Tarpon Fishing Charters
March 1 2011
Fishing Report for Miami Flamingo and Islamorada
Capt. Jim Hale
www.floridasportfishingcharters.com
786-255-1788
Jason Sullivan and I were running a little behind schedule arriving at the Whitewater Bay ramp at Flamingo around seven on this calm morning. Normally running across Whitewater bay on a slicked out day you can see the Tarpon splashing and free jumping in the distance and that generally gives you a good idea were they are, what they are doing and if they had moved overnight. The Tarpon that I have been fishing are concentrated and are in an area about the size of five football fields. We arrived at the spot to find six or seven skiffs lined up there with one boat hooked up, so we had to move on.
The next three spots were empty, but the forth had more Tarpon in it that I have seen in awhile. These are happy fish! School after school were rolling, pushing wakes, gulping air and after about 10 minutes Jason got one in the air about 90 lbs. Tired of throwing lures we changed to fly and Jason had three bites in twenty minutes and landed a Poon about 100 lbs. I was lucky enough to get some casts in as well, I jumped 2 on fly and landed one around 80 lbs.
They were eating Purple and Brown backcountry flies.
The flies are simple splayed Brown Rooster hackles with magnum purple bunny strips with a flash or two.
We fished the rest of the day and found hungry Tarpon in just about everywhere we looked.
Vince Maggio and I fly fished for Reds in Florida bay on a very windy day and found several nice schools of Redfish. Most of the schools had at least a hundred fish or more, and averaged at least eight pounds, but they were a little spooky and on the move. Vince made a nice back cast up wind and nabbed a nice five pound Red on his sacred fly the Irish Creamer, it is a top secret fly and he wont let me describe it. We had more good shots on Reds until we called it day. If it would have been a spinning rod day we would have had a great day being able to cast upwind better.
Yesterday the final day of February we once again fished Whitewater Bay for Tarpon, we had to fish in between some islands for a wind break because it was blowing a good twenty knots. We found a good number of Tarpon but the visibility was poor and it was difficult to cast so we went Red fishing in the Back country instead. We caught a nine pound Red and many smaller ones around 3 pounds. With the reds we caught several small Snook and over 50 nice Mangrove Snapper so it was rod bending action all day despite the strong winds. All of the Reds Snapper and Snook were caught on live shrimp.
The outlook for March is great; we are expected to stay warm and hopefully calm. We know Tarpon are here in masses and I expect it to get better. I will be fishing the bridges and Government cut at night for them as well.
Good luck
Capt. Jim Hale
www.floridasportfishingcharters.com
786-255-1788