Florida - I got left behind.

Well everyone I guess we can start this one out with an apology. We here at BRFC have had our hands full lately. Some with children, some with home projects, and then there is me, a man without a good excuse. With warm weather combined with high flows, bass fishing tournaments and a lacking desire to spend anytime with the masses out at pyramid lake there has just been nothing to discuss. Although I am sure the fishing anywhere you can get will be good, weather dependent of course. We might venture up to the LT this weekend or perhaps hang out for a few hours tossing shooting line to some LCTs. In the meantime here is a fishing report from my father about Florida. This past week my folks had the opportunity to visit a good friend of ours who lives in Stuart, FL. Unfortunately their house is right on the water so these poor guys had to fish every day. Rough. Sadly i wasnt able to join them on this adventure. Although it was a bummer to listen to the stories I dont have a lot of room to complain after fishing for trevally and Bonefish in Hawaii for a week. So until we can get some more trout porn up for you enjoy a little saltwater action in the words of my old man.


Old Man:

Just got back from 3 days of fishing out of Stuart Florida with my buddy Patrick. We were out for a day in on the ocean one day hunting for Pompano and 1 day of estuary and bridge fishing. The good news is that we caught fish every day even off of his dock and out of the Hobie kayaks.


Pompano

The first day we took the Boston Whaler out and eventhough the seas were running 4' with short period waves the ride and trolling were not bad in the 32 footer. We started out trolling frozen ballyhoo and soon hooked up on a bonito and had a good fun fight. As we were dealing with the little tuna a nice King Mackeral hit the slow moving ballyhoo and we ended up landing him too. We kept trolling out heading for 100' deep water in hopes of some Dolphin but the rolling seas were taking a toll on us. We had picked up some live bait so we started a drift with the live bait and in no time we had a school of Amberjack all around the boat. We lost one missed a couple of more and landed one. A couple of more passes turned up no more fish so headed back on a troll with the ballyhoo. Another nice King soon was landed. The Kings ened up in the smoker that afternoon and it made a great smoked King dip that evening.


Patrick with a nice pair


The next day we headed out for Pompano. It was a little late in the season but we heard that there were still a few around. The first cast landed a nice 16" fighter on a feather jig. With our hopes up we put in another 3 hours without a nibble. We tried fly fishing some streamers and shrimp patterns with no luck.


dinner

The next day we picked up some live shrimp and tried a couple of more spots for Pompano but gave up after fishing a nice outgoing tide without a hit. We had to head in early so we decided to try the shrimp under a bridge on the way in. That was a good call as we started getting hits on nearly every cast. We finally boated a nice Drum. That evening we took the Hobie kayaks out to a small estuary that was loaded with bait. Lots of hits later and we managed to land a small unidentified fish and get some nice wildlife photos.


Tree Herons???

The coolest thing about the ocean and estuary fishing is that you never know what you will find on the end of your line. We caught 7 or 8 different species on the boats and off of the docks and a couple of them went back in the water unidentified. Lots of fun and something that I plan on doing again.


My favorite pic of this trip