From: 06/03/2015
To: 06/03/2015
Type of Water: Saltwater
Species: Tarpon, Snook - Robalo
The winds & weather finally took another break, so I decide to scout the flats of Biscayne Bay, Florida. As I was getting my boat and gear ready for a late afternoon trip, my good friend Bobby Vaughn calls me. Bobby lives in the upper Keys, over 100 miles south of Miami where I live... a slight change in selection of flies & gear, boat in tow & I headed south on the Florida Turnpike with the hopes of a tarpon on fly at "magic hour" and stalk some snook after dark.
With almost glass conditions, beautiful blue skies and a trickle of puffy white clouds met me at the private dock somewhere in the upper Keys. Bobby shows up minutes after I launch my micro skiff and off we went.
At the first spot, we spent about 10 minutes scouting our latter part of the plan. The 'line siders' were alre View more...The winds & weather finally took another break, so I decide to scout the flats of Biscayne Bay, Florida. As I was getting my boat and gear ready for a late afternoon trip, my good friend Bobby Vaughn calls me. Bobby lives in the upper Keys, over 100 miles south of Miami where I live... a slight change in selection of flies & gear, boat in tow & I headed south on the Florida Turnpike with the hopes of a tarpon on fly at "magic hour" and stalk some snook after dark.
With almost glass conditions, beautiful blue skies and a trickle of puffy white clouds met me at the private dock somewhere in the upper Keys. Bobby shows up minutes after I launch my micro skiff and off we went.
At the first spot, we spent about 10 minutes scouting our latter part of the plan. The 'line siders' were already starting to stack in their ambush spots, tide was slowly changing. Slack tide came and went in the blink of an eye, at least it seemed to as my eye balls were busy looking for fish and trying to get familiar with the area as I can't cast accurately at night to save my life. As we slide along a mangrove line, I can hear snappers popping in the distance and that snook pop every once in a while, but it sounded like it was coming from deep inside the mangroves and impossible to cast at. I was starting to get very excited, as the life around me was coming alive, my senses got very tuned in.
We poled for maybe a minute before we saw rollers. Big forked tails and full backs showing themselves. The tarpon are here said Bobby, but he felt they were already moving out and we might be seeing the tail end. I took a blind cast to calm the nerves a bit, as I was stripping in. I notice a push on the star board side, opposite of my fly. As I start to haul for my next cast, I hear Bobby making a slight, high pitched noise and I knew I had one following but was out of room at this point.
I pulled my line around the bow and he followed til he was right next to us, he finally saw me and slowly turned away. I swear his eye ball looked at me, we were that close. Not even 10 yards away, Bobby sees the tail end of another tarpon. I asked which way did it go? But, Bobby wasn't sure and said to cast in this area...
Strip... strip... he's on it! Faster, faster... stall, strip SET!!! I'm on and this little tarpon goes ballistic with a huge jump instantly, right in front of us and completely air born. After a solid run, I get another huge jump right at the back of the skiff. Locals across the waters were cheering, it took me a while to figure out they were cheering for us.
After a couple snaps, we revived him very well on the trolling motor and left him where we found him. This tarpon wasn't the biggest by far but had heart and some of the most beautiful scales and not one blemish or battle scar. He was definitely very healthy and swam away strong, a perfect ending as the sun started to disappear.
We started to make our way back to the snook spot after the rollers moved on. The moon was full the night before and was slow to rise this night. We started casting but it was so dark, we changed to spin gear and caught two small snooks as a small storm was forming. We called it not long after and headed back in, mission complete. Sometimes, just getting out there is the important thing, fish are merely a bonus. And other times... well, things just work out.
