Fall Fishing Wrap Up: Big Keys Bonefish, Permit, and Tarpon…

Posted under fly fishing reports by Will Benson

Well, the 2008 flats season is coming to a close.  Despite a challenging season with tough conditions, long stretches of miserable weather, and less then enthusiastic critters on the flats, we still managed to end on an high note.  Mike Allen and I managed to eek out a couple final permit this November to finish the year with 36 together.  We were hoping for more, but never had the consistent fishing to make it happen.  Frank Smith had another very successful outing landing several good bonefish with me over the course of 5 days.  We didn’t manage a permit but we did find a fly line that we had lost the day before to a very big bone.  It was intact with fly and all!  Thanks to Mitchell at the Saltwater Angler for keeping us rigged in the meantime.  Jim Schneider and Pat Cummings were the beneficiaries of some late season tarpon action as they combined to jump 20 over 4 days.  Some of these were babies, but some were big boys.  For a couple of hours a day, and for a stretch of 4 days, large schools of resident fish were swimming for us just like they do in May!  It made me excited to see this again and kept the anticipation for next season high.  Then, just when I was really pumped, I managed to cut my foot wide open.  Damn rod holders!  No worries though, my neighbor, the good Dr. Burton came in on a Sunday night and put 12 stitches in me.  Many thanks to him and my charter Pat (with his Canadian survival kit), for taking care of my dumb-ass!  One day off then right back at it though.  My friend Dan Hall just finished fishing with me for 2 days and caught a tremendous bonefish.  Since my boat was in the shop at Murry Marine having a tune up done, I fished out of the Captain’s skiff and convinced him to come along for the day.  Turned out to be a pretty good idea as we landed this great bonefish, and managed to wrestle a few redfish, which is always fun.  I’m headed north next week to meet Dave and begin shooting a jungle snook piece, which we’re all really excited to put together.  Word on the street is the big boys are beginning to show.  Stay tuned…

The Seychelles: Alphonse Island “Jeets”, Airflo Fly Lines

Posted under fly fishing reports by Dave Teper

Travis Rummel was nice enough to introduce us to some of his friends this September out in Denver.  One of those friends, Gareth Jones from Airflo Fly Lines sent us this report of a recent trip to the Seychelles.  He also sent us a bunch of lines.  Guess what we will be fishing with this year…thats right…AIRFLO.

Flying into this remote atoll it was easy to see why Alphonse is without doubt one of the greatest bonefish destinations discovered to date.  Miles and miles of brilliant white sand flats and clouds (I kid you not) of bonefish eager to take the fly - as long as it hit the deck, these fish don’t look up.  To say I hooked 50 bonefish in the first morning is no exaggeration, I needed to get it out of my system and laughed with my Dad as we weaved in and out of each others lines with double hook up after double hook up. Needless to say, with that craziness out of the way, it was time to move onto something else - GT’s or JEETS as the locals call them, regularly cross the finger flats as they head from one area of blue water to another.  There are no push poles here, instead the guide’s idle you gently along the edge of the flat searching for the tell tale black shape of a big GT.  Once located it’s out of the boat with the 12# ready to cast large black or tan Sempher patterns tied on 6/0 Gamakatsu’s.  The set-up is pretty fierce - 100lb straight fluorocarbon directly to the fly, the line - an Airflo GT’ special with a 50lb test core, loaded on a Hatch 12Plus with enough backing to make a your own personal driftnet should the conventional approach fail… The flies are not flashy by any means and provided they were cast with a decent 6′ lead, they were seized upon with some serious aggression - GT’s are in my limited experience, the most aggressive things I’ve ever cast flies at - including Hippos, buts that’s another story.  The pursuing fights were incredible - our party landed fish during the week up to 100lbs - that fish was an absolute bus, but larger were hooked during the week including one estimated at 140lb… GT’s weren’t the only company on the flats, the legendary Milkfish would regularly put in an appearance - some in the 30lb class - and were certainly not interested in taking my stuff, and needless to say I’ll be back.  What did surprise me were the amounts of Permit we ran into, even more surprising was the numbers of bonefish they lived with - usually they had they own personal ‘force field’ of bonefish that would happily test out my crab before the Permit could get an eyeful.  Alphonse is without doubt one of the greatest saltwater fly fishing lodges on the planet, from the sultry voice on the other end of your wake up call, to the exquisite food freshly prepared each evening - Alphonse is 5 star.

The Curse Is Lifted:  Dave Finally Lands A Permit! 

Posted under fly fishing reports by Will Benson

 

After 301 days of going permit-less the talented Mr. Teper finally managed to wrap his hands around another vertical silver flounder!  It all began the day after our first film premier.  Dave, Capt Mark Phillips and I were out taking some much needed shots at fish following a nearly six week editing binge.  Late in the day, we spotted some tailing fish cruising off the flat with the tide.  Dave jumped in the water while Mark polled me into position with the camera.  What ensued was pure documentary magic.  Dave caught the fish and I captured the best shot of my life.  And with that, the curse of the magic shot began.  Over the months Dave managed to connect with a few but never got one to the boat.  He threatened to nail the next one to my wooden door, which only exasperated his already miserable luck. The darkest hour came when he and Capt. Jeff Legutki accompanied Bill Houze and I on a shoot in mid July as we were preparing our entry for the Drake Magazine Video Awards.  Dave managed to pass his bad luck on to Bill as Bill’s biggest permit to date came boat-side.  A freak bend was put into the edge of the reel spool during one of the last ditch efforts to escape from Bills Gold Cup-grip.  The line popped and the Captain lost his cool.  It made for awesome film, but we didn’t know it at the time.  It just seemed that Dave’s miserable luck was plaguing our efforts.  

At the Fly Fishing Retailers Convention this September, Dave had his moment of revelation as we stood at the back casting pond and threw a little known line of rods called Fetha-Styx.  As dave began his trademark left-handed relaxed cast, he turned to me and said, “this is the rod!”  Sure enough, first time out in the keys, first tailing fish in his sights, Dave’s hunch paid off as his new Fetha-Styx made short work of a nearly 20 pound permit.  As we all rendezvoused at Marvin Key for a picnic later that evening, Dave and Jeff broke the news.  Since I was fishing the rescheduled S.L.A.M. earlier that day and didn’t manage any fish to the boat, I was sincerely impressed if a bit jealous.  Maybe the good luck rubbed off because my Anglers Ron Walker and Joe Weaver managed to land 4 the next day.  Since Ron caught his last fish first, he took home most permit releases.  Congrats to Troy Pruitt and his guide Brian Helms for their overall win in the event.  For all the details on the 2008 Mercury S.L.A.M. check out the press release at ESPN Outdoors.

New Orleans Fly Fishing Rebounds: The Aftermath Of Gustav

Posted under fly fishing reports by Will Benson

Although he was out of power for nearly five days, caught between the mess of one hurricane and unsure about the next, Capt Greg Arnold is back at it.  “Will,” he said. “The marina ain’t there no more.  Launch ramp is fine, but all those houses and sheds…they’re gone. Not to mention, one of those big rigs from out in the gulf that has sunk in the middle of MRGO.  All you can see are the offices at the top!”
I could picture it in my head as Greg just kept telling me about what he’s seen down on the bayou.  A lot of the same area that was hit hard by Katrina took another blow in Gustav.  With a surge of about 12 feet, the roads were covered with mud and mostly impassable down to where you could put a boat in the water.  After 4 days Greg was able to get out and get a closer look at some of the damage in his skiff before heading out to check on the redfish.  
“It appears that the oyster boats themselves are mostly intact just the dock operations for the commercial fisherman are gone.  I suspect that the damage is significantly worse over in Grand Isle and back towards Cocodrie and Houma.  I haven’t been to look though.”  Greg said.  He also described  how obviously he was lucky this time, as the levees in New Orleans held, and the city should reopen for tourism soon.  The fishing hasn’t been outrageous but Greg said it was getting better and may get really good as soon as the weather settles down.  It looks like New Orleans has dodged another bullet with hurricane Ike, but the boys on the Texas Coast might not be so lucky.  We can only hope that the storm damage is minimal and that these hurricanes don’t continue to come at us every week! Down in the Keys we certainly feel lucky to have dodged the bullet on Ike.  The water in the Keys right now is very murky as a result of the continued tropical storm activity.  I am glad to be heading out to Colorado for the Fly Fishing Retailers Convention this weekend to promote Connected instead of trying to find fish in this pea soup.

Pine Island Sound Redfish: Tougher Than They Look

Posted under fly fishing reports by Dave Teper

So far the weather, and subsequently the fishing this summer has sucked ass.  It feels like it is a million degrees in the sun and in the water.  I’ve seen tarpon sweating blood, snook dying of dehydration, bonefish wearing sunglasses, and permit…well they haven’t really been around that much. It is hard to get motivated to crawl out of the cave and get out on the water.  Maybe I was just that bored, but we went fishing the other day.

The task at hand was to take advantage of one of the three good weather days all month to try to get some footage for a web project for my friend John Stark.  He had been on some nice tailing redfish for a couple days previous, so we decided to head north and try our hand at the nearly impossible.  To really validate the day, the object was to get a red to eat Willy’s crab fly.  I had no doubt that they would eat it, and eat it they did.  We had three eats, one I stripped the fly out of a big red’s mouth, the second was what we like to call an “action rod set”, and the third came to hand.  Not the biggest fish, but it fulfilled our goal.