatch these windfalls as they hit the water.  When I fished with this guide, Steve Kantner, we were about a month too early for ficus trees to be dropping their berries.  If I remember correctly, we tried to entice some grass carp anyway with a fly that looked somewhat like a red cherry made out of some kind of fabric.  I found it difficult to cast and caught no grass carp that day; all I did was spook the few that we saw.

Yesterday I wished I had one of those flies with me.  Every minute or so, when there was a bit of a breeze, half a dozen or so berries from this ficus tree would drop into the water and the grass carp would swirl beneath them.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to pull the camera out of my shirt pocket and film this.  I did take some humdrum video of what happened earlier in the trip.  It can be seen at:

http://youtu.be/zx7e2_bOwOg

revised video for "In search of peacocks."

I discovered that not all the video I shot yesterday uploaded to youtube from my last post.  The following should have all the video:

http://youtu.be/qothBKwjwII

In search of peacock bass

Fished the canals north of Lake Ida yesterday in search of peacock bass.  I know they're up there - I caught some a couple weeks ago.  Since the water temperature is getting warmer, I've been hoping it would make the peacocks more active, since they like the water hot and sun-shiny.  I've been having some success of late with a chartreuse "sqwirm-worm" fly.  I can't imagine it looks like anything in the water that these fish would actually eat, but they can definitely see it and the way it moves seems to trigger strikes.  I was hoping I'd find peacocks in the bright shallows close to shore and around boat docks in the canals where I was fishing.

First fish I caught was a bluegill.  A little later I hit a spot where some largemouth bass were lurking and caught a couple of those.  I worked my way down the canal toward Lake Ida.  There's a lateral canal I've found that makes a loop away from the main canal and then rejoins it a bit to the south, after passing through a residential neighborhood.  You'll know you've found it if two dogs run down to the seawall to give you a piece of their mind.  One of these looks to be a cross between a Rottweiler and a Bull Mastiff. Apparently neither likes to swim, which is lucky for me, so they just stand there barking their heads off as you pass by about 20 feet away.  No doubt there are lots of fish in that loop canal but it's pretty small and I can't seem to avoid spooking fish long before I reach them.  I did manage to catch one oscar as I was passing beneath a bridge just before re-joining the main canal.

I had been fighting the wind coming up from the south on the main canal on the way down to to the lateral.  That meant I had the wind behind me going north.  I was able to keep my kayak pointed to the shoreline as the wind pushed me along, which made for good casting.  I caught several more largemouth this way, including this one.  I'd estimate it at about 18 inches, the biggest fish I've caught so far on the sqwirm worm.

Not long before I quit for the day I hooked a fish that felt like it might be a peacock, as it was quite strong and refused to jump, as a largemouth bass would have, until the very end, when I had it close to my kayak.  Unfortunately, when it jumped it was somewhat behind my right shoulder and I only caught the briefest glimpse of it.  It had coloration that suggested it could be a peacock but I can't say for sure that it was.



Some video I shot can be seen here:

http://youtu.be/jsLOSRdC1Sk

Everglades canal fishing

I drove south yesterday to one of the canals that runs through the Everglades not far from Alligator Alley.  The canals down there are not unlike the one at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Boynton Beach.  They're freshwater and hold lots of largemouth bass but in my experience have a lot more exotics, such as mayan cichlids and oscars.  Since I've been having pretty good success of late with the fly rod, I thought it might be fun to try out the canal that parallels  Route 27 as it vectors north from Alligator Alley.

I started out throwing a size 4 popper but quickly found that although the fish would attack it, they couldn't swallow it.  So I switched to a size 6 (actually one size smaller than a 4) and started bringing fish to the kayak.  What I discovered, though, is that these fish wanted a much quicker, more aggressive retrieve than I had been giving them.  The shallows of that canal are just full of fish between six and ten inches long.  It may be that there is so much competition for food, that each fish must quickly grab something that moves and looks like food before another fish sees it.  The rapid, splashing retrieve I started to use must have triggered their desire to beat out their competition for a meal.

I worked my way north along the shoreline of the canal, switching from one side to the other as the wind began to pick up a bit.  The main canal has laterals coming off it every quarter mile or so and I fished these as well.  By around noon I had caught a dozen or so fish - a combination of largemouth bass, mayan cichlids, bluegill and another exotic species called an oscar, which is similar in size and fighting ability to a mayan but is darker, slimier and has an "eye" marking on its tail.

Although I was catching fish on the surface popper, I wanted to try out the chartreuse and olive "sqwirm worm" that I've been tying of late.  Once I attached one of those to my leader, the fishing got even better.  I would cast it to the edge of the spatterdock pads, let it sink down a couple feet and then retrieve it with short, quick strips of the fly line.  I began hooking fish on this sqwirm worm every 3-4 casts.  I lost track of how many fish I brought to the boat.  I'd estimate around 40, by the time I quit fishing, around 4 o'clock. None of the bass I caught exceeded 12 inches.  Some anglers would be frustrated by all those "dinks" I was catching.  Myself, I just enjoyed the action, especially when it was produced by a fly I had tied myself.

No video this time.  I brought my camera but realized once I was out on the water that I had neglected to insert the battery before I left home, which I had left plugged into the re-charger.  I tried a few minutes with my iPhone but none of the video was worth preserving.  Here's a mayan I caught with the sqwirm worm:

Fishing the "sqwirm worm" fly

Spent some time this morning at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Reserve.  It's been six weeks or so since I've been there and figured it was time for another visit.  I planned to try out some "sqwirm worm" flies that I've been tying of late.  I found instructions for tying this fly on the internet:  http://www.laflyfish.com/flies/sqwirm-worm.php   For a long time now I've been looking for a fly that would act in the water the way a plastic worm does.  Plastic worms are deadly on largemouth bass using spinning equipment  but are too heavy to fling with a fly rod.  I bought the materials for tying these sqwirm worms and managed to produce a dozen or so.  Mine are pretty rough, as I don't have access to my fly tying tools where I happen to be right now.  I had to tie these flies without a vise to hold the hook, or a bobbin to hold the thread or even a good pair of scissors.  Nevertheless, I managed to produce some flies that might work on some gullible bass.

When I arrived at Lox this morning, the wind was already gusting in from the northwest.  I started out throwing a plastic worm with spinning tackle just to gauge how active the fish would be.  On my first cast a fish grabbed the plastic worm, then let it go when I began to reel it in.  This fish was probably a bluegill or warmouth.  These fish can suck in one end of a plastic worm but have mouths too small to swallow the hook that the worm is attached to.  So I quickly switched to one of my fly rods, which was rigged with a tiny green popper.  The fish that went after the much bigger plastic worm weren't interested in that small fly.  I switched to a heavier fly rod and a much bigger popper.  I cast that popper right up against the water hyacinth floating up against the bank.  Pretty soon some bass started hitting it.  I caught about half a dozen, which encouraged me to give the sqwirm worm a try.  These things don't float on the surface the way a popper does. They begin to sink immediately but if you start retrieving the line in short jerks you can make it look like a tiny snake.  Before long, a couple bass went after the sqwirm worm, just as they had the larger popper.

Around 12:30 I turned around and allowed the wind to push my kayak back south along the canal toward to the boat launch where I'd put in earlier.  I let the sqwirm worm trail behind the boat and caught several more fish, including a bluegill, over the next half hour or so.

We had another cold front come through last night and the air was much cooler and drier this morning.  This usually turns off the fishing.  Not today, though.  Biggest fish I caught was around 12 inches but I had pretty good action most of the time I was out there.  Best part was catching fish on a fly I had tied myself.

Video from this morning's trip can be seen at:

http://youtu.be/jI0OLq6gTtI