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.