- The only known adult Orca in the world
- IGFA event April 14th and 15th.. Jose Wejebe event
- Fishing TV show Spanish Fly host Jose Wejebe Killed in a plane cash in Everglades City, Florida April 6th 2012
- Only in Florida
- CCA Florida – Tampa Chapter Announces Twenty-Seventh Banquet, April 22, 2012
- Fly like a bird
- Biscayne Bay Estuary deep dredge threat
- A fish named “Ball Cutters”, yes it is exactly what you think!
- Rod Naming contest, Win 1 piece 12 wt Fly rods or Spinning rods, Deadline March 26th 2012
- Ladies Only fishing tournament in Sunny Florida, March 23rd 2012, Chix n Stix
Jay Nelson
Remembering Shark Week + Borders FX
Figured it would be appropriate to do a shark post following Discovery’s shark week. More and more people have been hitting me up for shark trips lately – all of a sudden everybody wants to hook into Jaws in shallow water. I’ve got to admit, it is pretty fun to hook into a 50+ lb fish in less than 6ft of water – especially if it ends up being a spinner or blacktip shark. If you jam a hook into a spinner shark in shallow water, you’re going to get a show that you won’t soon forget. They put on a serious aerial display. Most importantly – sharks are easy to catch – just deploy large mullet near an inlet and wait.
I messed around with some plain black borders on these photos using a plugin for Aperture 3 called Borders FX. While using the plugin, I noticed that there is a way to add watermarks and text to the photos. People ask me pretty often how I get my watermark on my photos – this was probably the easiest way I’ve seen yet. If you are an aperture user, check out the Borders FX plugin.
South Carolina Flood-Tide Redfish – Part II
We’re in the middle of another set of summer flood tides in the Lowcountry. When the water gets hot in the summer, the flooded grass is where its at. The fish have been tailing hard and eating every crab and grass shrimp in site. My client tonight finally talked me into keeping a slot fish for dinner. When we opened this fish up, I thought it had a monster tumor or something. Nope – that was his stomach stretched to the max with fiddlers and blue crabs. The picture below is just some of the stomach contents from one 23″ redfish. I would definitely keep tying those crab patterns folks.
Jay Nelson
www.winyahguide.com
Flood Tide Tailers
You’ve got to love seeing a fish feeding nose-down, completely oblivious to everything else around. The full moons of summer bring high tides that flood the spartina grass flats, enabling us to search high in the marsh for tailing redfish. The “redneck” in me really digs being able to hunt and fish at the same time. The fish weren’t tailing as much as usual tonight, but we spotted several fish gorging themselves enough to get a few shots.
Perry, an excellent fishing mentor and a good bud. It had been awhile since we last chased redfish on the grass flats.
Chad had the mojo tonight – he managed one on fly and another on spinning tackle.
Jay Nelson
www.winyahguide.com
Cruising Redfish Sequence
Caught this guy with his back out of the water pushing up grass shrimp…
Jay Nelson
www.winyahguide.com
Goodbye Cold Water – Hello Migratory Fish
A group of us all had the same weekend off and free from family responsibilities. The water temperature had been rising steadily for the last couple of weeks here in South Carolina, so we decided to get out and look for a cobia. Sure enough, they were at every can/buoy we checked. Only problem was we couldn’t get them to eat anything we threw at them. We got a late start and blamed it on the time of day. We saw some PIGS – they denied live eel, menhaden, herring, various flies, the list goes on. Fortunately, some of our friends on other boats were able to connect with one or two.
On the way to the ocean, we stopped in Winyah Bay to catch bait and jumped up a pile of wood storks. To my knowledge, they are still considered endangered in NC, SC, GA, & Fl. We jumped around 400 of them in a flooded field. They definitely aren’t endangered in that spot.
Amidst our frustration with the cobia, I finally talked Douglas in to casting to an amberjack. He said that he hadn’t bothered with a “reef donkey” in over a decade, but he obliged. This fish charged the bait and left Douglas on the bow of the boat for what seemed like a half-hour…hahaha. He loved every minute of it. In the box or not – we were enthusiastic that the cobia had officially arrived.
After our semi-failure at sea, we headed inshore to enjoy some of the usual suspects. The great thing about this time of year is that there’s always something willing to eat.
The bonnethead sharks put up a great fight on redfish tackle and you can catch as many as you want in the Ge0rgetown, SC marsh.
Top wrap up the weekend, our buddy Craig raided his dad’s crawfish pots and put on a serious crawfish boil. The rising water temps have the “mud-bugs” nice and grown.
The end to a good weekend – a bunch of salty bastards sharing a nice pile crawfish. Our water is warming and the anticipation is building – hopefully this tarpon season will rival the action that we were blessed with last year.
Jay Nelson
www.winyahguide.com
Belly Crawlers
Fellow local charter captain, Graham Hegamyer ( www.southerntailcharters.com ), snapped some great photos this week of a group of mud-bellied redfish. We see some extremely low tides during the spring full moon phases. These fish drained into the skinny water at low tide putting on a show for Graham and his clients.
Lefty comes to town – the fish go bonkers
Georgetown, SC had the pleasure of hosting Lefty Kreh for a couple of days this weekend. Without a doubt, it was one of my favorite events on record. There was some local interest in setting up a private fly-casting clinic so my friend Heather Templeton called her God-Father, Lefty Kreh and told him to get on a plane. This was my first chance to spend time with Lefty since my friend Perry Peace introduced me to his casting principles a few years ago. He was even more charismatic than I expected – what an awesome guy. Of course it is great to see how effortlessly he can cast a perfect loop, but the most impressive thing was to see the way Lefty can teach others to cast a perfect loop. The private casting clinic was hosted on Saturday at a historic Lowcountry Plantation called Ricehope. The 15 guys that signed-up got to experience something very special. I watched as all of them improved their fly-casting within a very short amount of time. On Sunday, Lefty stopped by our local tackle shop, Pawleys Island Outdoors, for a casting demonstration and book signing. An overwhelming crowd showed!
My friend , Newman Weaver (www.gtownkingfisher.com), and I had been getting excited about a potential opportunity to get Lefty on the water this weekend. At the last minute Lefty had to pass – his schedule for the weekend didn’t leave him any time to relax. Fortunately, we were able to fill Lefty’s spot with our friend Kent Edmonds (Temple Fork Outfitters). Historically, March is not the best month for sight fishing in our marsh but today was special. The redfish were still in large schools, but were finally riding high in the water column and chewing small shrimp and glass minnows. We got to watch fish flare gills and vacuum our flies over and over again. Thank God our fish seem to be making the transition out of the winter funk. Come on Summer!
Probably my favorite moment of the weekend – Lefty entertaining my 7 month old daughter Addie. Lefty and I both agree that she will probably be out-casting daddy pretty soon.
Adios Winter – Looks like an early spring in Carolina
After several days of low pressure and high winds, we finally got a real taste of spring yesterday. Air temps in the 70′s, light winds, and sunny skies – oh yeah! Once the morning fog lifted, the fish decided to put on a show. We saw something yesterday that I haven’t seen in our marshes since November – a group of 30 big reds tailing happily in the mud! They were completely unaware of our presence. I wanted to grab my camera, but opted for a fly rod instead. Once cast and the water exploded – a hammer of a fish broke away and inhaled the fly! After a long, cold winter it looks like things are starting to get back to normal in the Carolina marshes. Can’t wait for summer and for our seasonal visitors to begin arriving in the creeks, bays, and ocean.
Sight-Fishing Carolina Redfish
I had the opportunity to ride down to Charleston yesterday and fish with friends Tucker Blythe ( www.greyghostcharters.com )& Guitou Feuillebois. We fished an area Tucker had been scouting about an hour south of Charleston. The weather was finally beautiful after several days of wind/rain. I almost forgot what it was like to fish unpressured redfish. We hit a couple of Tuck’s go-to spots and some new areas where birds were working glass minnows. It seemed like every place we stopped we would spot a school of fish before somebody could even climb up on the platform. We ended the day with 15 nice redfish and watched every one of them scarf the fly (thanks to some great water clarity). There’s a lot of people fishing the shallows these days and increased pressure will eventually shut a school of fish down. Don’t keep wearing-out the same school of fish – keep exploring and trying new areas. Once you find fish that haven’t been repeatedly blasted with cut bait, the pay-off will be totally worth the effort you put into it.
This was the order of the day: step up on the casting platform – hook a fish – then get off the bow and let the next guy lay into one. I’ve definitely never seen so many doubles on fly.
Stormy Day Reds
The Carolina Coast got pounded with rain today. From sun-up we had been watching the rain come down and the trees sway back and forth. An outdoorsman can only take so much time on the couch. Finally at 230pm we got a break between storms and Douglas, Clay, and I hit the water for a couple of hours. We knew the fishing would be feast or famine. As luck would have it, the fish were really happy and we caught them on every cast for almost 2 hours. We didn’t catch many monster fish, but we put up some good numbers and turned a nasty day into an enjoyable day on the water. We even boated one with 94 spots! It just reinforces the old saying “you can’t catch em from the couch”.
