Pro Tips

I just returned home from three days fishing and camping in the Everglades National Park. This was my first trip of the season here in South Florida since returning from Cape Cod. I had the pleasure of fishing with Jason Lynn who is the manager of Boca Grande Outfitters on Gasparilla Island. Jason is an experienced angler and avid fly fisherman and I have fished with him many times. He knows how much I love fishing in the Everglades and so we have been planning this trip for some time. 

 
We started out on Sunday morning in Everglades City and headed south. Our plan was to stay on two different camp sites while fishing the two different areas and maybe a third on the way back home on the third day. We fished the first day with some success in an area where I have fished in years past. It was cool and breezy from the North and the air temps were in the low 70's all day. In the late afternoon we arrived back at our campsite and enjoyed a cool breezy evening with no bugs. As it got dark we had a visitor at our campsite. I heard Jason say hey look at the little bird that just landed on that branch. I was standing next to the bush where this little Eastern Spotted Owl landed while I was checking the battery level in the digital camera for the next day. With the light North wind and temps dropping in the upper 40's we decided we did not even need to set up a tent on the Chickee that evening. It was unbelievable to sleep under the stars and watch the moonrise around 9:00 pm. The cool cold fronts of the winter months in the Everglades completely clear the night sky of any clouds and humidity. This means the stars appear to be within reach when standing on the edge of the Chickee looking out on the water at night.
 
We fished a new area on the second day and we were into consistent topwater action for snook all day. It was very cool fishing. The snook were sunning themselves over a shallow muddy bottom as the temps came back up. It was again in the mid 70's on day two and not a cloud in the sky.


We had planned on returning to the campsite to pick up our gear and move on to another campsite and fishing area that afternoon. We got so wrapped up in the fishing that we did not return to the campsite until dark. When we returned to the campsite we found two other guys who were camping and fishing in the park. We apologized to them for leaving our gear on the campsite so late and told them we would grab our gear and head off to the next site. They told us they were just two and if we wanted to stay there was plenty of room. So we stayed and hung out with these guys and had a blast until the moon came up again and we could stay awake no more.
 
At the end of the day of fishing on the second day we had hooked and lost a monster. We were determined to get a big snook on this trip so we decided to head back to the same area to start the days fishing on day three. As we were headed back in the morning we stumbled onto baby tarpon rolling everywhere. We could not pass this up so we stopped and fished them for hours. It was so cool to see the beautiful mini silver kings rolling all around the boat and Jason landed his first ever Everglades baby tarpon on a fly rod.


Then in the late afternoon we headed back to the area where we had lost a huge fish in the afternoon the day before. I quietly poled the boat through some very shallow water while Jason was on the bow looking for Walter. After about 20 minutes he hooked up with what we both knew, but neither one of us was expecting, a massive Redfish. It was a beauty and he hooked it along the edge of some very small mangrove clusters with shallow sandy water all around the boat. It was a great way to end the trip and a fish of a lifetime! We got back into Everglades City around 6:30 pm and were bushed...