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2011 Fall mullet run fishing with Patrick Sebile and Capt. Andy Tasker
10.19.2011
Man what a day today.. had to take care of a flat tire this morning. Then while upgrading my iphone to IOS5, it erased all my data. So had to spend time restoring from my google backups. !
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Last week I had a chance to fish with Patrick Sebile over in Ft. Pierce, Florida. The mullet run is at it’s tail end there but the bite had been real good.
The night I got there Patrick and I decided to fish the jetty area with out much luck. We figured it would better to get up early and do some shore fishing that morning around his condo. 630 am we were fishing the shore line and got into some mackerel, jacks and blue fish action. The glamour species like the tarpon and snook where no where to be found however.
That night we met up with Captain Andy Tasker down in Stuart Florida. I first saw Andy on Facebook always with nice snook. Usually when I see people holding fish on FB I figure they had a great day and contribute it to a lucky trip. Andy however was consistently putting up some photos of nice fish. This was the first time I was to meet Andy while fishing with Patrick.
Andy got us out to a nice dock light load with snook. Everytime a pod of mullet would come by they would go crazy. It was quite exciting to hear all those snook popping in the light. Patrick and Andy started to cast lures and was catching snooks. I though the most effective lure would be the stick shad or magic swimmer but it turned to be the coolie minnow.
After a few snook a big storm rolled in and we had to bag it to see if the storm would past. About one and a half hour later it finally past and we relaunched the boat. This time Andy got us to a near by bridge. This was when action really started. There were snook and tarpon explosions every where.. it was very very cool. This night we caught snook after snook and once again the coolie minnow was the lure that got the most bite.
We called it a night about 3am so we could rest up for the next day’s fishing with Andy.
http://captainandycharters.com
The next day we we met Andy right after lunch about 1pm. Middle of the day tarpon fishing was the plan. Patrick was testing out the new Penn reel and casing flat shad and magic swimmers. Andy did the slow troll mullet and this time the mullet was the clear winner. We hooked 4 tarpon and got one to the boat for a photo before calling it a day.
Andy is relatively a new guide in the area, but he isn’t a new fisherman my any means. He’s young, highly motivated and an excellent fisherman. I would definitely look him up next time I’m in town.
One of Andy’s video, fishing with Bananas…
I’m working on my night video…here is a start of the edit.
Tarpon surface eats, using the Canon HFS-20
10.25.2010
Canon hfs-20
A couple weeks ago I was on the East Coast with Captain John of Chaos Charters. We got on a really nice Tarpon bite. Though I failed to get a good jumping shots because of the low lights I did shoot some videos with my small camera Canon HFS-20.
The Canon HFS-20 is an excellent small camera that you can carry around almost any where. The 32 gigs of built in ram holds hours of 1080 HD footage. It even has a couple SD memory card slots if you run out of storage. Touch screen, point and shoot super easy to use with a nice crisp images. Excellent stabilizer plus the coolest feature is the ability to do a pre-record of 3 seconds.
This prerecord feature lets you point the camera to something in “pre” record mode so it’s not really recording. However when an event happens and you push the button, it records 3 seconds before you push the button.. Cool stuff right!? It’s awesome for tarpon jumping or tailing red fish footage when you don’t know exact when it is going to happen. This way you don’t waste a lot of storage of nothing on your memory card.
Youtube:
Vimeo:
The Locals…
The Everglades is part of what I consider my local waters. The usual shallow water suspects sought after during chillier days are redfish and snook (yes snook). The temperatures are starting to stabilize with highs in the 80s during the day and lows into the 60s in the evening and wee hours of morning. Though I did not miss the massive cold temperatures of this past winter, I did miss the occassional warmer winter days and slightly chilly morning run through buttonwood canal. The backcountry of Flamingo becomes a real special place after extreme warmth of summer passes. Whether planning on coralling wads of finger mullet and pilchards into your baitwell or simply tying on your favorite lure or fly, the Everglades will fail to dissapoint the bait soaker or sight fisherman in us. Once you are exiting out of Buttonwood canal you enter natures realm of big fish eat small fish, starting from Coot Bay, into Whitewater Bay, Oyster Bay, Shark River, and the entire gulf coast outside of there. The incredible fishing is only bested by the vast unspoiled wildlife that surrounds you. Now that the mullet are here, porpoises, tarpon, and other big predators are having their fill devouring massive quantities of these half-brained delicacies. It’s pretty cool watching a redfish chase down and flare it’s gills at a small mullet imitation fly or soft plastic, but feeling a helpless baitfish at the end of your line struggling as a big redfish or snook closes in, is pretty exciting in it’s own aspect.
Human food...
Fall Field Testing and upcomming events…
As we wake in the early hours now to grace the cool fresh morning air, I’m not the only one who is glad that the days of hot sweltering summer heat are almost behind us. A transitional change is definitely in the air. With the arrival of the equinox, the Chinese mid-Autumn festival, and season premiers of your favorite soap operas on TV, Autumn/Fall is upon us. This change in season should bring about days when fish will stay active through most of the day. This also brought about the massive migration of mullet and other baitfish down the Florida coast, with them pelagic predators nipping on their heels. I welcome this change and embrace it with an entire arsenal of baitfish flies and the latest lures from DOA Lures.
Mullet headed south
Speaking of DOA Lures, they have released a new color for the CAL jerkbait known as #425 Watermelon/Clear Holographic. This new color is VERY fishy as have been wacking quite a few clear water redfish from Flamingo to Islamorada with it. We term the phrase “match the hatch” in Fall and this color matches the miriad of small fin fish that are found in vast numbers on the flats this Fall. When matched with one of DOA’s hot heads on either a weighted or unweighted weedless hook, they look absolutely irresitable. You can also chuck these light jerkbaits a mile with the G Loomis Greenwater GWR930S 10lb Power Pro.
Image by Jerry McBride and Ron Romano (SLAM Mag)
Flamingo Redfish on #425 DOA CAL Jerkbait
The ideal conditions have provided shots at some tarpon, both big and small. With all the baitfish roaming around, you sometimes don’t know when to expect to find some laid up tarpon or group of baby tarpon to throw a fly at.
Islmorada Baby Poon
The bigger variety in Dark Water...
Redzone apparel had provided me with a couple of their SPF50 micro-fiber shirts. The printing is guaranteed not to fade on these shirts as they are permanantly embeded into the color on the shirts. They are comfortable to wear all day and look real sharp. I like them!!! They also produce shirts for the many boat manufacturers on the market, including Maverick Boat Company. Jeff Harrell of Finatic Designs (same guy who designed that cool Rasta Tarpon “one love” sticker) and Ken of Breathe like a Fish have sent me a couple of their face masks with the breathable vent holes. Unlike the popular Original Buffs, these face masks have overhanging flaps on the front and rear of the mask that are perfect for shirts that don’t have some sort of mock turtleneck or raised neck. I just thought that idea and the meshed breathe holes were a great idea I’d mention. Also be on the lookout for a new bonefish and fly shirt design from Ihuntfish. I had a chance to see it in person and thought it was a pretty cool design.
I have been eyeing MinnKota’s new iPilot system on their trolling motors and it looks like I will be testing a reveiwing one very soon as I have on the way to be part of a removable setup on my Maverick 18 Mirage. This new skiff is extremely versatile and the addition of a trolling motor should open some doors for a variety of different types of fishing. I used to shun trolling motors but I think having the iPilot system with spot-lock will be pretty cool. Of coarse, it will be removable for days when I plan to stay on the pole all day. I’ll look forward to using the new iPilot and reviewing it.
For those of you who fish EP Flies, Enrico Puglisi will be at the Vero Backcountry this coming Thursday (Oct. 7th). Maverick Boat Co. and Vero Backcountry will be hosting the Maverick/Backcountry Cup, fly tournament on Saturday, December 4th. Mark your calendars for this date, as this proves to be a real fun tournament with lots of cool prizes and great comraderie. I will have more info on the tournament up shortly. If you are interested in registering or inquiring about the tournament, contact Capt. Eric Davis at the Vero Backcountry or Charlie Johnson at Maverick Boat Company.
Stay tuned… Fall is only starting to rev up and there should be lots of great things to come from big bonefish in Islamorada to absolute baitfish slaughtering mayhem in the Gulf.
Mullet run 2011 fishing with Chaos Charters, Long day in 6′-8′ rollers
9.15.2010
Sent out a bunch of Saltyshores Stickers today. So those of you that ordered the last few days they all just went out today. I even have one going to Japan very cool!
Monday evening I was driving to the east coast to do some offshore fishing. The goal was to get a sailfish and swim with it and hope to get some great shots. Driving to the east coast is a much easier drive than to Miami for me from Tampa. Mainly because there isn’t that dreaded alligator alley to cross. AA is so long, featureless and boring it is the worst part of my drive any time I head south.
On the way over I got a call from Captain Jonathan Earhart of Chaos Charters. He found out I was coming over and wanted to see if I wanted to get out for a couple hours that evening to do some fishing. I was a bit early anyways and I had my gear so why not.
Chaos 16 bonefish skiff
John has a neat looking skiff called Chaos 16 Bonefish made in the Carolina. This was one of the boat I was consider before I bought my first skiff the Maverick Mirage 2 a few years back. The boat looks unique and with some cool lines. I was a bit skeptical about how well it rides at the time and did not really follow up on it.
I met John and his buddy Chad at the ramp and our first priority was to get mullet. While looking for mullet we kept running into snooks. I tell ya, those guys on the east coat do not know how great the have it with nice snooks all over the place. Of course they way the same thing about us as far as red fish is concern.
With one cast of the net we had a live well full of mullets. We idle down to the area we saw all the snook and with one cast chad gets a nice fat snook. After a couple photos and few more misses with the snook we moved on to get some tarpon which usually holds a little deeper in the water column.
With the sun setting and the tide ripping out the bite was on. The mullet would float on the top and they were getting blasted by Tarpon and sharks. It was the best Tarpon bite I’ve even been on really. I mean in 2 hours we must have had 15 eats and landed 3 Tarpon. If we counted a blast and no hookups it would probably be closer to 30, yeah crazy stuff.
I manage some still shots but it is definitely not as good as it could be. They tell me the mullet run is just starting so I’ll be back there next week hopefully get more cool shots.
Oh one more thing. The Chaos boat for a 16′ rode surprisingly well. The winds were 15 mph and it was a very dry skiff. Very stable and efficient w/ the 60hp on there. Not sure how well it poles because we were fishing the deeper stuff today.
Speaking of deep water the Minnkota Ipilot was again super impressive today. We hovered in that ripping current for hours with out touching the trolling more. I have to get me one of these. There’s also another company with a similar product called Rhodan but I have not been on a boat with one on yet.
The offshore scene though was definitely a disappointment. Drew and I was up by 5am to meet the captain at the ramp by 6:30am. We get there and loaded the boat and it started to poooooooour down rain. We dawn our rain jackets and trudge on.
With this front coming in the seas were not kind to us. When we got out fo the inn let we are faced with 15-20 mph winds and 4′ sears. the rollers made it even worst. A constant 4-6′ rollers with occasional 8′ coming in to toss us around.
We were determined to get out there though. With a short 2 mile run we were fishing in the nasty seas. Jeff, the captain launched out the kites baited with goggle eyes. Out first couple runs were kings cutting us off. This means re rigging in the nasty rocking and rolling weather.
This went on a for a bit with a few more cut offs. We finally get a sail fish at the end of the line on one of our kited goggle eyes. We fought it for two jumps only to have it come off. We were bummed to say the least.
With all the bait gone we decided to troll. We hook a wahoo a little while later only to loose it at the gaff. A few bonita and one aj was all we could boat today. It was just one of those days it seems.
On the way in we ran into a sunken tree with Mahi all over them. Believe it or not we could not even get the mahi, which usually eats everything, to eat! … a long tough day.
You know the old saying “it’s better to have a bad day on the water than a good day at work”. Well that day.. I would take work all day. I was glad to see land.
Mullet run photos, North Palm beach
9.10.2010
The mullet run in Florida is the migration of Mullet on the east coast of the US. This is where millions and millions of mullet of all sizes move south before it gets too cold up north. With this much bait you can imagine there will also be mess of predators that feed on them. This usually results in Tarpon, snook, sharks amongst other things that gives an awesome aerial display as they blast the bait.
I have been trying to get photos of the mullet run the the past two years. The problem is I live on the west coast of Florida and it happens on the east coast of Florida. I must admit I have missed out both years.
This year I’m here early to try to catch it finally. The problem this time is that I’m here too early.. go figure. There are plenty of mullet but not many predators feeding on them just yet. They tell me another week it should be going off. I will wait patiently as usual. Here are some photo of mullet I got with out the predators surrounding them.
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