Archive for January, 2008
Jan
22
Posted under
fly fishing reports by Mark Phillips
The best weather of the year dominates our skies in between cold fronts this time of year and has certainly been the case this week. Bright blue skies, little to no wind and 78-84degree weather sure make it nice on the water. The Permit fishing has been nothing short of Epic with many shots at large fish. Capt. Bill Houze posted a 5 fish day with three others broken off!!! One of these fish was in the 35lb+ club-look up behemoth or gargantuan- and pictures will soon follow. Barracuda fishing is great and the fish are very aggressive. With this nice weather I’ve been venturing a little beyond my normal range and headed to the reef. Lots of bonita are being caught with a few blackfin tuna mixed in. We’ve had quite a few shots at sailfish but they seem to like the ballyhoo balls much more than our flies. Very exciting stuff at any pace and we will only have more options as the days slooooowly grow longer.
Jan
16
Posted under
fly fishing news by Will Benson
Dave and I left Florida with my boat in tow headed to New Orleans Louisiana via Jacksonville where we met Vaughn Cochran. Vaughn is an old friend of mine and it was great to introduce he and his wife Jean to Dave. We were welcomed into their wonderful house in the country outside St. Augustine. Dave and I spent a couple of days hanging around the fly shop and coordinating an upcoming collaboration between the three of us. Vaughn had some awesome ideas for a multidimensional piece on tarpon fishing and the art process. Sitting around watching some of Vaughn’s old footage of fishing and Key West on VHS and a DVD of Permit was really cool. It’s important to remember the pioneers and the historical element thats transcends the generations of fly fisherman. I was astonished at the film techniques used in the early 70’s and how I could see the answers to problems I’ve encountered filming Tarpon right in front of me on grainy old film. We are very happy to have an artist and guide of Vaughn’s reputation on our team and look forward to working alongside him in the future.
After a 10 hour drive to Bumfuck La, a week of downtime on the internet, and a massive cleaning effort, we finally set our gear up on the boxes and are back in action. We had a chance to do some red fishing the first couple of days and absolutely tore them up. Dave is still complaining about his arms hurting from fighting 20-30# reds. Fished with some new buddies Tony Wells and Chip Mischler over the weekend and had a great time. we landed some nice fish but nothing over the low 20’s . The guys were impressed and vowed to come back again. We also fished with our buddy Jerry Dahn on Sunday and watched him sight fish his first Red! It was a healthy 25# fish that tore off about 100 yards of line. Congrats to Jerry.
We are going to have a showing of Permit at the Uptown Angler later this month. If you are in New Orleans and would like to see a sneak peak of the film please contact us. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures from Travis Holeman’s couch way the hell out here in the dirty south.
P.S. We heard it through the grapevine that the Captain finally figured out the rubix cube. Congrats!
Jan
10
Posted under
fly fishing reports by Mark Phillips
The New Year started on a tough note as the coldest front ever recorded brought record lows today. Waking up to 45 degrees my first inclination was not fishing or even going outside but rolling over and going back to sleep. I guess we were due as the weather and fishing has been very good prior to this event. My biggest Permit of the year was caught last week (36lbs) and even caught a few Tarpon at night. This cold front should bring more seasonal fishing and once the winds lay down, the blue skies should give us good visibility and hopefully great fishing. December was a pleasant surprise, as the fishing was as good as we have seen. Will and Dave are in Louisiana, and we keep calling and harassing them with outrageous stories of all the tailing permit they are missing by fooling with those redfish up there this month.