| Fish bite depite tough conditions
Friday 04-11-03, pre-fishing for the Herman Lucerne Memorial it was very Rainy and windy. Tough fishing a 12 lb Snook is all we had to show for it and an early day off the water. Captains meeting and dinner as usual the Lucerne has a great fish fry. All Proceeds go the children’s hospital in Homestead.
Sat. 04-12-03, Tournament day. We started out trying to catch our Tarpon first an hour and a half and no luck. But we did manage a 18 inch Trout and a 10.8 inch snapper. This was not much of a consolation. We did have a couple shots at some big tailing reds that we did not capitalize on. Later we found some decent Snook and Small Tarpon but they were not interested in our baits. Lines out at 330pm and we were frustrated. Dinner on the patio at the hotel this is always fun. Guys listen here trying to figure out what the other guys did that he might not have done.
After discussing it with my partner Capt. Timmy we came up with a game plan for Sunday. Lets catch a Snook early and then go for a Bass. We ended up with for nice Snook the largest being 29 inches. We also caught a 18.5 Redfish to end the tournament with four fish and 77 inches. This was almost embarrassing except other people in the tournament were in the same boat. Quality anglers and guides struggled as we did. No excuses there are always teams who perform well. The tournament ended and the results tallied up. The dinner at Keys Gate is great as usual, always enough food.
I didn’t fish much during the week, but fished the Sea Vee owner’s tournament with friends Omar, Oscar, Luis and Randy. This was for fun but there was some cash on the line. We caught Kingfish Bonita’s and a reel nice 31lb Cobia. There were a couple very good quality catches entered lots of Kings, Muttons, Cobias, Dolphin and Tuna. The party afterwards was top of the line, thanks to Sea Vee.
Fly Fishing with the Dentist for the next 3 days everyday we get a different pair of anglers. 20 in all 10 guides, it was fun.
Thurs-04-24-03 Today I fished Dake and Gabe. They wanted to fly fish but we had some serious wind so we fished spin tackle. We struggle most of the day doing all the right things casting to mudding rays, fishing potholes, fishing high percentage areas. Man it was tough. We ended up catching baits and finally getting a few bites including Gabes decent 27 inch Redfish some Trout, Ladyfish and a couple nice Bull Sharks. Gabe landed a nice one of 80lbs. the only positive, was that the other guides were at the dock and no one did anything much better. Lots of talk about the conditions and the tough fishing.
Friday- 04-25-03 I thought yesterdays wind was bad, well today is worse and the fly rods didn’t even get looked at. Jim and John just wanted to make the best of it. We started out Snook fishing, no bites. Not again I thought 2 days in a row. We went and Trout fished caught some baits and hooked something very large for 30 minutes until it wore thru the leader. We fished around and tried several areas nothing seemed to good. We ran west to Lake Ingram I had heard there we some big Tarpon around the area. We now have a wind of 25-30mph and we trying to make the best of it.
Once up inside of Lake Ingram we found fish busting up mullet, but we could not get them to eat our baits. We ran back to the mouth of East Cape Canal and Tarpon fished the rest of the afternoon there. The Tarpon were thick and busting up mullet, our baits kept getting eaten buy everything but Tarpon. Spinner Sharks, Rays and possibly a couple Tarpon bites but we never actually saw one.
Sat-04-26-03 Just when you thought it was safe to go back. Today’s weather even worse.
25 mph and its going to storm. Today I decide to change it up and go into the backcountry. I was with Dr. Becker and Brian the first words out of brains mouth was could we fly fish. Sure I said. We ran into the backcountry only to stare straight into an oncoming wall of dark clouds. Dr. Becker caught a quick Snook of 3lbs. The storms are getting closer and the temps are dropping. Its April and its getting cold. The winds shift and we go to anther spot, Dr. Becker hooked a large Snook only to have it come off. Did I mention these guys were fishing fly and making the cast in 25 mph plus winds. The storms finally arrive and we ran for cover back to Tarpon Creek we fished there until it cleared up and Brian hooked the Snook of a lifetime. The 10 pounder hit like a ton of bricks he set the hook and tried to get tight with the wind and all the commotion he lost it but it was exciting. We ended the day with Dr. Becker catching a 22 inch Redfish and running from the second wave of storms.
Monday 04-28-03- Scott, Kathy and Veronica from Switzerland. Today was much better the wind was down. We started out Snook fishing with topwater. On Scott’s second cast he got slammed by a Snook , the plug we 3 feet in the air but the Snook missed the hooks. Several minutes later we caught a 5 pound Snook on topwater. We tried several other Snook spots catching only Trout, Jacks and Ladyfish. We caught some baits and ran to East Cape Canal for Tarpon. The Tarpon were there and Free jumping, we only had 4 Mullet. The first was eaten by a Shark that took 200 yards of 15lb test and finally cut thru the line. The second was lost. The Third was eaten by a 100 lb Tarpon. Veronica was holding on while the Tarpon did all the acrobatics he knew. For some reason the circle hook came out, that’s not really normal. This Tarpon took 50 Yards on the initial run, enough for a good hook set. Kathy was up and her line was being peeled off a hundred and fifty yards and we a chasing a large fish which is running thru a creek a this point , we knew this wasn’t going to have good ending. The fish finally wrapped around a tree and cut Kathy off. We were out of bait tried a couple other spots on the way back before we ended the day.
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