Return to Mosquito Hell, with a most striking dawn

My last few fishing trips onto the flats have been unproductive. The late summer water has been hot and low in oxygen. Maybe the fish are somewhere else, or maybe they’re just laying low. Tomorrow morning I’m venturing back into the mangrove lakes of Mosquito Hell, an area where I always find fish this time of year, assuming the Black Salt Marsh Mosquitoes (BSSMs) don’t drive me out first.

Trip planning

The moon is near full tonight, so the morning fishing activity is likely to be brief. I plan to arrive in the dark to maybe find a snook or two before the sun comes up. Then I’ll peddle-paddle my kayak to an area where the tarpon hang out and snook spend their day hiding in the mangroves. Occasionally, a snook wakes up for a mid-morning snack. If I find the juvenile tarpon rolling, I can see if they’ll play with me. Like snook, tarpon feed actively at night on a full moon, so they may be sated by the time I arrive.

I’m preparing for the BSSMs the night before, putting into play a few improvements over my last trip to Mosquito Hell:

I take my khaki fishing pants, outer shirt, and gloves to the driveway, spray them with DEET, and place them inside a 2-gallon zip-loc bag.  I lay out a towel to protect the car seat from the DEET. The rest of my special mosquito gear I place on the passenger seat: for my head, a Tilley hat and insect head net; for my feet, Simm’s neoprene wading gaiters and neoprene dive booties. Mosquitoes are not going to bite through 5 mm of neoprene.

My scheme is to drive to the launch in the dark, and change into my stinky DEET-soaked clothes, then get out of the car to rig and launch my kayak. I will start fishing at 06:00, before the first dawn light. The nearly full moon sets at 05:49 and the sun rises at 07:06, with civil twilight starting at 06:36.

It’s tricky fishing in total darkness, and tricker fly fishing. I only know that a snook is nearby if I hear it blow up the water while chasing mullet. Sometimes the water is silent. Other times I cast too far and hang the fly into a mangrove tree. Then I have to turn on my head lamp to untangle the line and of course the light attracts mosquitoes to my head. But other times I cast the fly near a snook and things get exciting in a much better way.  Hope springs eternal.

My alarm is set for 3:50 am. Time for bed.

Fishing report

On the Mosquito Horror Scale (0-10) the morning ranks an 8, “Severe” but not “Extreme”. My mosquito gear system works perfectly. The only mosquitoes that try to bite me are 3 or 4 that go for the pads of my fingers where I have no repellant. That’s not a safe place for a mosquito to bite a human, and they are instantly dispatched with a pat of the finger. With my DEET-soaked outer clothes, mosquitoes don’t even follow me into the car.

No mullet are splashing around the kayak launch area in the dark, so no predatory fish are there either. Too bad – sometimes the fishing is amazing right there. I light out for the far mangrove shore, about a mile’s paddle.

The first traces of dawn light appear, with Venus still visible directly above the tallest thunderhead on the left.

Dawn explodes enroute. Yowza.

I reach the other side eight minutes after sunrise. The water is extremely murky and tannic, like donut shop coffee with a tiny splash of horrid non-dairy creamer. I dip my finger in the water and taste it through the head net: slightly brackish.

To find fish in water this opaque I need a “search bait” that’s dark, for maximum contrast when viewed from below against the sky, but with some sparkle and a lot of vibration to get a fish’s attention. I put away the fly rod and rig my spinning rod with a 4” paddletail in rootbeer & gold with a gold underspin jig – just the ticket.

The paddletail, true to its name, wiggles its tail back and forth, and the underspin leaf twirls up a storm.

At 7:15, my second cast is slammed by a snook in the 30″ range. It makes one jump, a brief lateral run pulling line off the reel, then runs straight for me as fast as I can take up line. It passing directly under the middle of the kayak, bending the rod hard. The  tip section of my three-piece TFO travel rod snaps, creating a brief moment of slack that pops the lure free of the fish’s mouth.

This is the 4th time this spinning rod has broken, every time in exactly the same spot, 5″ above the ferule. Until now, I’ve blamed myself, but thinking on it, each break occurred under a different circumstance and stress geometry and I’ve never broken any other spinning rod. I’d wager the TFO Traveler is weak at the internal edge of a carbon fiber sheet wrap. I will write the company about this problem. I bought two replacement tip sections the last time one broke, so I still have one left, but I need a more reliable multi-piece spinning rod.

Why even bring a travel rod on a local fishing trip? When kayak fishing tight to the mangroves, it helps to have the rods I am not using at the moment disassembled and stowed safely out of the way. That’s a key advantage of multi-piece rods, not to mention the obvious advantage when I travel.

Back to fishing. Having broken the spinning rod, it’s “fly or die”. I re-assemble the 8wt fly rod and choose a black dark-water fly, this one tied from Drew Chicone’s pattern, The Devil’s Daughter. The tail is ostrich and peacock herl, the body is fluffy marabou feathers, and the head is spun deer hair. Peacock herl gives It shimmer and the ostrich and marabou make it swish enticingly in the water.

I start with the fly in the photo and immediately hang it in a mangrove. Impatiently, I shove my kayak into the mangroves to untangle the fly, leader, and line, then tie on another I’d made with a weed guard to keep it from hanging in trees and roots.

Predatory fish that have spent the night foraging under a bright moon generally won’t be hungry again until the afternoon. This morning fits that typical pattern, with fish ending their feeding spree shortly after sunrise, shortly as in 9 minutes. In the next hour, I get rained on briefly (feels good) and catch a couple of small juvenile tarpon on fly (they’re always hungry), while their older cousins roll on the surface for air but won’t eat.

Fishing is over until afternoon but the shoreline holds birds, orchids, and bromeliads. I can see for miles, the mosquitoes have let up, the rain shower has cooled things off, and I have yet to spot another human. It’s has turned into a pretty fine Sunday in the Everglades wilderness, but it’s time to get out. Bigger storm clouds are assembling and I don’t want to be crossing open water in an electric storm.

On the way home I stop by Moreno’s Tortilla shop in Florida City to pick up hot tamales and a pack of corn tortillas. Josephine greets me and knows what I want without my asking. This little hole-in-the-wall makes the best Mexican tamales and you can’t buy all-corn tortillas this good in a supermarket.

On the drive back, I divert 10 miles to check out a canal that friend Jay and I had identified from a YouTube video. In the video, a young kayak fisher from out of town was catching lots of fish while getting bitten on the eyelids and lips by something he called “yellow flies”. As soon as I step out of the car I am engulfed by a swarm of hungry deer flies. Uh oh.

I consider deer flies even worse than mosquitoes because they are active midday when it’s too hot for protective bug clothes, they will find the the tiniest spot of skin on which you did not apply repellant (e.g. lips and eyelids), and their bites really hurt.

Climbing over two metal gates, swat swat swat, I find the kayak put-in, swat swat. From the vague track through the vegetation, swat swat swat, I can tell it’s rarely used. I wonder why not, swat swat.

I mash the deer flies that followed me into the car and photograph one that wasn’t too mangled.

Serious rain slows the drive home but returns a few minutes by washing salt from the kayak and car.

Unpacking my fishing gear, two stow-away mosquitos escape into the house. It’s still summer here in South Florida where if it’s not one nasty biting bug it’s another. I’ll bet the Wisconsin Driftless Area is getting really nice about now.

© Philip Stoddard