Eye of the Cormorant

another odd bird who chases fish.

Tag: travel

  • Everglades tarpon fishing, with thanks to Woody Guthrie & Drew Chicone

    As I went walking I saw a sign there,
    And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
    But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
    That side was made for you and me.

    © Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
    & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

    Contrary to my religious practice, I have been off the water for two long weeks. Bunch of pressing things going on, but my psyche demands TOW (time on water). Rain is predicted for Saturday afternoon but the morning looks good in the western Everglades if I stay south of the fire. The plan unfolds to shirk the day’s assorted social obligations and to start the morning fly fishing for juvenile tarpon from my kayak. Play it by ear after that.

    I packed the car the night before, bringing a single 7-weight fly rod, a clear-tip intermediate sink-tip line, and an assortment of proven flies that I tied to entice juvenile tarpon. Going “fly or die”.

    * * *

    FINDING JUVENILE TARPON AFTER A COLD SNAP

    A few days back, a friend reported seeing 100 dead juvenile tarpon in my favorite Everglades tarpon fishing area, killed by the recent cold event. The spot I chose for today, ~60 miles northwest of there, is a brackish canal network dug 20’ deep to excavate fill to create adjacent dry land for buildings. Some people still think building in the Everglades is a good idea. On the plus side, deep water makes a good thermal refuge for manatees and juvenile tarpon during a winter cold snap. I always find tarpon holed up there in the winter and especially when it’s cold. 

    The general area sees significant fishing pressure, evidenced by the occasional snagged fishing lure I pluck from a mangrove and by the landing net sitting next to a kayak on the shore at a nearby residence. Educated tarpon are hard to catch, especially on fly, and these tarpon most often refuse my two best producers along  the Tamiami Trail: Mike Connor’s Glades Minnow and Jay Levine’s black micro-bunny.

    Water access is controversial. There’s a boat launch a mile away, but a clear “NO TRESPASSING” sign is posted on a buoy you’d have to pass to get to the canal network. It’s all public water but I assume someone of authority doesn’t want motor boats shattering the peace in the canal area. Fishermen have told me about being issued a $125 fine plus administrative fees when they were caught on the wrong side of that sign by an officer from the Florida Wildlife Commission.

    Florida Statutes Ch 810.011 states that No Trespassing signs must be “…placed conspicuously at all places where entry to the property is normally expected or known to occur.”  

    If I approach the canal system in a kayak from the tidal creek on other side, the only posted sign says not to feed the alligators. By my read of the statute and the signage, a person can lawfully enter by kayak or canoe from this creek (nix the paddleboard – see below). To honor the implied intent, I paddle solo and fish in silence.

    While no sign prohibits entry from the creek, a militia of large alligators guards a shallow area in the creek outflow. It’s such a good spot to snap up a passing fish that only the biggest gators can command a seat at the table. They allowed me to pass hassle-free on prior trips, but I always treat them with respect and get past them quickly lest they think up some excuse to engage.

    * * *

    THE WEE HOURS

    Dream after dream has me looking for a bathroom. At 1:35 am, my conscious brain integrates the repeated hints that I need to get up to pee. Sleep is over. The alarm is set for 3:30 am, but lying awake at 3:05 I give up and start my day. Dress, shave,  sunscreen, pet the cat, coffee, granola, Heather Cox Richardson, pack the cooler, and hit the road to cross the Tamiami Trail in the dark. 

    A dense fog in the Everglades blocks the full moon and lowers my driving speed to 35 mph. Ninety minutes later, I pull off onto a gravel lot in pitch dark. Fifty minutes to sunrise, and twenty to the start of civil twilight.

    * * *

    GATOR GAUNTLET

    Water levels are very low this winter. The gators’ usual ambush spot in the shallow portion of the creek bed is high and dry. Seeing no gator eyes glowing in the beam of my headlamp, I haul my kayak overland in the dark to the rocky exposed creek bed. The sky shows the very first hint of dawn as I launch in the fog.

    The dark water explodes around my kayak. The gators hadn’t gone far. Huge bodies, black and cream, churn in front of me and on either side. So much for silence.

    The glassy water is dotted with dead cichlids killed by the cold, mostly tilapia. I’m sure the gators have been enjoying the feast. Just past the gators, foot-long mullet begin leaping into the air and crashing onto their sides. Nobody knows why mullet jump, but I’m pretty confident it’s a courtship display. Fifty yards further, a dorsal fin and tail nick the surface. Tarpon can breathe air and come up to the surface for a quick gulp in a behavior known as “rolling”. The tarpon are alive and rolling.  

    * * *

    FLIES 

    In very tannic or murky water, tarpon bite dark-colored flies, but they prefer white flies in clear water. The water today is clear but somewhat tannic, so it’s anybody’s guess what shade of fly will do best. I start with a black baitfish fly that’s been super-effective for tarpon and snook in dark water.

    I pull some fly line off the reel and make my first cast in front of three rolling tarpon. Nice to have my right arm working again after four months of physical therapy for a torn muscle in my rotator cuff.

    The tarpon ignore this black fly over the next dozen casts. That means they won’t take Jay’s black micro-bunny either. I switch to a white micro-bunny fly. They like that one better, but not enough. They nip and pull its tail, “short-strikes” in fly fishing parlance. I begin counting short strikes.  

    Since they don’t want black or white, how about olive? I try an olive micro-bunny. Nothing. Black & white bunny?  Nope. White baitfish with swishy peacock herl tail? Nope. Black & purple tie of Paul Nocifora’s BMF?  It gets a bunch more short strikes, but no eats, even after I snipped off the weed guard. A black & purple tie of Chico Fernandez’s Marabou Madness, weighted to get down deeper? Nope.

    The proven tarpon flies that did not catch tarpon today.

    I have been on the water for two hours now, fishing the best time of the day. I have made over a hundred casts at rolling tarpon with seven flies, two of which received 13 short strikes between them but zero eats. Mangroves lining the canals have been more eager than the tarpon, grabbing my flies on the errant backcasts. My newly rehabilitated rotator cuff is starting to complain.

    I suppose it’s possible the tarpon, though plentiful, just won’t bite today.  The water feels coolish but not cold, maybe 68°.

    Not catching fish is hardly the worst thing on a spring morning in the mangroves. A bull manatee is swimming back and forth underneath me, probably curious about my kayak. Chortling songs of Purple Martins grace the air. Mullet sploosh nonstop under the watch of Great Blue Herons waiting in ambush on the odd bit of open shoreline. Anhingas and cormorants dry in the trees overhead as they digest their breakfasts. Alligators rise and sink as I pedal-paddle past.

    * * *

    THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER

    Master fly designer Drew Chicone of Ft. Myers publishes an email newsletter with detailed instructions for tying his more successful fly designs.

    Drew invented “The Devil’s Daughter”, a big black fly for targeting overfished snook and juvenile tarpon who have seen every fly in the box. It’s a complicated tie as saltwater flies go, combining shimmering peacock herl, swishy ostrich herl, and fluffy marabou feathers into a pulsating body, with a head of spun black deer hair that displaces water as the fly moves. It’s light for its size, lands softly, wets quickly, swishes enticingly, and pushes water to announce its passage. I had tied one and used it only once, but it caught a 40 pound canal tarpon.

    This fly is in my collection today so I throw it in front of the rolling tarpon and move it through the water steadily with tiny twitches to make it quiver. The fly stops and I give the line a tug…

    Line rips out of my hand and screams off the reel. I take back line and a five pound tarpon goes airborne. They always do and it’s always a remarkable show of athleticism.

    The pink and lavender iridescence blows me away.

    Over the next two hours I catch and release eight tarpon ranging from 3 to 10 pounds.  Two toss the fly and six have to be unhooked in the net.

    After being unhooked, this ten pound tarpon chose not to stick around for the photo op.

    Expert wisdom has it that the fly design matters much less than how you move it. True enough, but this morning’s fishing success has hinged on one black fly designed by Drew Chicone. Both times I’ve fished it, 1/3 of tarpon contacts resulted in hook-ups. Heck of a fly, Drew.

    * * *

    The sky opens up as I pull into the driveway. I could use a nap. 

    One last nod to the enduring spirit of Woody Guthrie:
    Roll on sweet tarpon, roll on.

    © Philip Stoddard

  • Too clever by half

    Here’s a stupid story that also explains the name of my little flats skiff.

    * * *

    Monday morning before sunrise, I launch my skiff from the front boat ramp at the marina at Flamingo in the south end of Everglades National Park. 

    When launching the boat solo, I secure the loop of a dock line rope to the cleat on the front of the skiff and tie the other end to one of the two vertical PVC posts at the rear of the boat trailer. Then I back the trailer into the water and stop abruptly. The boat floats off the trailer into the water, tethered to the rear of the trailer by the dock line. 

    Dock lines come in 15’ and 25’ lengths, so when I got my 14.5′ skiff, I bought a pair of 15′ dock lines, one for each end of the skiff. Fifteen foot dock lines are the perfect length if I’m backing the trailer down the boat ramp and someone else is guiding the boat along the dock. Launching solo, however, a 15’ rope is just long enough to tie a clove hitch around one of the 2.5” diameter PVC pipes enclosing the risers on my boat trailer. The clove hitch is not the most secure knot one could tie onto a slick PVC pipe, but it’s the only snug hitch knot I can manage given the limited length of the dock line.

    Launching solo this morning, I remove the safety straps, tie on the dock line, back the trailer into the water, and the boat floats backwards off the trailer as planned. I ease the car forward to bring the back of the trailer onto the dry part of the boat ramp, placing the rope within my reach. 

    As the rope comes taught, its tip pulls free of the clove hitch on the trailer’s riser, the knot unwinds, and the skiff continues its backwards drift untethered.

    Expletives fly as I leap from the car. It’s early on a chilly weekday morning and nobody is on the water nearby where they might grab my skiff before it floats across the cove.

    The air is 47°F, the water is 59°F, and I am not up for a frigid swim in my fishing clothes. More to the point, I am not up for a half-hour run to Cape Sable in soaking-wet fishing clothes. I scamper down the adjacent dock, hoping I might find a way to intercept the skiff as it floats past.

    The boat’s drift takes it close to the end of the dock. Jumping from the dock into the small skiff looks possible.

    Now is a good time to tune in to my two inner voices, akin to what Terry Pratchett dubbed “first sight” and “second sight”.

    The first voice says:

    “I should make this jump OK … but it’s a moving target, I might miss, and the boat has many sharp angles and no soft surfaces.“

    “If I miss the jump and break a bone, neither my wife nor my orthopedist will show me any sympathy, and that’s assuming I don’t break something then fall in the cold water and drown.”

    “The internet has a thousand videos of people who injure themselves attempting to jump from docks into boats.”

    Not everybody tunes in to their second inner voice, but I heard mine state clearly:

    “Did you hear the part about broken bones and drowning? Listen to the first voice.”

    Heeding the sage advice, I abandon the jumping idea posthaste.

    Instead, I climb down from the dock onto a wooden beam just above the waterline, wrap my right arm around the nearest piling, and extend my left leg over the water as far as it will go. My toe catches the errant skiff. Whew! I ease the skiff close to the dock step onto the deck, and motor to the closest tie-up spot. My car is waiting for me on the boat ramp, the driver’s door still wide open.

    Half an hour later, I’m 10 miles away. The water is too cold to catch fish on flies or lures, but the fish will bite shrimp soaked on the bottom. I bought three dozen live shrimp on my way to the marina this morning. Here are some of my catches:

    Black Drum
    Sheepshead
    Southern Stingray, 2 meters long nose-to-tail, and a 13 cm stinger barb.
    I did not bring the sting ray into the boat. Those inner voices again.
    a little Mangrove Snapper

    I hear a song of rising buzzes, my first Prairie Warbler of the year. A crocodile that slid from the sunlit bank is now eyeing me jealously, but keeping its distance. Good croc. A pod of dolphins spout spray as they venture past, chasing their own fish and not pestering the ones in my vicinity.

    When the fish stop biting, I watch birds and explore my way a couple of miles up a tidal creek where I eat lunch in a wild place with egrets, ibis, and rails for company, but no humans.

    Up the creek. Tide is down.

    Driving home from the marina, I spot a large Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake crossing the Park Road.

    Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

    Monday morning would the SECOND time that my over-extended dock line has freed itself from the trailer during a solo launch.

    A quick trip the marine store and I am the proud owner of a 25’ dock line, long enough to tie the securest of Secret Navy Knots and then some. Of course I coulda-shoulda purchased a longer dock line the first time the boat escaped, or gee, maybe even before that. 

    Too Clever / 2.

  • Falling Iguana Alert!

    It took a week, but the Arctic blast freezing tootsies across the US finally made its way to Miami on Saturday night, dropping to 34°F by dawn Sunday. 

    Most cold fronts stall before reaching South Florida, so our exotic people and critters are not adapted to temperatures below 50°F.

    A chill like this brings Painted Buntings into our bird feeders and moves the manatees out of Biscayne Bay and into the urban canals.

    Displaced northerners walk around shouting “Yes! Yes!” Teenage girls across Miami break out the boots with the fur. I unearth the LL Bean flannel-lined jeans and my 40 year old fleece jacket, recently refurbished by Patagonia at no charge. Everybody else wearing a too-thin jacket mutters profanity beneath their frosty breath.

    LL Bean flannel-lined jeans. Love ’em!

    The long, hard freeze of 2010 clobbered our native bonefish, snook, tarpon, and shark populations. A hard cold snap also kills-off many invasive exotic tropical fish and reptiles, but never gets them all.

    When the temperature drops below 40°F, local news organizations issue Falling Iguana Alerts. The Falling Iguana Alert is kind of a joke down here, except it’s a real thing. All over our neighborhood, fallen iguanas littered the ground.

    This Iguana fell onto the windshield of a neighbor’s car.
    This one made it all the way to the ground.

    The bigger they come, the harder they fall – neither iguana in the photos survived. Had either of these bad boys landed on someone walking their dog, it could have done some damage.

    Don’t be fooled, this frigid Cuban Knight Anole is not dead.

    A Cuban Knight Anole fell onto the patio near our backyard pond. Good-intentioned folks who don’t know better sometimes bring a cold-stunned Knight Anole indoors to warm it up. Remember the velociraptors that chased people around the lab in Jurassic Park?

    I moved Señor Knight Anole to a sunny spot by the front patio and he took care of the rest on his own.
    This little iguana only partially lost its footing and was found hanging upside down in a bush outside our front door.
    Cute little guy, huh?

    In the afternoon, Gray and I bundled up and biked over to check on the manatees at a nearby marina on US 1.

    I counted 31 altogether. One big male kept rolling onto his back and waving his flippers in the air.

    Several bulls were quite frisky.

    It’s dropping into the 30s again tonight, perfect weather for snuggling around an outdoor fire.

    Vetoed. Both Gray and our neighbors agree that it’s too cold tonight for an outdoor anything. Sheesh. Somebody I know will be getting flannel-lined jeans for Christmas.

  • Endings and Beginnings

    Dave Barry once noted that he’d seen more spectacular sunsets in his first year in Miami than his entire life in Philadelphia. Having an iPhone in my pocket helps to illustrate his point. Sunsets are splendid, though as a fisherperson, I’m partial to sunrises.

    Dusk

    Wild pony, Assateague Island, VA
    Assateague Island, VA
    Spring equinox, Southwest Miami-Dade County, FL
    Tarpon rise (lower right), Ochopee, FL
    Womenfolk on Rabbit Key, Everglades National Park
    Ochopee, FL
    East Everglades, Miami

    Dawn

    Fly fishing at the start of civil twilight, West Lake, Everglades National Park
    Two planets and a moon, Everglades National Park entrance road
    West Lake, Everglades National Park
    Assateague Island, VA
    South Pointe Park, Miami Beach
    Crandon Park, Key Biscayne
    Key Biscayne, FL
    Little Duck Key, FL
    Palm Key, Everglades National Park

    P.S. Last sunset of 2025

    Assateague Island, VA.

    P.P.S. First mosquito of 2026

    Remnants of a mosquito that entered through the heat vent at our rental house in Chincoteague VA, assisted by raccoons who partially dismantled the heating ducts under the house.

    © Philip Stoddard

  • Tarpon colors

    Fish are often camouflaged, some by color and patterns that resemble their backgrounds, others by reflecting the light around them and thus matching any and every background. Tarpon do the latter with scales that work like mirrors.

    Juvenile tarpon are about my favorite fish to chase on the fly rod. I say “juvenile” because the adults weigh 70 to 200 pounds. I normally avoid disturbing the adults and fly fish instead for smaller juveniles weighing 3 to 20 pounds, reasonably common in the canals and tidal creeks of South Florida.

    Tarpon are smart and strong, and they are spirited jumpers. The mantra among tarpon fishers is “Bow to the King”, meaning when the tarpon jumps, you lower the rod to create slack and prevent it breaking off or throwing the fly.

    Instead, I lightly tension the fly line during a jump to help the tarpon toss the fly without breaking the line. My goal is to fool the tarpon into eating my fly, have it give me a showy jump or two, but spare it the exhaustion of a complete fight and spare me the guilt of exhausting a beautiful fish.

    Yesterday, while kayak-fishing a saltwater canal, three miles from home as the cormorant flies, I spotted a couple of big juvenile tarpon in the 40-60 pound range. I swapped up to a larger fly “the Devil’s Daughter”, a muted black pattern designed by Drew Chicone for catching tarpon that are wise to the fly fisher’s usual sparkly fare.

    Tarpon can breath air, “rolling” on the surface to gulp a bubble before descending into the murky water. Following a roll, I’d cast the fly 6-10 feet in front, let it sink a bit, and retrieve it steadily. Twice I felt “short strikes”, in which an unseen tarpon grabbed only the feathery tail of the fly. A couple of casts later the fly stopped mid-retrieve, like I’d hooked a log. I set the hook and the line began to pull. The fish was in no hurry.

    Smaller tarpon jump immediately. Instead this tarpon went deep and swam away slowly. I took up the slack and kept reeling until my 7wt rod bent double and the leader touched the tip guide of the rod. The tarpon turned and made a dash under the kayak. I flattened the propulsion flippers to keep the line free as I worked it around the bow and the tarpon took off. Once in a while, I’m glad for the smooth drag on my fly reel.

    We had been pulling back and forth on the fly line (intermediate clear tip) for a couple of minutes and the tarpon had enough. It took to the air, arcing its body in a fast reciprocating shake that tossed the fly. I got my fly back and the tarpon continued on its hunt for hapless baitfish. I was ecstatic – that’s about as good as it gets in my book.

    Sometimes the fly won’t shake loose and I must net the fish to release it. While I have it in the net, I usually take a photo to document the spectacular purples, pinks, blues, and greens reflected by the tarpon’s mirrored scales. Here are some photos from my collection.

    Thank you, tarpon.

  • Pandora’s Flats

    I’ve been grappling with a multi-way conflict: (1) trying shake the “forever cold” while (2) healing a torn rotator cuff muscle (supraspinatus) in my fly casting arm, and (3) enjoying every nice day I can on the water with a fly rod and binoculars. At least I don’t have to grade papers.

    A cold front reached South Florida, knocking down the mosquitoes and moving sharks away from the shallows. The Everglades mangrove flats beckoned me southwards.

    Entrance to the flats.

    One shallow flat in particular draws me to watch shorebirds and chase game fish.

    Birds gather on the falling tide. Snook and Redfish forage near that edge.

    To get the best experience, you have to get the tides right. Depending on the moon and tide phases, the area can be 16 square miles of water (birds wait in the trees and fish are everywhere), 15 square miles of exposed mud (birds dispersed everywhere and fish are concentrated in the channels with the sharks), or something in between (birds and fish both concentrated on the edge of the tide). If the wind comes up, water might blow onto or off the flat, superseding the tidal prediction.

    Several two mile trails lead to the edge of the flat. When my late colleague George Dalrymple took his zoology class down the Snake Bight Trail, one student had to be carried out after she fainted from the sheer horror of the Black Salt Marsh Mosquitoes. I found that pedaling my bicycle down the trail lets me keep ahead of the swarm. Just don’t stop! But the best access is in a shallow-draft boat, a kayak, canoe, or technical poling skiff.

    Coming by boat, you have access to more of the flat and can approach the edge of the tide where birds and fish are concentrated. However, it’s easy to get trapped by the falling tide, particularly when distracted by fish or shorebirds, both of which follow the rapidly moving tidal edge. If Poseidon empties the bathtub while you are far from a channel, there’s no walking out. The deep, sucking mud steals your sandals before eating you whole.

    People who get stuck sometimes phone the Park dispatch office. The ranger explains:“Yes, we see you out there, but we can’t get to you. Unless it’s an emergency and you want to pay for a helicopter, you are going to sit there until the tide comes back in.” You might spend up to eight hours waiting for the next high tide to free your boat. Hope you brought extra water and a granola bar, and good luck with the lightning.

    I have willingly allowed myself get stranded at the bottom of the outgoing tide while watching shorebirds, chasing fish, or watching shorebirds chase fish. I eat lunch then escape when the tide returns to float my boat. The show can be worth the wait.

    Tricolored Heron
    Black-necked Stilt
    Speckled Seatrout that took my fly.

    The low tide can bring spectacular birding as it did last week when baitfish and birds filled the runouts along one of the main channels. The flats were covered with winter waterbirds: White Pelicans, Black Skimmers, all the long-legged waders, Marbled Godwits, Short-billed Dowitchers, Wilson’s Plovers, and assorted “peeps”.

    White Pelicans fishing cooperatively for mullet.
    Black Skimmers leaving the flat as the tide rises.
    White Pelicans, Great White Herons, Great Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Snowy Egrets, all fishing the shallow run-out at dead low tide.

    When the high tide pushes birds off the flats, some regroup on the highest shorelines, while others settle into the mangrove trees.

    Reddish Egret takes refuge from the high tide on a mangrove island.
    Yellow-crowned Night heron practices the Angeli Mudra yoga pose.
    Roseate Spoonbill looks down to assess the water level while waiting for the tide to recede.
    A Mangrove Clapper Rail skulks through the matted seagrass caught in the mangrove roots.

    A couple of days prior, my friend Jay Levine had caught and released 30 Snook on fly in a channel and had zero shark hassles. But when I arrived, the water had rewarmed, the sharks were returning, and the Snook were making themselves scarce. I caught and released a couple of Snook safely but an unseen shark took the third one and I called it quits.

    Four days later, my fishing friend Jeremy Nawyn asked me to join him kayak fishing this same flat once again. At first I declined, but then I took a look at the tide chart: 

    Tide chart for Flamingo on 26 Nov 2025. The black band in the middle is daylight and the gray bar at the top is the moon. The tide on the flat we are fishing is delayed by an hour. It will fall for eight hours, from 7:45 am until 4 pm .

    I normally fish this flat by motorized skiff because it’s so exhausting to exit by kayak. If you fish the rising tide (safest) you must paddle back against the fast incoming tidal current to escape, but a long falling tide like this one is a virtual water taxi service. As a lagniappe, the wind would be at our backs coming out. I texted Jeremy that the tide chart had changed my mind. I was in.

    Jeremy’s proposal was to head out in the dark before dawn and ride the incoming tide up a narrow unmarked channel on the edge of the flat, then ride the outgoing tide back toward the marina with the wind at our backs. We faced little risk of getting stranded if we stayed in or near the narrow channel, and would not have to fight the tides or winds to escape.

    I arrived early to enjoy the starry moonless sky.

    Orion.

    I rigged my kayak while the resident Barred Owl hooted:“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”

    Jeremy arrived at 5:30 am with his kayak mostly rigged in the back of his pickup truck. We were on the water by 5:45 am, 70 minutes before sunrise.

    Great Egrets and White Ibis leaving their roosts. White birds look black in the pre-dawn light.
    Jeremy in the lead. One of his teenage kids sometimes joins us, but not if we’re going out this early.

    Our fishing strategy was to paddle the narrow channel and cast toward the mangrove roots on shore where the predatory fish typically forage for crabs and small fish when the tide is up.

    I hooked a nice Snook near the mangroves then pedaled my kayak hellbent-for-leather onto the shallow flat, grounding the Hobie’s pedal flippers on the mud before stopping to work the fish to my landing net for a quick measurement and release.

    Phil with Snook in shallow water. Photo by Jeremy Nawyn

    Grounding the kayak on the flat might seem like an odd thing to do on purpose, but it prevents unseen sharks from popping up from below and grabbing the fish on my line. A Snook or Redfish hides handily in a foot of water, but a Lemon Shark or Bull Shark is conspicuous. If a shark comes for my fish in super-skinny water, I can see its approach, open the reel, and let the fish run. My trick worked this morning with a handsome Snook and a chunky Redfish.

    Snook, 24″.
    Redfish, 24.5″

    A Lemon Shark circled my kayak looking for my redfish as I hefted it in my landing net from one side of the kayak to the other. 

    Pesky Lemon Shark circling the kayak.

    Enough already. I pedaled the kayak right at the shark to chase it away. 

    Typical of this flat, the water was opaque with sediment. One could only make out detail in the top 6”, which made it hard to spot fish. At the farthest extent of the tiny channel, a three-foot tarpon swam under my kayak, which I only saw because the water was just a foot deep… and dropping. Time to turn around.

    I stopped in at a favorite cove on the way back, wherein I often find Snook and Tarpon. A four foot Lemon Shark had gotten in ahead of me and was working over the cove, chasing all the fish up the mangrove creek – definitely time to head back. As cool as they are to see up close, I don’t want sharks hanging around my boat jonesing for my fish. Lemon Sharks at Flamingo have bitten the hands of several fishermen in the past couple of years and even dragged one careless lad overboard and into the water (YouTube video).

    I paused to watch eight Ospreys circle a mullet school, diving in succession, snatching hapless fish, and landing in the trees on shore to enjoy a sashimi breakfast.

    This lucky Osprey caught a yummy seatrout.

    Full of fresh fish, the Ospreys set about collecting soft material to line their stick nests. Some carried clumps of dead seagrass in their feet.

    On our way back to the marina, I spotted a young couple in an inflatable kayak paddling the opposite direction, heading toward the heart of the flat. Unless they knew what they were doing, they stood to get stranded in about 20 minutes and stuck there for the next 5 hours. Seeing neither fishing gear nor binoculars, I took them for tourists. I paddled over and asked whether they came here often. “First time” responded the young man in a British accent.

    I explained about the tides and the mud, and pointed them toward a channel marker. If they paddled directly to that marker they could spend all day watching birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals from the main channel without getting stranded.

    As I packed my gear in the car, I watched another Osprey pair skimming the West Indian Mahogany trees to collect Spanish moss for their bulky nest on the water control lock that separates the Buttonwood Canal from Florida Bay. 

    Lock Moss Nesters

    I ate my lunch while overlooking Florida Bay from the refurbished visitor center. In addition to the wildlife viewing it’s entertaining to watch international visitors enjoying this National Park in their own ways.

    Keeping up with Instagram is priority anywhere you go.
    More my style.

    Hey, that’s the same couple in the kayak I saw earlier, now returning from the flats. They pulled their boat ashore and stopped by to say “hi”.

    Caroline from Strasbourg and Jason from London.

    They had decided to head back in after a large American Crocodile surfaced in the channel next to their inflatable kayak.

    My photo, not theirs, but you can see why they might have felt unsafe in an inflatable kayak.

    Until recently, I’d have told them not to worry about the normally docile American Crocodile, but last summer an experienced fly fisherman told me of a large croc at Flamingo that went airborne in its best attempt to take him off the deck of his skiff.

    I took Caroline and Jason over to the marina to admire the assembly of mother and baby manatees.

    Too cute.

    * * *

    Pandora’s Flats

    A couple of months back, I promised to write an essay about why you shouldn’t fish at Flamingo. The dense mosquito swarms are sufficient reason for normal people to stay away nine months of the year. Risk of stranding on the flats while exposed to sun and lightning should give pause to any sane person. We recently acquired the man-made problem of habituated sharks and crocodiles popping up at random from the opaque water below – recreational fishing boats have trained them well. If you just wanted to fish, you might find an equally productive area with fewer ancillary hazards.

    American Crocodile. Note the skinny snoot, Roman nose, and 4th tooth on the bottom that sticks up.

    All of these risks have proven insufficient to keep a certain zoologist away. The combination of birds, fish, and scenery will keep me coming back as long as my health and the rising seas allow.

  • Return to Mosquito Hell, with a most striking dawn

    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

  • Annoying the fish

    When I took up fishing again after a 50 year hiatus, my wife Gray was bewildered: “Phil, you’ve spent your whole career being nice to fish. Why do you suddenly want to be mean to them?”

    I could say I went fishing for the spectacular sunrises and experience of nature, but Gray would quickly note that I could get up at 3:30 am to be on Florida Bay for the sunrise, spend the morning watching shorebirds, manatees, dolphins, rays, and sharks, and come home to enjoy lunch and a nap, all while leaving the fish in peace.

    So hers is a fair question. I studied electric fish and mosquitofish for 35 years at Cornell and FIU. I had a massive fish-rearing facility on the roof of my building where our fish bred because we made them so happy. An undercover plant from PETA worked as a technician in my lab for a few months then left because he couldn’t find any evidence that we were inhumane in our treatment of fish. I definitely don’t want to be mean to fish.

    So, yes, my love of fishing embodies a patent contradiction in my values. I truly love all the wild things and trying to catch fish. I especially enjoy chasing fish with a fly rod, widely recognized as the least efficient way to actually catch a fish.

    With that bed of nettles as our background, let’s relocate temporarily to the site of the sunrise photo, a seagrass flat in Florida Bay, two miles south of the Flamingo Marina in Everglades National Park. In a future essay, I’ll tell you all the reasons you should NOT fish there, but this day I will share some of its magic.

    Here’s the flat surrounding a mangrove key a few minutes after sunrise. This light always enchants me. Look for a moment and you’ll see the water is pink dimpled with dark blue, far prettier to my eye than Christo’s famous pink island wrapping.

    The water surface reflects the sky at low sun angles so my iPhone camera can’t see into the water to document for you how the fish are going about their morning activities. That would require a circular polarizer on my iPhone (wait, look it up… PolarPro makes a good one). But I’m up on the poling platform of my skiff this morning wearing polarized sunglasses. You’ll have to trust me when I tell you what fish I’m seeing and what they are doing.

    Mullet are flipping and splooshing in the shallows, while egrets line up to try for the small ones. From the key comes the hollow whinny of a Bald Eagle, the raucous clatter of a Mangrove Clapper Rail, and the sweet song of a Yellow Warbler. Against the key lies a deeper channel where I spot a nice redfish but I won’t try for it. A five foot lemon shark cruises the channel, not far behind. Hooking a snook or redfish in any channel at Flamingo is tantamount to feeding a shark. I do not feed sharks or alligators, for similar reasons.

    Two juvenile Goliath Groupers, about 18” long, are out in the open on the flat. Young Goliaths normally spend their days holed up in the mangroves, roving the flat at night. But here they are in the light of day.I watch to see what these young groupers will do when they’re caught out in their pj’s with a flats skiff poling towards them. When I get closer, they panic and swim to the nearest clump of red mangroves, sticking their heads in the roots and leaving their mottled brown and black bodies sticking out in the open. With their heads concealed, they can’t see me, so I guess I’m not supposed to see them either, but they look thoroughly silly.

    Two young redfish with light gold bodies and blue tails are cruising the shoreline. I pitch a sparkly spoon fly in front of them, then retrieve it. One redfish starts to follow the fly, then changes its mind and wanders back to cruise with its friend. A different fly might have worked better, but which one? Unlike a rising trout that feeds for a while in one spot while the flyfisher tries one fly after another, a flats fish on the move rarely affords a second chance.

    The edge of the flat becomes a reverse shower of small jacks taking to the air. Underneath the water, I presume, a school of large jacks roars through the water in hot pursuit. In fifteen seconds, the water is still once again. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on the flats.

    I round the corner of the key and the glassy water surface erupts and goes still in alternation. Silver tails appear briefly and disappear. A school of juvenile tarpon is actively feeding on baitfish.

    The prey this morning is a school of anxious young mangrove snappers that’s holding in one area. To my happy surprise, the tarpon are cruising back and forth to take multiple shots at the bait school and affording me a parallel opportunity with my fly rod.

    I throw a black tarpon fly in front of the advancing tarpon with no success. The same fly worked last week in murky water four miles to the east, but the water here today is clear. Oh, right. Light-colored flies work better in clear water than dark patterns because fish (including baitfish) in clear water change to lighter, more reflective body colors for better camouflage. I knew that. The tarpon will be coming back soon for another pass at the snappers, so I remove the black fly and select a big gray & white snook fly that I tied but never put in front of a fish. If I stretch my imagination, this fly  could resemble a young mangrove snapper. It looks very fishy in the water and it’s not black.

    I attach this snook fly to the heavy tarpon-proof bite tippet on my leader, and cast it in front of the tarpon school. To complete the illusion of a small fish finding itself in the wrong place at the wrong time, I make the fly attempt an escape. It works. One of the larger tarpon breaks from the school and grabs the hapless fly. I set the hook, but the tarpon doesn’t seem to care. The lining of a tarpon’s mouth is as tough as Kevlar – I’ve seen a tarpon consume a whole blue crab without chewing. But, feeling the line resistance, the tarpon forcibly yanks some fly line from my left hand and swims back into formation in the school. I restore tension on the line, putting a good arc into the 7-weight fly rod. The tarpon resists for a moment, then jumps clear of the water, snapping its body back and forth in the air and creating the slack needed to neatly toss my fly.

    You normally drop the rod tip when a tarpon jumps, precisely to keep it from creating that line slack, but I kept light tension on specifically to help the tarpon escape. More on that in a moment.

    Free of the leader’s encumbrance, the young tarpon, roughly 10 pounds’ worth, once again resumes its position in the school as the members continue their search for yummy little mangrove snappers.

    * * *

    Even though a fish’s face doesn’t change with mood, I swear this tarpon glared with an annoyed expression in its whole body. Perhaps it was in the way it shouldered loose some free line and went back to what it was doing before. It was never so clear that my hard earned fly-fishing skills, such as they are, do indeed annoy the fish.

    When a woman sends me a message like this, it stings. Same with a fish it turns out. I didn’t spend 35 years studying fish behavior to no effect.

    Increasingly, I compromise, seeking a bite on the fly then a self-release at a distance.

    When a fish takes a fly that I tied myself, I delight at having completed the illusion. My heart skips a beat at the sudden appearance of weight and power on the other end of the fly line gripped in my left hand. If I’m lucky, the fish makes a fast initial run, and maybe, if it’s the right species, it makes a couple of spectacular jumps. If it’s a new species for me, I want to see it up close and take a photo to remember it better. But for familiar species I do what I can to help the fish pitch the fly and get on with its fish life, ideally without my having to net and unhook it.  

    We’ll see how that deal sits with me. And, I suppose, with the fish.

    © Philip Stoddard

  • Fishing with alligators

    Fishing with alligators

    As a rule, backcountry alligators avoid people, while those dwelling in human-infested waters learn that associating with humans can provide an easy meal.

    Feeding alligators is a very bad idea, though alligators in this second group believe that feeding alligators is a very good idea. They hold that the highest calling of human newcomers to the swamps is to catch big fish and feed them to deserving alligators. These alligators can be bold, aggressive, and very dangerous. If you toss a rock at one to scare it off, it assumes you are throwing food and comes closer.

    I fly fish tarpon in the tidal creeks and ponds along the Tamiami Trail, Florida Route 40 (“The Trail”), about 70 miles west of Miami.

    Last year, two human-adapted alligators ran me out of a productive pair of ponds. The smaller gator, an 8-footer, even came out of the water and chased me overland in a bid to snatch the tarpon I’d caught and had intended to release unharmed. Sprinting from a gator with a 10 pound tarpon in your arms is an effective cardio workout. I always think back on that morning when people tell me “I want to take up fly fishing – it looks so relaxing”.

    The ponds along the Trail do hold a lot of fish, but I cannot manage a big fish and fend off a bold alligator at the same time. I needed a way to convince the gators to leave me alone before I would fish there again. I needed a partner. A brave partner with experience in the ways of alligators.

    I met Gabriel Ross through an online fishing club. In time I learned that Gabriel knows a lot about freshwater fishing in South Florida. He fishes the Trail regularly and has both a sunny disposition and a high tolerance for mosquitoes. Importantly, Gabriel is not unhinged by alligators, which he has fished around all his life. Just the fellow I’d wanted to meet.

    On our first fishing trip together, I brought along two special items. The first was a new net with a long handle and silicone mesh, ideal for lifting big fish clear of the water quickly and gently. I don’t want to fall in the drink with a hungry and excited alligator moving in, and I don’t want to let a precious gamefish bounce around on the ground. Nothing annoys me like seeing video on YouTube featuring some proud, clueless asshole letting a tarpon flop around in the rocky dirt or on the pavement while he gropes around trying to unhook it. The second item was the 18’ carbon fiber push pole from my skiff, already proven useful for poking nosy sharks on the flats. Eighteen feet seemed like a good minimum distance to maintain between myself and a hungry alligator. I’d replaced the push pole’s sharp metal point with a flat-tipped cone 3D-printed of polyurethane, so a hard poke from the pointy end would not make a hole in the recipient. 

    Gabriel and I met up at dawn at the appointed pond on the Tamiami Trail. As Gabriel set up his minnow trap, an alligator began to move out of the mangroves. More and more of it. It was massive, 9’+, and it was coming towards us. 

    At 18 feet and closing I made my move.  Holding the push pole aloft with a firm grip on the broad shoe end, I let the other end fall two feet through the air onto the alligator’s head with an audible clunk.

    A gator this big is never challenged. He wheeled around and snapped at the push pole. I whipped the pole upwards in time to save it, and again dropped it on the alligator’s head – BONK!

    The gator wasn’t scared, he was pissed. He turned to face me, opened his mouth, and hissed. My next two strikes were a couple of sharp, well-placed pokes in the nose. Inspection of an alligator’s skull shows the nose is bony, not soft like a shark’s. Still, you’d think it would make an impression to have an 18’ pole thrust directly onto the tip of one’s nose, reinforced or not.

    I was preoccupied when the big gator was around, so here’s a photo of a smaller one later in the day.

    The alligator went underwater, but did not flee. Two sharp nudges in the ribs finally convinced him he was not going to be left alone, much less fed a snook or a tarpon, and he reluctantly departed.

    Cool as a cucumber, Gabriel never batted an eye throughout the commotion, quietly tending his minnow trap and bait bucket and re-rigging his spinning rod for bait-fishing. Only when he stood up did Gabriel mention that he carries a handgun to fire into the ground if a gator comes too close. Gators, he explained, are frightened off by the noise. Me too. Glad he told me before he had need to use it.

    With the big guy gone, the pond’s usual resident gator, a 6-footer, came out of the mangroves and swam up to us.

    “Feed me a fish?”

    It only took three pokes to send her to a far corner of the pond, where she found something else to eat (num num num). She stayed far away from the two-legged maniac with the push pole and from Gabriel’s minnow trap. Minnow traps are a favorite snack food of alligators.

    Oddly, the tarpon that are always common in the ponds north of the Trail were largely absent. I gave up pitching flies for missing tarpon, and got my first lesson in bait-fishing freshwater snook on the Trail.

    Bait

    The African Jewelfish (Hemichromis bimaculatus), also known as the Jewel Cichlid, is an invasive exotic from the pet trade.  My former doctoral student, Vanessa Trujillo, studied Jewelfish in the Everglades. Vanessa found that African Jewelfish beat up the small native fish species during the spring drydown, which they can do because they’re tough and mean. Jewelfish outbreed native fish in rainy summer floods because they have biparental care that ensures better survival of their offspring. 

    African Jewelfish, photo Gabriel Arenciba, The Art of Microfishing

    African Jewelfish are abundant in these ponds, so snook are already cued into looking for them. Because jewelfish are tough, they hold up well as bait until a snook eats them. Gabriel finds jewelfish easy to catch in a minnow trap baited with stale, week-old brioche. Bien sure.

    Gabe recommended connecting the jewelfish’s lower lip to a 4/0 circle hook. Circle hooks have the point concealed inside the hook gap, so when a predator fish swallows the bait (bye-bye jewelfish), the hook does not lodge in the predator’s stomach, but slips free until it encounters the jaw, yielding a clean hookset. An additional trick I learned from Chico Fernandez’s book on bonefish is to press down the very tip of the hook barb rather than pressing the whole barb flat or leaving the barb intact. The goal is to leave the barb shaped as a bit of a hump; it hooks up more reliably this way and makes it possible to remove the hook without tearing anything.

    Time to fish

    Gabriel tossed his Jewelfish bait into the pond and quickly connected with a hefty snook. Gabe barely kept her out of the mangroves but finally got her in range of my spiffy new net. 

    Mrs. Snook measured out to 28.5”. She would be the biggest of the day. I took a quick photo then Gabe put her back in the water across the road so our alligator friends wouldn’t grab her before she regained full orientation and composure. It’s a short swim from there back to the pond.

    Snook are protandrous, meaning they start life as males and change to become female, transitioning when they reach 25-27 inches or so. Every badass snook is a trans female.

    I caught a couple of snooklets in the pond in quick succession before catching a Florida Soft-shelled Turtle. Ugh. Gabe caught a big Florida Gar. Lots of teeth and smelly slime – double ugh.  The slime left in my net attracted fire ants. One got inside my shirt and stung me. I hate fire ants – triple ugh.

    We could hear snook under the bridge making audible pops as it or they snatched small fish from near the surface. Gabriel lay on his stomach and pitched jewelfish into the slim gap under the bridge. 

    We caught several more snook that way.

    In time the mosquitoes let up enough that we could take off the armor.

    At 10 am, a wall of white appeared in the East. We had just enough time to dive into our cars before the rain squall hit. As is typical in the Everglades, the rain passed in half an hour, cooling the moist air and leaving enough cloud cover to darken the sky a bit. Perfect conditions for Black Salt Marsh Mosquitoes to come back out.  

    We fished a few more creeks along the Trail. I’d never caught a fish at my favorite kayak put-in spot, but it always looked promising. Turns out the bridge there was stacked with snook eager to nosh on jewelfish.

    At another spot Gabriel knew about, I finally caught a sparkly young tarpon that took a jewelfish snack.

    I also caught a blue crab. Everything eats jewelfish.

    A second rain squall further improved conditions for mosquitoes.

    We returned to our starting point. There, without warning, the water erupted in an explosion of snook.  A mob of them had roared out from under the bridge all at once and raided a school of jewelfish or mollies – I couldn’t identify the prey in the mix of froth and silver.

    I don’t think I’ve done justice to the summer mosquito experience in the tidal mangrove swamps lining the western end of Tamiami Trail. As challenging as the alligators are to fish around, the summer mosquitoes in the mangrove ponds and creeks are just as bad, but in their own way. Alligators are finite while mosquitoes are infinite.

    Beyond sheer annoyance, the Black Salt Marsh Mosquito is a known carrier of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE). I lost a colleague to mosquito-borne encephalitis my first year at FIU. Because of the potential for contracting a lethal virus it’s best to minimize the number of bites one gets. Gabriel and I wore semi-breathable mosquito suits dosed with the repellant picaridin, a plant-derived product that doesn’t dissolve synthetic fabrics, fishing gear, or car seats. The bug suits work, but South Florida summers are hot enough as it is without adding a second layer to further restrict air circulation.

    I’d like to wear a GoPro camera to capture some of the action, but a camera mounted on my hat doesn’t work under a bug net and a chest strap mount would create constriction points in my clothes for mosquitoes to bite though.

    Am I trying to convince you to stay away from my fishing spots? Yes, but I’m not exaggerating about the contents of Pandora’s box you encounter on the Trail 9-10 months out of the year.

    I enjoyed fishing with Gabriel because he’s good company and is supercool around alligators. He liked fishing with me because I could handle the mosquitoes. It’s too beautiful out there to spend your day with someone who complains about nature.

    © Philip Stoddard

  • Fly fishing the Tetons

    I last visited Grand Teton National Park in August of 1980. Since then, the Tetons have moved about four feet due to fault slippage, not so noticeable for a mountain range 43 miles long. Indeed, most things seem about the same, but one thing that has changed noticeably is the tenfold increase in number of fly fishers.

    The exponential rise in the popularity of trout fishing is widely attributed to the movie made from Norman Maclean’s wonderful novel.

    People tell me all the time “I LOVED that movie. It made me want to take up fly fishing. It looks so relaxing.”  Relaxing? They missed how seriously the menfolk in that family took the challenging and technical craft of trout fishing on a big western river. The narrator recalled his father’s sermon:

    “He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”  

    The Snake River is the region’s big trout fishing draw, and even has its own race of fine-speckled Cutthroat Trout. Snake River Cutthroats are gorgeous creatures, silver and gold with little black dots, orange fins, and the trademark orange lines under the chin for which they are named. 

    Dozens of guided drift boats ply the river each day, and as many people fish from shore. Small trout are gullible but the medium and large ones have learned the mantra “look twice, bite once”.

    Our first day exploring Teton Park I spotted a distant, shallow creek below a splendid overlook. The Snake River was open for fishing, but creeks in the park were closed for one more day. Gray was painting, so I wandered down to the creek for a look. Descending through the dense brush I sang a little song: “Go away bears – go away moose”. 

    The creek was brimming with solid cutthroats, 12”-18” in length. Here they are:

    The next day we had our big splurge, a full-day float trip down the Snake in a drift boat manned by Larry Milton of Mangis Fishing Guides. In addition to a day of glorious scenery, an oared drift boat (shallow draft dory) provides a fly fisher access to many good trout holes inaccessible to those wading or fishing from shore. Even so, Larry, with his 30+ years of floating the Snake, kept saying “this hole SHOULD get you a bite”. 

    Watercolor by Gray Read

    The “hatch” on the river that day was a random hoard of hapless spruce moths that either fell in the water or ventured close enough for a trout to leap up and grab one.

    I started out the day casting a “hopper-dropper” rig, a floating grasshopper dry fly with a small sparkly nymph fly dangling below. Usually 90% of bites come on the nymph, but this day 90% of the bites came on the dry fly. I snipped off the nymph to get a better drift of the dry and did a little better.

    Of ~20 cutthroat trout I caught and released, one was 16-17”, three were about 11”, and the rest were little pookers, 5-8”. Not a bad day. 

    The water was warming – better to get fish back in the river post haste than pose them for a pretty photo.

    The evening of the next day, we returned to that first creek, me with my fly rod, Gray with her watercolor kit. A fellow watching for moose from the overlook told me he’d seen a dozen fishermen trudge up the hill from the creek below. I went exploring anyway, expecting the lovely trout from before would be gone or hiding. To my surprise, every trout from two evenings prior was holding in exactly the same spot as before, lazily rising to pick the odd caddisfly off the surface. 

    Gray paints while I fish. Amid the scattered raindrops on the water, you can see the expanding ring where a trout has just picked a bug off the surface. Perfect dry fly conditions.

    Alas, these beauties showed exactly zero interest in the assorted flies I drifted past them on fine 6X tippet. They weren’t even disturbed by me casting at them. I could just as well have been a moose. 

    I did get some attention, though. I was followed down the creek, then back up the creek, by a female Cinnamon Teal. She squawked at me the whole time. When I sat down to change flies she flew up into the air to spy on me from above.

    Between bouts of nibbling aquatic vegetation, Mrs. Teal had no compunction against splashing directly over a big trout to keep up with me. I saw no sign of ducklings and it was too late in the year for nesting. She was just a busybody. The extended mountain twilight was coming to an end, and moose were wandering in – time to leave.

    Jenny Lake had opened to fishing, but we found the water was over 65° F, too warm to fish trout without stressing them.

    Same with Cottonwood Creek that flows from Jenny Lake.

    Instead, we hiked in to some beaver ponds to look for moose. Tiny trout dappled the surface or leapt into the air for flying insects, popping from the glassy water like slippery watermelon seeds squeezed between the fingers. Good dry fly fishing for naive 4-5” trout, but mind your backcast and keep an eye peeled for thirsty megafauna.

    Funny looking moose by the beaver pond.

    On our last morning we stopped by Flat Creek in the National Elk Refuge, a spot recommended for wade fishing by Larry the river guide. From the number of parked cars with single-purpose fly rod transport tubes clamped to their roof racks, I estimated 40 experienced and dedicated fly fishers were already stalking this narrow winding creek. Assuming I could even find a couple of bends to myself, I knew these fish would be highly over-educated.

    We left the crowded stream and drove over to the Gros Ventre River, which I’d also wanted to explore. We parked at a turnout away from the river and hiked to a section of water not visible from the road.

    I had this cold, braided river to myself as far in each direction as I cared to wander. Each bend offered promising trout spots. As I walked the banks, the air filled with small brown grasshoppers. Freshly expired stonefly nymphs littered the gravel bars. Easy to guess what these trout were eating. Indeed, I SAW lots of trout swim up and check out my flies: “Ooo, brown Morish Hopper, size 10” or “Golden Stone nymph, nicely tied.”  Indeed, I had a wonderful time picking my way along the game trails, fording the river to access the promising holes and seams, and seeing trout flash my flies in such a beautiful spot, even though I didn’t get a single bite.

    As we hiked back to the car, the rangeland had every color on display. Hard to believe that’s a photograph.
    Three bull moose grazed in the river as we too ate our lunch.

    In contrast to our day in the drift boat, I caught one trout and a whitefish while wade-fishing a couple of hours a day across the rest of the week.

    You can’t beat the Tetons for scenery, hiking, and critter-watching. I was delighted to spot my first Pine Marten and spent half an hour happily watching a Dipper bobbing and swimming in a mountain creek while Gray painted nearby, surrounded by a patch of fireweed and its attendant Rufus Hummingbird.

    But, if you thrill when a trout eats your fly, and again seeing it up close in your net, the Driftless Area of SW Wisconsin  draws far fewer people, and, as a result, offers much more productive trout-fishing.