I’ve got about a week to go on my three-week visit to Florida and daily trips to deep grass flats at the mouth of Tampa Bay. By and large fly fishing has been decent for average sized Speckled Trout with usually 4-5 dozen fish coming to hand over the 4-5 hour morning wade/float. Jacks and Ladyfish occasionally break the trend but trout are the main target. Tides have been a bit goofy with mid-day tides high and no real negative tides to speak of. This limits the wading opportunities and forces a battle with wind and tide to keep the kayak lined up along the productive edges of deep grass and potholes/channels.
Water temps are ideal for trout in the mid-70s, there’s a lot of bait in the water and clarity is excellent. Trout are plentiful on the deep grass and very predictable. Most of the time I am chucking 3-4” unweighted streamers on a 7 weight with a 200 grain, 30’ SONAR Warm sink-tip. Long casts gets the fly down into the zone quickly and allows coverage of a lot of water. When the opportunity to wade the edges a bit at lower tides I’ll chuck Shrimp Gurglers on floating line. Those top water strikes are fun to see.
Top producers have been Chartreuse Gartside Soft Hackles, Myakka Minnows and Shrimp Gurglers.
The pattern is simple. Whenever deep eel grass meets a pothole, there is usually a 1’ to 2’ sharp drop in depth. Potholes are sandy bottomed clearings devoid of much cover surrounded by eel grass. When the sun is high or tide low, potholes are readily visible as light blue green areas surrounded by darker areas of grass. The edges are where trout typically lurk to ambush bait moving through the area. Depending on wind and tide, flies can be presented from the grass into the pothole and retrieved, from the pothole into the grass or parallel to the edge of the pothole and grass. The target is always to get the fly to move at depth over junction of the grass and pothole. A thunk on the end of the line lets you know you’ve connected with a Speck. Low tides concentrate fish closer to the open water of the pothole while higher tides allow trout to move further into the deep grass.
Although anglers in general have been few and far between on the flats, I’ve been fishing for the last two weeks, a group of Master Anglers have shadowed me every day and taken their toll of fish. Unfortunately, Cormorants are pretty intelligence anglers. They will follow the kayak and swim under the boat to snag unsuspecting baits as it’s scared up out of the grass, many times banging themselves on the kayak as they tackle their prey. I’ve had up to eight birds surrounding the yak at one time. Whenever I connect with a trout, it can be a battle to land it unconnected to a Cormorant. They do real damage however when trying to release trout. I’d estimate that 1 out of five trout released get captured and swallowed by a cormorant before it reaches the safety of the deep grass. Cormorants do not practice catch and release or adhere to any slot limits.
Will get four more days on the water next week after avoiding crowds over the weekend. Maybe the cormorants will take some time off.
