Return to the Everglades

November 10-17, 2007

 

After having such a good trip in the early summer, Jeff and I decided to get away for a week back to the Everglades to hit the east coast as well as return to Flamingo.   Instead of spending the whole trip in the glades we decided to tack on a bonefish outing in Biscayne Bay and have a free day to hit some water closer to Melbourne. 

Everglades City/Ten Thousand Islands

Our first stop was Everglades City and the Ten Thousand Islands area of Everglades National Park.   There is so much water in this area and it seemed a bit overwhelming.  Luckily we found a good guide in Capt. Ned Small who started our week right with a 100-mile tour of the Ten Thousand Islands, Lost Man's River, and the Everglades Backcountry.   Fishing started getting good at the mouth of Lost Man's River and again at First Bay and Second Bay.   I managed to get my very first official slam that morning with a redfish, snook, and tarpon all on the same fly - a #1 Puglisi Finger Mullet.  Needless to say, I cut the fly off my leader on the 3rd fish to save it for posterity.   We got lots of snook in the back country on the way back to the Turner River too, many small ones but also a few average sized snook.
Everglades City at dawn

Backcountry Slam
Snook Redfish Tarpon
Jeff with small snook The backcountry Ned - our guide

The next day we hit the bays and flats around Sand Fly Pass in Jeff's boat.   Fishing was tough but I managed to get a Sheepshead on a fly which is a semi-rare event.  We kept the Sheepshead for fish tacos later that evening.  Other than that we found the redfish and some snook but had no luck in getting any to eat our flies.  Jeff got a small jack and I missed a snook and we had a few fast hits from Ladyfish but that was it for the day. 

Flamingo

We drove from Everglades City over to Flamingo in the afternoon and set up camp at the campground there.  The plan was to fish West Lake one day and return to Snake Bight the other day.  Waking up on Tuesday morning there was a bit of chop and clouds so we opted for West Lake that day.  The lake turned out to be somewhat dissappointing.  In four hours of fishing covering about 8 miles of water I got one snook and one tarpon, both on a #1/0 Prince of Tides and that was it.  There was a lot of water in the mangroves and we could hear snook back in the trees where they were safe from our flies.  We decided to pack it in and head out to Franks Key and Bradley Key instead to see the flats there at low tide.  On the flats we saw a lot of sharks but no reds at all.  Not a great day.

Our  camp in Flamingo The camp gator by the road
West Lake entrance

On Wednesday we headed out of Flamingo to Snake Bight where we had such great success the previous trip.  The area was not to disappoint this trip either, we caught fish along the mangroves at the edge of the channel all morning long.   We didn't see the tarpon that we had in June, seeing a few rollers when we first got there but we caught plenty of jacks and ladyfish as well as three big snook that Jeff got.   Jeff also caught one very nice jack.  Most fish came on a #1 Prince of Tides or a #1 Puglisi Everglades Special.   We finally made it to the creek where we had so much luck in spring but found it full of birds that spooked and took about 15 minutes to fly out, spooking every fish in the area for us. 

Marina at dawn The bird filled creek - this was after 10 minutes of flight
Pelicans leaving the creek

 

Biscayne Bay

We left Flamingo in the afternoon and drove to Florida City where we spent the night after driving to Key Biscayne for dinner.  The next morning we fished Biscayne Bay for bones and had a tough day, our only skunk of the trip.   There was a cold front coming which dropped the temperatures from 80+ degrees to about 48 degrees on Thursday afternoon/evening.  Thus, the bonefish were not too happy.  We had some shots and we had a few fish look at our flies but that was about it, most of the time we poled flats looking for fish and maybe seeing 1 or 2 moving rather quickly away from us. 

Indian River Creeks

On Friday it was cold but we had the day so we fished a few creeks off the Indian River mainly looking to see if we could find where the tarpon would go in cold weather.  We found a few tarpon but had no luck in getting them to take.  We did see a ton of manatees in Turkey Creek, some dolphins out of Crane Creek, and even managed to each catch some snapper in Turkey Creek to avoid the skunk two days in a row.  It took a grande latte afterwards to warm up though.

Capt Jeff in the cold Dolphins at Crane Creek mouth
Manatees in Turkey Creek Turkey Creek

Gear

This trip only required 1 fly rod and a few flies really.  I got all fish on my 8-weight rod and used these four flies for the trip: