Snook at Snook Islands

I've been fishing for several years at Snook Islands without catching any snook.  Snook Islands is an artificially created achipelago of small mangrove islands and rocky reefs near the intracoastal waterway at Lake Worth.  I believe these islands and reefs were created to mitigate the loss of natural habitat in the area that's occured over the past hundred years or so.  Both shorelines of Lake Worth are highly developed, so there's very little in the way of structure to attract fish. Also, native seagrasses are almost non-existent. I think the name "Snook Islands" was initially more aspirational than descriptive--it was hoped that creating them would cause snook to congregate there. The project was years in the making and it appears finally to be complete.  After my experience there yesterday, I can say that perhaps the place is becoming worthy of its name.

I arrived around 10:30 a.m., a couple hours after high tide.  There's often a strong southeast wind blowing across the ICW that only increases as the day goes on.  Between the wind and the turbulance caused by boat traffic out in the channel, the conditions on the water are often less than ideal for kayakers.  Yesterday, however, there was hardly any wind and minimal traffic.

Once I passed beneath the Lake Ave bridge I came upon a boardwalk built out from the shoreline.  I began casting a gold spoon beneath the boardwalk around the support columns.  Within a few casts I hooked and released a small cuda.  It's always good to get the skunk out of the boat early.

I was seeing lots of mullet activity in and around the islands and reefs.  In my experience, seeing mullet doesn't necessarily mean lots of fishing action--these mullet are too big to be eaten by snook, redfish, sea trout and other fish you'd be happy to see at the end of your line.  But yesterday I thought maybe if there's lots of mullet around, there'll be smaller baitfish as well.  I came up on the first couple rocky reefs and threw my spoon toward one of them.  On one of the retrieves I got a solid strike.  The fish stayed down and pulled hard. It felt like a jack crevalle, and after about five minutes of me trying to pull it to the surface, that's what it revealed itself to be.  I know jacks can get upwards of thirty pounds.  This guy was only three or four.  But the hook point of my spoon had gotten lodged so tightly in this fish's mouth that in extricating it with a needle-nose pliers, the spoon got bent in half.  Jacks are pretty tough, and this one swam away quickly, but my gold spoon was now unusable.

I happened to have a spare and tied it on the end of my line and continued to work the islands and reefs northward up along the west shoreline of the ICW.  At the tip of one of the reefs I hooked something that swirled and jumped.  I could see the black lateral line along its flanks and so knew it was a snook.  It was somewhere between 20 and 25 inches, not as big as the snook I was catching a few weeks ago at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, but a good enough fish for me.  Unfortunately, it had swallowed my gold spoon deeply and I had to set the fish on my lap to extricate it.  Probably the fish would have been better off if I had just left the lure in its mouth, where it would rot away fairly quickly.  But I didn't have any more gold spoons, and well...sorry to say, but even though I released that snook, I have a feeling it didn't survive the experience.

I caught two more snook, maybe a little smaller than the first one, before I reached the northern tip of the line of islands and reefs.  I must say, there are a lot of them.  So there's now plenty of places for snook to hang out in that area.

For a short time I switched from the spoon to a Mirrodine suspending twitchbait, which snook in other places have seemed to like.  I did have one fish, probably a snook, attack it close to one of the reefs.  But the water in the Lake Worth Lagoon yesterday was pretty murky, and I felt the gold spoon was creating more flash and was thus more visible to the fish.  So I switched back to that after I had turned around and headed back toward the Lake Avenue Bridge.

By then, the tide had turned and the water around the islands and reefs got pretty shallow. I fish from a Hobie Pro Angler with Mirage Drive.  The fins of the Mirage Drive extend about 18 inches below the hull of the kayak and there were lots of places where the fins struck bottom; so I mostly fished the somewhat deeper water on the eastern side of the islands and reefs, closer to the boat channel.  I figured with the dropping tide, the action was over for the day.  But I did catch one more snook one my way back to the boat ramp.

There are days when I catch half a dozen largemouth bass in four hours of fishing and consider it only an "OK" day, nothing spectacular.  Yesterday I caught six fish and was very happy, especially since four of them were snook.  I guess it's a question of expectations.

I'll be going back to Snook Islands tomorrow.  My goal will be to catch at least one snook on fly tackle.  Conditions are supposed to be similar to yesterday but with an even more favorable tide pattern.

No video of yesterday's trip. I really didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did.

Loxahatchee snook

I can see I haven't posted here in a while, even though I've been fishing quite a bit. I'm fishing in Florida now, rather than up north in Kentucky.  We've had a number of cold fronts move through over the past couple months, which has complicated the fishing somewhat.  Nevertheless, I've gotten out quite a bit and had some success with fly and spinning tackle,

A couple of days ago I drove to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, which gives access to the Loxahatchee River. I've fished Jonathan Dickinson quite a bit, had some success with jack crevalle from time to time, but not caught much of anything recently.  I generally fish the area just upstream and downstream of the boat dock. But I recently viewed Pete Hinck's video about catching snook much further upstream than I typically go. He shot his video in June, whereas it's now February, when the water's much cooler.  Nevertheless, I thought it was worth going upriver a couple miles or so, where he and a buddy caught a bunch of snook last summer, to see if I'd find any for myself.

I followed an incoming tide upstream and made pretty good progress, casting to the shoreline every now and then but mostly trolling my Terror-eyes jig behind my kayak.  At one spot I saw a little bit of movement in the water close to some mangroves and cast nearby.  I got a quick strike, which turned out to be a jack.  A little further upstream, again close to the mangroves, I hooked something larger.  Once it jumped, I saw that it was a pretty decent sized snook, somewhere in the 20-25 inch range. I've caught snook before but this one was my biggest so far.

I continued upstream, waiting for the Lox to narrow down and turn twisty, as I had seen in Pete Hinck's video.  Apparently, he was much further upstream than I was, even though I'd already been pedaling my Hobie for over an hour.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the river yesterday--a couple dozen canoes and kayaks, a bunch of motorboats, and the JD Park tour boat.

At a certain point I turned around, as the tide itself did, and started headed back toward the boat ramp.  For a couple hours the only action I had was a couple follows from smaller snook than the one I'd caught.  I was still working the mangrove pockets and edges pretty hard but it wasn't looking like I'd catch anything else.

Around 4:30 I switched to a Mirrodine suspending twitch bait.  At a spot pretty far downriver, where it widened considerably, I threw the Mirrodine toward the shoreline and hooked something solid.  The fish didn't jump and I thought it was a good sized jack.  After several minutes I pulled it up to the surface and saw that it was a snook, somewhat bigger than the first one. I managed to get it close enough to the kayak to release it. It was actually not hooked in the mouth, but in the jaw below it, which made for an easy release.

So:  a day with not a lot of action, but catching those two snook made the trip well worth it.

Video of yesterday's trip can be seen at:  http://youtu.be/-oqMQ0BftRc

Great day on Cumberland River

Haven't posted recently because, frankly, I've had some bad luck with fishing. A couple weeks ago I drove out to the East Fork of Indian Creek in the Daniel Boone National Forest only to find that the trout stocking truck hadn't made a visit yet and the stream had no fish in it. A week later, I drove to Great Crossing Park near Georgetown, Ky to fish the North Fork of Elkhorn creek and discovered the park was closed due to a construction project. I won't even mention the numerous times recently when I've actually gotten to cast a rod someplace and haven't caught a thing.

Well, all the fishing dues I've been paying recently bought me a tremendous day on the Cumberland River yesterday--possibly the best day I've ever had on the Cumberland in 30 years of fishing it.

Followers of this blog (not sure if I even have any) will know that for the past several months I've mostly been fishing from my Gheenoe, which has a trolling motor and a six horsepower outboard. Yesterday I decided I would leave the Gheenoe home, since I haven't been doing well fishing the Cumberland with it anyway, and take my canoe instead. The Gheenoe gives me access to several miles of the river, because the outboard can buck the current upstream. But yesterday my plan was to wade the shoreline very close to where I parked my vehicle. I'd only need the canoe to cross the river and fish the bank opposite the boat launch.

When I first arrived at the river I was a bit dismayed--the flow level looked higher than I'd anticipated. I'd been planning to wade but now I wasn't sure how possible that would be. As I was studying the water, a large fish, probably a trout, jumped near the bank opposite where I was standing. Well, that was a positive sign, anyway.

Back in the parking lot, I pulled on my waders. I'd just driven two and a half hours to get here, so I wasn't going to give up without at least trying to get into the water.

As it turned out, it wasn't quite as deep as I'd first thought. The sky was overcast and the surface ruffled from gusty winds, so earlier I couldn't see down through the water. But the depth and current was such that I was able to get far out enough that I could avoid snagging weeds on my backcast.

I started out with my seven weight rod and a sink tip line. To the tippet I knotted a white crystal schminnow fly that I had tied myself. I had a hit right away but then nothing for a while. Since at that point the day was somewhat dark, I switched to a brown and black schminnow. I started getting action immediately. I caught two rainbow trout on the boat-ramp side of the river and lost several more. The fish were hitting my fly hard and so I struck back hard to set the hook. But that only resulted in my breaking off the fish and sometimes my fly as well.

After a couple hours of casting along the boat-ramp bank, I got in my canoe and paddled across the river to the other side. Before long I found a sweet spot where there was a low ridge of rocks that broke the current. Many, many trout were hanging out just in front of those rocks. I stopped trying to set the hook and just waited until the fish hooked themselves. The first few fish were probably recent stockers. But then one that was considerably bigger took my fly, even though it was in the same area. That's the fish you see in the photo above. It's hard to judge the size of that fish by the photo. I estimate that it was 20 inches plus. I don't think I've ever caught a bigger or more beautiful trout in the Cumberland.

I continued working my way slowly downstream--very slowly, because I kept hooking and mostly catching trout.  In an area similar to the first one I hooked a fish that at first seemed no bigger than the eight to ten inch fish I'd been catching. But a few seconds after I felt it at the end of my line, it took off downstream, into some faster water, and my entire fly line spun off the arbor of my reel and then I was into the backing line. I've never had a trout take me into my backing before. The last time this happened to me, I was up in Michigan with a twenty pound chinook salmon on the line.

I was using 4X tippet, which has a breaking strength of around six pounds of pressure. That's enough to hold most trout. But because of the size of this fish and the strong current it was in, I had to be very careful not to apply too much pressure.

Once I got the fish into my net, I saw that it was slightly smaller than the first one and not as brightly colored.  I took the picture you see below with the fish lying on top of my landing net. I just measured the oval of the net and it's sixteen inches. As you can see, the tail of that fish extends several inches beyond the oval. So I'm estimating that fish as at least eighteen inches.

I continued to catch more trout as the afternoon wore on. I lost one that probably would have been in the 15-16 inch range but never got a close look at it.

I ran out of the dark schminnows I'd been using and put on a dark bead-head wooly bugger. The trout liked that one, too. Apparently, anything long and dark that could have been food was enough for them to take a swipe at it.

For the final half hour of the day, I switched over to my five weight rod with floating line and tried a nymph and indicator rig. The trout seemed to like this less well than the big streamers I'd been throwing. But I still managed to catch a couple more.

I had thought yesterday would be my last day of fishing in Kentucky this year. I hadn't been expecting to have much luck and I know the weather is starting to close in. But after yesterday's experience, I may have to give it at least one more shot.

Video I shot of yesterday's trip is available at:

http://youtu.be/keDVpq7smME

Hoh River Steelhead fishing

Haven't posted in a while, as I haven't been on the water much lately.  However, last week on a family vacation to Olympic National Park in Washington State I managed one day on the Hoh River to fish for steelhead.

I've never fished the Pacific northwest and knew relatively little about the fishery up there, other than that salmon, steelhead and trout swim the rivers leading out to the ocean.  I only had one day to spare but didn't want to miss the opportunity to cast a fly for these fish.  I contacted Waters West, a fly shop in the town of Port Angeles on the the Olympic peninsula. They rented me waders, boots and set me up with a guide for a trip down the Hoh River, which at this time of the year is the only stream with enough flow to float a boat.

My guide, Curt, picked me up outside the motel at 6:30 a.m. and we set out for an access point on the Hoh, which is about 75 miles from Port Angeles.

Once we arrived at the river, Curt handed me a Spey rod and gave me a casting lesson. Spey casting is the primary method for presenting a fly to steelhead when wading up there in the Pacific northwest.  I've never casted a long two-handed rod before.  It took me a bit to figure out how to fling the fly at the end of the line most of the way across the river, where it would then swing across the current and possibly attract a steelhead.  Meanwhile, Curt got busy dunking his trailer off the inflatable raft we'd be fishing from for the day.  Inflatables rather than drift boats are used at this time of year because they make less noise when scraping across the rocks when you are floating downstream.

I think I could get into Spey casting, given enough practice time, but I was glad when Curt said we were ready to set off in the raft down the Hoh.  He switched me from the Spey to a conventional 8 weight Sage with a nymph and indicator rig.  Actually, the rig was two orange egg flies below a couple of split shot and a bobber.  We stuck with this set-up the entire day, never changing flies at all.  Since steelhead don't feed when in freshwater streams, it apparently makes sense to lure them with bright egg flies rather than natural-looking nymphs.

Curt estimated the flow that day at around 600 cfs.  It hadn't rained up there in quite a while. What sustains the river is melt-water from the Mount Olympus glacier, which is the primary source of the Hoh.  In the upper stretch where we put in, the river only covered about a fifth of the gravel stream-bed.  A couple times during the day Curt had to get out of the boat and pull us over rocks when we bottomed-out.  Due to the lack of rainfall, Curt said the salmon had yet to make their fall migration up the river.  Nevertheless, we might find some summer steelhead and possibly some sea-run cutthroat trout.

I have always assumed that northern salmon and steelhead rivers that connect to the ocean on either coast hold populations of resident trout.  That's the case in Great Lakes streams, which also have salmon and steelhead.  But Curt told me that the only resident fish in the rivers up there are whitefish; the state doesn't stock trout in the coastal rivers and so the only sport fish worth catching are anadramous, i.e. salmon, steelhead and sea-run cutthroat.  This was news to me.  When Curt had asked me a couple days earlier what kind of fishing I had in mind, I had told him if the steelhead were scarce, I'd be happy to catch trout all day.  Well, I found out that wasn't an option.  Since the cutthroat, like the salmon, hadn't made much of an appearance yet, it was going to be steelhead or nothing.

Early in the trip down the Hoh I hooked and brought to the boat what turned out to be a whitefish.  I know whitefish are considered the bane of western trout anglers, but I was glad to get the skunk out of the boat.

Around 10:30, as we were passing through a deep pool with submerged rocks, my indicator dipped again.  I lifted the rod tip and saw something flash at the end of my line.  "That's a steelhead," Curt said.

The fish didn't jump or make long runs.  I let it take line off the reel via the drag whenever it wanted. Meanwhile, Curt started rowing us over to a gravel beach where we could land the fish.  He only carries a small net in his boat suitable for trout, preferring to seize larger fish by the tail in shallow water when they have been sufficiently tired out.  Once the raft was beached, we both climbed out.  I kept tension on the fish and reeled in slack whenever possible.  Curt waded out toward the fish.  I tried sliding it several times to him.  Seeing Curt, the fish headed for deeper water each time he approached.  Finally, exhausted, it allowed him to close his hand around its tail.  I got out my camera and snapped some photos of him holding the fish, then he handed the fish off to me (slowly, carefully) and took the picture with his cell phone you see above.  He said it was a male in the 7-9 pound range, probably a hatchery fish and not nearly as big as the wild 20 pounders that enter the river with the high water in the spring, but a beautiful fish nonetheless.  I was certainly thrilled to have caught it!

We released the fish and got back on the river.  After we ate lunch, I waded out into the river and had another go with the Spey rod in a broad, deep run that Curt said was suitable for swinging a fly. After about 20 minutes, I'd had enough and we resumed our journey down river. Curt maneuvered us through various runs, riffles, rapids and rock gardens, directing me where to cast my indicator rig.  We did hook another small fish that came off before we got to identify it as either another whitefish or possibly a small cuttie.

All day long it had been bright and sunny.  Perhaps the summer steelhead would have been more active with cloud cover and rain.  But in terms of comfort and aesthetics, you couldn't ask for better weather.  It was also very enjoyable to be able to talk fishing all day with someone who's as passionate about it as you are.

The final stretch we fished is called the Oxbow canyon (I think).  Here, the river pours through a narrower gap between the trees on either shoreline and you find faster and more turbulent water.  Many times we passed over a spot Curt considered fishy and then, once we reached the end of that run, would work hard on the oars to pull us back upstream so I could fish it again.  I'm assuming he's seen fish come out of those places before and wanted to cover it as thoroughly as possible.   But that morning steelhead turned out to be the only significant fish I caught.  Still, it validated the day--not to mention the money it cost to be out there.

We exited the river around five o'clock.  Curt re-loaded the raft on the trailer and we drove back to Port Angeles, arriving there around 6:45.  It had been a very full day.  I may never get back to fish that area again.  But I'll definitely take the opportunity, if another one comes my way.

North Fork of Elkhorn Creek

I can only manage the long drive down to Burkesville for trout fishing about once a week. I'd like to hit the water more often than that, so I thought I'd give the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek a try.  It's only about a 45 minute drive from my house.  The North Fork is slow-current, warm water fishing.  It's got some bass and panfish in it.  I've caught a few of both on spinning tackle using plastic worms and small crankbaits.  This time I brought my 7 weight fly rod with the sink-tip line and some small flies and poppers -- the same setup I use for fresh water fishing in Florida.  My expectations were pretty low for this trip.  But it was a beautiful afternoon and it's  a  short drive to the boat ramp (compared to Bukesville), so I decided to give it a try.

I started out throwing a San Juan Worm, which is a small plastic wormy-type fly normally used in trout streams.  It was still on my leader from my last trip to the Cumberland.  I thought maybe the bass and panfish in the North Fork would think it looked like a caterpillar fallen from a tree.

Well, after about twenty minutes not much was happening, so I switched to one of the tiny green popper flies I had such good luck with in Florida.  I had reached a shady section of the creek where the bank was steep and strewn with rocks.  I caught a small bluegill almost immediately and then another one a cast or two later.  As I worked my way down that shady bank I picked up more small fish every half dozen casts or so.  I'm not kidding about "small."  Some of these fish would have made a good live bait to throw with a spinning outfit.  I hadn't brought anything but my 7 weight, so I just kept casting the TGP and catching fish.  I even got a largemouth bass to grab it.

I fished from 2 until 5 p.m. and caught about 15 fish altogether, so it was one of those trips that turn out much better than expected.

Getting my Gheenoe re-trailered at the boat ramp was tricky.  The ramp, though made of grooved cement, is covered in moss and is about the slipperiest thing I've ever tried to stand on.  I did manage to get my boat back on the trailer without falling on my butt, mainly because I kept myself upright by holding onto either the trailer or the boat itself for balance.

Video of the trip is here:

http://youtu.be/-s8fT0m4Ku4

Cumberland River Nymphing

I did my weekly trip to the Cumberland yesterday. It was hot and humid on the river.  Fog started to develop in mid-afternoon but then the sun came out again and burned it off again.  Threatened thunderstorms didn't develop.

Since I haven't had much luck lately with streamers, I spent almost the whole day throwing a double nymph combination (size 16 Pheasant Tail, size 20 Copper John) under an indicator and split shot. Action was OK, not as good as last time.  I got three fish to the boat and lost four or five others before I could reach them with the net.  For a while there were quite a few midges flitting about.  Every now and then I'd see a mayfly or caddis.  A few trout were eating something either on or just under the surface.  Could have been dead midges on the surface or some kind of emerger.  I did one long drift with dry flies:  a hopper and a light Cahill, which resembled the mayflies I was seeing.  My dry fly casting isn't the greatest but because I was in a boat drifting at the exact speed of the current, once my flies plopped down on the surface they ought to have looked pretty natural.  I got a couple drifts right over the top of some fish that had surfaced a few seconds earlier.  But nothing came up for my flies.  Since the nymphs were working, more or less, I went back to them late in the day, when I caught a small brown trout and a bigger rainbow.  Video is available at:

http://youtu.be/vZ3H-pxWEDw

Nice weather, nice fish

Since we've been back in Kentucky I've been fishing the Cumberland River tailwater in southern Kentucky for trout every week or two from my Gheenoe.

Yesterday was a beautiful day weatherwise -- partly cloudy, low humidity, no wind, temperature in the 70s.  This is pretty rare in Kentucky in July.  I'm glad I was able to take advantage of it.

It's a long haul from where I live to where I put in on the river.  It's a two and a half hour drive; then time spent packing up the Gheenoe and dunking it off the boat ramp; finally a 30 minute drive upriver to the spot where I start fishing.  It wasn't until after noon yesterday that I took my first cast.

I started off throwing a streamer toward the vertical bank that I believe I showed in the video accompanying my previous post.  I had one bite in that first drift but the fish came off.   I switched flies to a San Juan Worm, which flutters a bit in the water and which I thought might look like a caterpillar to the trout, and then motored back upstream to drift over the same water with this different fly.  Well, the fish either didn't care for the San Juan Worm or were too deep in the water column to see it.  The flow in the river was still pretty strong at this point.

After this second drift I switched to a different rod and a different technique.  I tried a double nymph combination (a size 16 Hare's Ear and a size 20 Copper John) under a split shot and a neon orange strike indicator.  I drifted a different section of the river and hooked three trout on the nymph rig.  All of them broke off.  The hook on the Hare's Ear seemed sharp to me but I know that fly has been in my nymph box for quite a while, so maybe it wasn't as sharp as it needed to be.  I then put on a Pheasant Tail nymph fly of a more recent vintage.  I caught the first trout I hooked and several more thereafter, either on the PT or the smaller Copper John.

By this point in the afternoon it was around three o'clock and the water level in the river had begun to drop and the current to slow down.  I had good action from then on, until I quit around six o'clock.  I hooked a bunch more fish.  Some broke off, some I managed to get all the way to the boat.

Most of the fish I'm catching in the Cumberland this year are good size, between 15 and 20 inches.  In earlier years, the average Cumberland trout was between 8-10 inches.  I don't know this for a fact, but it may be that the folks at the trout hatchery just below the dam have been holding fish back and allowing them to grow a bit as we all waited for work on Wolf Creek Dam to be completed and the river below it to return to normal.  So I'm thinking I'm catching hatchery fish recently stocked, rather than holdover fish from previous years that have grown up.  If anyone reading this knows what's up with this, please leave a comment.  In any case, the Cumberland is really fishing well right now, but you need to be there in low water levels.  Check the generation schedule on the TVA website

http://www.tva.com/river/lakeinfo/index.htm

and plan your trip accordingly.

Here's some video I shot yesterday:

http://youtu.be/t12b0ce-JtI

None of the fish I got to the boat show up in the video.  By the time I got the fish into the boat, they were pretty exhausted and I didn't want to further risk their health by holding them out of the water for a video.  Also, it's tougher to take video in moving water like the Cumberland than in still water, such as I fish in Florida.  I need a hand on the rod and another on the trolling motor I use to control my position as the boat drifts downstream.  If I want to hold a camera, I either need to set the rod down or take my hand off the TM in order to take the camera out of my shirt pocket and aim it.  One of these days I'll get a camera mount, like other anglers do.