Wintertime Fly Fishing Forecast

Yep you bet!.. this is when the Spotted Sea Trout bite turns on! The clear and cool water temperatures that run in 50s-60s is what really warrants these big toothy fish to move into our backwaters and taking your fly with gusto! This is the time of year I like to wade fish St. Augustine either by walking a beach or traveling by kayak and or running the Skiff to my favorite holes in Jacksonville's Timucuan Preserve. Were mostly catching them with an intermediate sink tip fly line on the HD Clouser fly by blind casting and drifting your line through the waters current around structure. Our wintertime pattern also includes catching some Bluefish and Jack Crevalle in the mix with some opportunities to catch a Redfish as the water warms up toward the middle of the day. But mostly fly fishing for Big Trout is on the menu! Good luck and tight lines! 

 

St. Augustine Gold

It’s not that often that we can say you had an epic day of fly fishing! That means blue bird skies, with a high air temperature of about 70 degrees, fishing in crystal clear super shallow waters sight fishing and seeing over a 100 Redfish and catching what seemed to be more like Goldfish and not Redfish! There were no other boats in sight. It was epic! I and my partner and guide friend Tim fished out of his 16 ft. Gheenoe poling around in super shallow water to find these deep colored Redfish swimming around like goldfish in a bowl. On top of it all they were hungry and feisty with a bad attitude that put a mean bend in our fly rods. I blame this on the rapidly cooling waters that dropped 10 degrees in the past 7 days to 64 degrees.  They fought hard and long. There were times that we didn’t see the Reds until they were right up on the boat and to close to cast to! Literally!  We had one hook up that the Redfish acted like shark by circling the boat looking for something to eat. My partner then dropped the fly maybe 15 feet away and around the back of the boat near the Redfish. The Red literally came over to get it! There’s nothing like seeing and fish actually eat the fly twice after missing it the first time. The fall eating frenzy seems to be on it's way! So go fish!  

                                                                     Rich  11/3/13

                                                                        Rich 10/27/13

                                                                      Tim 10/27/13