Afishionado

Redfish for me..

I've been throwing the Egret wedge tail mullet at em.. Nice thick tail makes a lot of vibration.. They'll hit most artificials as long as they're presented properly..

haha I've been down the outdoor journalism road.. and the sponsorship road.. and the kayak team road... not for me I pulled out of the "professional" industry completely.. I don't feel any pressure to produce fish anymore and honestly it makes me fish better.. Brian Clancy is a great guide, among many here on the space coast.. The fall is a great time to fish the space coast, namely the indian river... This is where the monster reds spawn and if you know where to go you can find schools of monster bulls 2000+ deep... it's like a religious experience throwing a topwater into a school of reds like that.. you'll have a dozen of them as long as your leg fighting over it.. Only problem is this is when the googans who can't catch a big fish the rest of the year come out of the woodworks and hammer these spawning fish.. I call it the redfish rodeo, and it can get downright sickening.. Improper release practices account for many deaths of big broodstock reds ... about august you'll start seeing floaters.. What I like to do is get out there really early and find them before anyone hits them at all.. catch one fish for each person on the boat and then move on to the flats to hunt the slotties.. Definitely find you a guide who covers the indian river in the titusville /port st john area during the months of august-october and you will have a great shot at finding one of these epic schools .. nothing like 2000 bull reds in 3 feet of water, there is nothing that comes close.. I'm trying to get some bow time on them this year and stick one on fly

Definitely don't soak your reel overnight.. If you drop the reel in salt and it gets submerged, a breakdown is in order.. take it apart all the way down to the main gear and just do your standard lube and oil (grease on the gears, oil on the bearings.. never grease a bearing in a reel) I break my reels down for regular lubing about 4 times a year.. I like to take brake parts cleaner and blow out all the old grease in the reel, it strips everything off and leaves you with a nice clean surface to apply grease and oil with no chance of any old crap coming out and mixing in.. When you rinse your reels after a trip on the salt, use a steady light mist.. I see a lot of people blasting their reels with hoses which drives grit and salt deeper into the reel.. steady light mist until its dripping off, then wipe everything down dry.. After this I ususally spray some T9 or other corrosion inhibitor on a rag and wipe down the reel and the rod including all the guides, reel seat, ect.. That's basically it

On a whim this morning I decided to go hit it... Left the spin gear at home and only brought the whip to try to keep that thing in my hands more and learn more about it rather than taking it out once every 3 months.. I was hoping to encounter the same tailing drum that I found on saturday.. Launched at gray dawn and paddled into my target area.. It was blowing SE 8-10 pretty much the entire paddle but about the time I got there, the wind laid down, and the fish started doing their thing.. Had 4 separate pods of drum out in front of me so I staked out and jumped out since I'm horrible at fly casting in the kayak itself.. They were in about a foot of water, tipping and tailing, exposing their entire backs.. I slowly waded up to them trying not to make too much noise and then just behind them I see a couple red brooms pop up.. Really nice reds.. At this point, I didn't even care about those drum.. Was able to get within 30-40 feet of the tails and laid one in right in the sweet spot on the first cast.. He wasted no time pouncing on it and in a heartbeat the line was getting ripped out of my hands, he got me down to the reel and took all 90 feet of fly line in about 10 seconds.. I'm watching my backing just rip off the 8wt as the fish is throwing up a monster headwake out on the flat, schools of mullet panicking and jumping out of it's way.. I was shaking at this point and absolutely stoked.. He finally calmed down, and I began to gain some line, got back on the fly line and got about half of it back before he decided to make another monster run.. Got 3 good runs out of him before he finally came to me floating on his side.. When I got it in my hands I was just off the walls... Can't believe I landed it! I didn't measure him but it's hands down my biggest red on fly.. Actually it's only my 3rd red on fly A few minutes after I get a nice little drum as well.. The lull in the wind lasted less than an hour, and in this spot once the east coast seabreeze kicks in, the tails go bye bye.. And at that point usually so do I... Short trip with no big numbers but you can't wipe the smile off my face right now!!

I had my little water bottle cooler with a couple ice packs in it, was able to keep about a half gallon of shrimp.. they were killer!

There's a few snook in NoFlo! I have a buddy up there who must have a good spot because he's always pulling decent snook in the st augustine area I believe.. The fish kill was triggered by a "perfect storm" of events.. It started in January when we had a massive brown algae bloom take over the entire banana river.. winter time is usually when our waters clean up and become very sightfishable, so we knew something was very wrong.. In march we had a few cloudy days consecutively.. The algae requires sun to photosynthesize and survive, so the extended cloudy period made the algae begin to die off, and when it is dying off it depletes large amounts of oxygen.. It happened so fast the fish couldn't get away and one of the sensors in sykes creek actually hit 0% oxygen.. It was hypoxic for a couple days... really took a toll on the fish..

I think it was just the way the sun was hitting them in the picture because they were actually white shrimp

I've been driving an hour north of my house to fish the mosquito lagoon lately because of the huge fish kill we had in march in the Banana River (actually ended up being the biggest fish kill recorded in north american history).. The banana river no motor zone has been my go to area since I was a kid and it killed me among many to watch it get hit so hard.. I have been avoiding it and trying to let it recover and not add to the pressure that the thousands of other anglers are already putting on it.. Yesterday morning I decided it was time to check it out.. Glad I did.. Not only is it full of life but the water is cleaning up very nicely.. I managed to pull something off yesterday that I have been trying to accomplish for years which is the 5 species slam of a redfish, spotted seatrout, black drum, snook, and tarpon.. I have came close many times but have never been able to seal the deal on this elusive slam.. Well, yesterday the fish gods smiled on me and not only did I accomplish it, but I also got two black drum and a trout on fly.. Probably not a big deal to most but I am a complete beginner on fly so basically any fish on the whip for me is a d**n good one.. I am thrilled to see my home waters begin to perk back up... The banana river is not out of the woods by any stretch when it comes to its ecological state, but it is on the right path thankfully.. I was pretty stoked when I landed that snook and sealed the deal.. It's pretty rare to get all 5 species in a day, the banana river really produced yesterday.. Also noticed as I was paddling that I was spooking up shrimp everywhere.. Got out and threw the net out of curiousity and got a couple dozen in one throw.. Threw it about 4 or 5 more times and came away with a half gallon of nice size shrimp after I culled the little ones out so they could go back and reproduce.. I can't recall ever seeing the shrimp that thick in the no motor zone so hopefully that is a sign of things to come for the banana river..

Got a whole bunch of wee dinks yesterday.. still fun though..

I.rar is definitely right about not letting it sit too long.. don't let them get a good look at it.. nice fast retrieves will elicit reaction strikes.. A buddy of mine uses chuggers and does great..

I finally found some time to get out today, been busy as hell lately and it's been killing me because the wind has been non existant the past few days which equates to killer redfishing.. Thankfully, today was also windless, and the redfishing was killer.. I caught too many keep count of and every single one of them was tailing... I had went with a friend of mine who had a spot he said he was doing good at which is a few miles south of the spot I have been destroying them in. Reluctantly I agreed to tag with him and check it out.. We were greeted by tons of tails, unfortunately they were mullet tailing on the flats.. He picked up a couple reds blind casting which was fine, but that's not my style, I would much rather sight fish em... After a few unproductive hours and my gut screaming at me to go north to my spot, I told him I was gonna blast on up there and check it out... It was a 3 mile paddle but the hunch was strong so I just started digging.. Hit my target area and was rewarded with REAL tails all day.. At one point I had 6 schools of reds in front of me and they were all standing on their heads grubbing off the bottom.. When they are tailing they are generally pretty easy to catch but alas, these fish were fussy and I threw just about everything in the box at them and they only thing they would touch was a small 2" shrimp lure.. Once I dialed in what they wanted it was an absolute slaughter.. Here's a video of a pod of tailers I managed to get.. They were straight belly crawling that water is about 10" deep in the video (full screen is better) And here's a few fish from today... No big ones, but when they are tailing like that and you can sight fish all day, them being small don't hurt my feelings at all..

Metalhead for life right here... I'm 30 and was raised on classic rock though and still love it.. Pink Floyd is mind blowing.. Sabbath, Rush, Skynyrd, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, ect.. As far as new music, I don't really dig a whole lot.. I like my music unique and out of the box and sadly this day and age bands like that are a rare breed.. Tool, Mudvayne, Primus, Pantera, Sublime... My all time favorite is probably Mushroomhead though, it just hits all the marks for me ... really underrated band.. They use alot of classic keyboard and synth in their music which usually I can't stand synth but man they do it perfectly.. I've been to see them twice in the past 6 months, the live show is killer and they tour small and intimate venues which I love.. here's a couple video I shot from the last two shows.. I was way too close to the stage to pick up any good sound quality so I just put the studio tracks over the video I shot.. they turned out spot on and lined up perfectly..

That's whats up man, that looks like my list haha

Stick Marsh - The place where the gators are bigger than your kayak bahaha Got a nice nocturnal trout throwing topwater the other night.. Too bad my nocturnal picture taking skills suck ?