June 26th 2008

It was a vacation week for me, but I did run one trip with Harry Krukenberg and his daughter Allison, from the great state of Ohio. I first fished with Harry and Aly last summer, along with his Dad Herman. They were great folks, and I wouldn't have passed up a chance to fish with Harry and Aly again. I was disappointed to hear that Harry wasn't able to make it for this trip.

Our trip was on Wednesday, and I had been off to weddings in Georgia, and such, and not on the water in almost two weeks. There were only a handful of guides at the ramp, and they all told me there was no bait to be had save for some big threadfins under the bridge or tiny little new hatch shiners that aren't big enough to toss. Not what I wanted to hear!

June 26th 2008

Typical summer weather this week with rain and wind punctuated by periods of calm. I checked the Gulf water temperature on Friday morning and it was 90 degrees. The tides were moving around the full moon earlier this week, and the bite was fair.

Thursday I tried to get out early in the morning with my fishing buddy Keli Emery, but we had to wait out some steady rain. We finally donned rain gear and headed into Little Cockroach Bay with some frozen threadfin herring. This is redfish candy, frozen or fresh, but the trick to using frozen bait is to keep it on ice and cut it up one bait at a time.
We rigged the chunked bait on half-ounce Rip

June 2008

The Fishing Report. 

Permit on a Tarpon fly is a great experience, especially when it happens within minutes of fighting a Tarpon with the same fly! Curtis from Oklahoma recently jumped a 60 pound Tarpon with a Marquesa Sunrise fly, then about 10 minutes later he cast to and landed this 17 pound Permit. Set for a a Tarpon pull, the TIBOR GULFSTREAM reel handled the Permit well, but not before the Permit tore into the backing on a fierce run. The fish was landed in about 11 minutes. The Marquesa Sunrise fly has enough orange in it to attract Tarpon and Permit who are focused on Palalo Worm orange. This season we experienced three separate worm hatches and each time the fish turned onto the orange patterns.