Some good reports coming in....

The bass fishing is really kicking off here, with reports of some excellent lure fishing all along the south east coast.

Heres one from a quick session I had earlier, the xlayer doing the business today.

During the last couple of sessions we have noticed the bass have been nipping lures and are not smashing them like you would expect in the summer months, moving to smaller lures such as the Zonk 77 or megabass edonis seems to be working well for us at the moment, something to try?

Tight lines,

James.

Fishing Picks Up!

Seems like things are starting to turn around. Yesterday Mike Connolly out aboard 37 ft Falcon, managed to release three striped marlin at Destiladeres (up past San Jose). All of the fish took like caballito and were between 120 and 150 lbs.
Looks like this cold La Niña current is finally coming to an end.

Pinhole Fly

FLANGE FOCAL DISTANCE:  44mm

Subject Distance: 1 inch
[brief report]

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.. Not art, not clear and sharp, but we like the novelty of it all.
.. Got another 4" of wet snow last night.
.. Snow pack is now 120% of historical snow water content.
.. Gloomy weather leads to indoor entertainment.
.. The whole damn house is getting documented with pinhole photography. We'll not bore you with details. This shot makes pretty good wallpaper.

*******

.. Midges and giant streamers sighted in the environs of Craig, Montana. Get thee to the "Mighty MO."
.. Lower Gallatin River Canyon heating up like wildfire. No stonies reported but the fish are taking giant subsurface offerings.
.. The Madison River in the lowlands, where open, is seeing the first of the mayflies and squadrons of snow flies are permeating fisher folk's orifices. Might be a good time to visit.

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root river spring steelhead

I fished the Root River on Saturday with Neal, Ryan, and Shawn. The upriver bends and pools throughout Colonial and Quarry parks were subject to tremendous angling pressure. There was a waiting line to just have the opportunity to fish some of the better water, and as one angler left the rest would inch in closer. We all shared a disappointing morning with just a few hook ups and zero fish for our group.

Shawn was able to make a second trip on Sunday and found the river almost vacant. He was able to get some retribution for the group landing 4 fish in just a few short hours. I wasn’t even out of bed when the pictures came across my phone. The early fish came on egg patterns and the fish later in the morning were hitting a small pink fly. Nice job bro!

root river spring steelhead (nice colors)

another nice root river steelhead

Gator trout Sarasota Bay surprise; beach snook coming soon



Snook will hit the surf soon. Peak season is June thru August along Florida's West Coast.



Something’s going on around Sarasota Bay that has me stumped. But I’m not questioning it one iota.

In fact, I hope it continues.

Gator trout have invaded the bay. They’re trout unlike any we’ve ever seen.

A couple of weeks ago, I had Chuck Linn of Oklahoma out for a 6-hour trip. The Oklahoma angler had little saltwater fishing experience.

“I fished the Steinhatchee area a few years ago and caught small trout,” he said.

Smallest trout he caught on this outing was 4 pounds.



That 4-pounder was his first fish, and we thought that would be the highlight of the day.

We were both wrong.

Fishing in 18 inches of water off Whale Key along the west side of Sarasota Bay, Linn caught and released three monster trout, ranging from 6 ¼ pounds to slightly more than 7 pounds.

That’s three trout off more than 6 pounds – in one morning!

To put that in perspective, I’ve been fishing the area for 35 years. During that time, I’ve taken two trout of more than 6 pounds. One was caught in 1990 in the warm-water runoff of the Crystal River power plant. The other was caught in March 2007 in Pine Island Sound.

Other anglers are experiencing similar success. Fellow MCFF club member Rick Grassett has been leading clients to gator trout on both fly and spin tackle. One of his clients caught and released a 6-pounder on fly near Selby Gardens in Sarasota Bay.

What’s going on?

Who knows?

Why question?

Just enjoy.

It won’t be long before I put the kayaks in the garage. Beach snook season almost is here. Guiding clients to snook on the fly is one of my specialties and I enjoy it very much. I’ve been doing this for more than 25 years and my success rate is good.

This 7-pound spotted seatrout was caught on a topwater plug in 18 inches of water. The fish was released.
Beach snook fishing is one of my favorite things to do. It’s sight-fishing at its best. During a typical morning, clients will see more than 200 snook and sometimes more than 400 snook, ranging in size from 20 inches to 40 inches.

I’ve conducted Beach Snook Seminars throughout the area, including at least three to MCFF members. One thing I emphasize is there is no need to wade. In fact, wading is taboo. Yet when I visit my favorite stretch of beach, I routinely see beach snook anglers “waist deep” in the water and casting to the west.

Truth is most of the snook are behind them.

While you will see snook lying on the bottom 20 to 25 feet out, those usually aren’t feeding fish. Most of the snook that are actively feeding are found within 5 feet of the dry sand, cruising parallel along the beach.

My best day took place in August of 2009. During that beautiful morning, I caught and released 15 trout from 25 to 40 inches, three redfish to 32 and jumped three giant tarpon.

I usually use a 6-weight TFO TiCRX rod, 20-pound leader with a 25-pound shock tippet. Fly of choice is Gibby’s D.T. Variation, a fly which has accounted for more than 5,000 snook over the years.

Why argue with success?

Beach snook action begins heating up in May and runs through August.

If any of you are on Facebook, please send a friend request.

Also, if you are on Twitter, you can follow me @Gibby3474. I routinely “tweet” fishing updates.

Steve Gibson

Southern Drawl Kayak Fishing

www.kayakfishingsarasota.com



http://gibbysfishingblog.blogspot.com/

(941) 284-3406

04/04/11 - Peatmoor Lagoon

Weight –18lb 4oz
Catch – 52 Roach, 6 Bream, 3 Perch, 1 Rudd
Weather – Mild, mostly cloudy and windy

The penultimate weekend of revision, meant no fishing, however with a match at Peatmoor Lagoon, Mark & I decided we needed a practice session to at least get an idea of the venue, since neither of us had seen the place.

What little information we managed to glean, skimmers, roach and a few tench would be the target, the lake is on the west side of Swindon and controlled by Peatmoor AC.

Mark & I had arranged to meet at Cotswold Angling for 8.30, but my sat nav sent me down a dead end road, whilst Marks sat nav sent him to another area of town on the other side of the dead end. After much swearing, about crap sat navs and never wanted to come to Swindon again, Mark finally arrived at the tackle shop.

Having spoken to Cotswold Angling last week, Mark was told we could get tickets there. On arrival it transpired they only sold season tickets and Hinders sold the day tickets, because the controlling club only allow 5 day tickets a day to be sold. Great another trip around Swindon. Cotswold gave us the postcode, which resulted in another dead end! A call to Hinders got the correct postcode, which was ½ mile away. Fortunately getting to the lake happened without further incident.

Our match on Saturday would be between pegs 1 & 27, which would put us on the south bank of the lake. I settled on peg 19, whilst Mark was on peg 22. The one thing we did notice was how tight the pegs where, fortunately there are only 16 booked in for Saturday, so at least we would have some room. The lake itself offered plenty of water and was about 4-5ft deep.

Mark & I had traded many e-mails (mostly when we were supposed to be working!) about how to approach the venue. Mark was in favour of the pellet approach, whilst I was felt that worm & caster would be better, purely because at this time of year the fishing can be a bit iffy, as the fish prepare to spawn, so I just felt we needed to cover all options. The other thing that we wanted to establish was whether we could catch on the pole, since most recent weights had come on the feeder, which I would prefer not to use.

Groundbait, chopped worm, caster and micros were deposited at 13m. I also started to catapult small balls of groundbait over the “feeder line” and I started at 5m feeding caster. After 30mins I had 20 small roach, mostly caught on red maggot. Mark had caught a 1½lb skimmer on the feeder.

I had set up a big waggler to fish over the feeder line, although I caught a roach 1st cast, the wind was proving a bit troublesome, creating quite a bit of tow and since I hadn’t set up a feeder decided to concentrate on the pole.

After letting the 13m line settle for an hour, I started toss potting a caster, chopped worm & micro mix every put in, after a few roach, I decided to use a bigger toss pot every other put in. This definitely helped and I caught my first bream, at nearly 4lb on double red maggot. My rig was a jean François 0.4g, but with the increasing wind the tow was getting worse and my presentation was suffering.

At times like this I always remember a fishing lesson I got from Nicky Collins at Viaduct, fishing a cold winter league match on Lodge Lake. The first half of the match I was ahead with a few skimmers, but the wind got stronger, Nicky switched to a heavier rig and in the 2nd half of the match he doubled my weight, simply because I persisted with the same rig, which was now rendered useless by the wind.

So a new rig was soon set up with a polar ice 1g. The difference was very noticeable, the float sat better in the water and another big toss pot of food, resulted in another bream. For about 45mins I caught regularly, including a big perch. Worm was the best bait. When the swim died, I switched back to the inside line and caught more roach.

We were about 3hrs into our session and Mark was struggling. His pellet line hadn’t produced, the feeder only resulted in 1 skimmer and the only fish he could catch over his chopped worm were roach, although he had some quality specimens. Having seen my success with the heavier rig, he finally relented, after must moaning, about “this aint very good” and “not sure I want to fish on Saturday”. Anyway the next 2hrs on his heavy rig, he couldn’t stop catching over his pellet line, including quality bream and a 3-4lb tench. Funnily enough he was now interested!

My pole line had pretty much died, so decided on a pellet dump at 15m, before switching back to the inside line when I had a really good run of fish on caster. Back out on at 15m I did catch a big bream on pellet, but no other fish.

Mark finished with 38lb, so those last 2 hours were very productive and in many ways threw the ideas we were beginning to formulate out the window. All in all it was very useful practice and we have both came to the same conclusion in the way we plan to attack the match.

So we will see on Saturday whether we got it right.

E-QUAKE

FELT THIS ONE

one of more than 300/year

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.. It's rare to feel them.
===>  http://quake.utah.edu/helicorder/ydc_webi.htm