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Tampa Redfish on fly, Nautilus NV reel, G Loomis 10wt GLX, Cortland Precision Tarpon Taper Plus
Feb 16th 2010
Since I’ve been away since last Thursday I had lots of catching up to do. In the morning I did some paper work that just had to be done. Looking outside it was cold, windy but… yes there’s a but… it was very very sunny with no clouds in the sky. This lends it self great for fishing sand flats sight fishing on fly(well except for the windy part). Knowing it was going to be blowing 15-20knots today I brought out the 10wt.
Well the wind was even almost too much for the 10wt. It was very tough rolling the fly over against the wind for any distance at all. I did manage to fool 2 fish today but only one came boat side. When the winds started to crank up even more and white caps started to appear on the flats, we decided to bag it and call it a short fun day. 3 hours of fishing was plenty considering the conditions. It was blowing so hard it blew the stripping basket off the boat and it had 3 pounds of weight in it.
Needless to say.. I fell even further behind. Is there a place where you can buy more time?
Nope, money can’t buy you time. Some body once told me.. “When you’re on your death bed.. no one ever said, Dammit! I wish I could have worked just a little more.”
Photo note: This photo was shot in manual mode. iso 200, 250s, f20. The built in flash was used as a fill flash to get under the visor for less of the shadow effect.
Cortland Tropic Plus Tarpon Fly line Review, Fly Fishing for redfish in Tampa Bay
Monday Feb 8th 2010
Whew!, I don’ t know about any of you guys but … have you ever get the feelings sometimes that you are being pulled in so many different directions you are just don’t know what to do. The last few days between personal stuff, ,videos, photos, deadlines, it has my head spinning. Between all the traveling lately, I haven’t been on the water just to plain old fish in quite a long time. I’m always looking to shoot videos, photos, networking etc.
Well today I got a call from Tom of Wanganchor.com about getting out and throwing the fly rod around for some redfish. the winds were light and the skies were fairly clear. Since I’ve been wanting to test out some of the Cortland lines I decided to spool up the Nautilus with the Cortland Tropic Plus Tarpon 
. I have been messing around with it in the empty grass lot (Grass so you don’t scratch up your fly line, wet grass is preferred. DO NOT practice on concrete. Yes I found out the hard way ) and I was really pleased on how it was casting for me. I had messed around a little bit with the Cortland Crystal but wasn’t too thrilled with the memory it was holding. (People tell me I need to use it in the summer when it’s hot out). The Tropic Plus though, even with the air temp at 55 degrees the line was not coiling up for me like I expected. Since the name says “tropical” I figured it was a summer line and would had issues with the lower temperature, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The line was very slick, more slick than the Rio Clouser taper, Tom had on his rod.(yes all new lines are slick, the Rio was was new as well) The memory was minimal even with the cooler air temperature. I did not bother to stretch the line and tangles were very minimal. I originally had about a 15′ leader on there with a heavy red fish fly and admittedly I had issues turn it over consistently. Once I cut it back to about 9′ I had no problems turning it over. The leader was a simple slim beauty and albright knot combo, 50lb to 30lb to 20lb test.
Punching into the light winds wasn’t a problem with the 10wt(yeah I know over kill for reds but I really wanted to try this combo today). If you fish Florida waters and is looking for a well balanced line for bigger fish, you need to give it try. This one is staying on the reel for me. The Crystal however is yet to be determine. I will let you know this summer. :)
Oh about the fishing, I almost forgot. Tom and I got on the redfish fairly quickly at Tom’s secret spot. Tom poled me on a pod of reds .. problem is neither of use knew the reds were there before they spooked. I let the fly sit and luckily the second half of the pod ate the Karnack fly Tom tied up for us. At the end of the day we got 3 to the boat. It would have been 4 but due to my embarrassingly bad knot tying(yes, curly tail) one red fish took one of the Karnack home with him.
Tampa Fly fishing for red drum, again with the 3 amigos
Jan 4th 2009
It was in the 30′s last night here in Tampa. This very very cold for us here in Tampa even for this time of year. However with clear skies and low tides it was looking good to do some sight fishing on sand flats. While drinking my cup of coffee this morning I started to text Tom(wanganchor) and Joe(carbonmarine) up. Both were running errands and on a conference call. But I knew that they knew, that I knew that they knew… the conditions was calling to get some more fly fishing in. Everyone basically made up excuses to hit the water for a few hours.
I gotta say for the first few hours we were highly disappointed. Basically there were no fish to be found. Perhaps it was the very cold water temperature we weren’t sure. All we knew was there just wasn’t any reds around to cast at. We did some running around and all we found were small sharks cruising the flats. The winds were picking up and it was pretty much time to pack it in. We were also loosing sun light but we decided to give it one last spot suggested by Tom.
We started out wading and I came across a floating redfish. I guess he was trying to get warmth because I’ve never seen that. I’ve seen snook do it but never a redfish. I made the cast and I immediately hooked up to a 28″ redfish. Tom hooks up shortly and then Joe within 10 minutes of each other. Then it went dead again. I caught one smaller one later but that was it . A good day considering were about to walk away with skunks.
As you can see we were using our homemade wading striping basket contraption described in this video. I tell you it works pretty well.
loop evotec g3
btw: my loop Evotec worked just fine after the saltwater dunking I gave it a couple days a go. It’s a nice litte reel and not crazy expensive like some of the super high end ones. Seems to be holding up in the salt nicely.
Photo note: Bad news is, I had crap on my lens if you look at the photos bottom right hand side. Good news is it didn’t really affect the photo much as it was off the subject. All shot in program mode aka automatic mode.
Fly Fishing for Tailing Red fish in Tampa Bay, a struggle.
Dec 31st 2009
Today I took the Skiff out to fish with my friend Jon of Fishbuzz TV and Jared. We got there bright and early to look for tailing red fish in Tampa bay. Our plans were to get some some photos and videos then try try to catch a few. Well the first part went ok but the 2nd part was nearly impossible today. The water slicked out and the fish here got so spooky you couldn’t even move on the boat with out spooking them. I mean even grabing the camera put out enough vibration to put the fish on guard. Jon got out of the boat to try to wade to the tailing reds. He got 3 follows but they would not eat.
After 4 hours of doing this we were pulling our hairs out trying to figure out how to be more quiet. I have to say today the fish won. I will leave 2009 getting skunked.
Happy New Year everyone and be safe out there.
In a couple hours I wll be grab my gear and try to get some some fire works photos and video here in Tampa. They are having a fireworks thing at Channelside.
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