Put year-round sight-fishing mileage on your fly rod in Florida Bay.

By MIKE CONNER, Managing Editor

There are lots of places in Florida where you can catch a fish on a fly. Then there are waters that, by virtue of their shallowness, are perfectly suited for the dynamics of fly tackle. Flamingo, the southernmost outpost in Everglades National Park, is just such a place. By no means a shielded secret, the Flamingo region of Florida Bay has been a playground for devout saltwater fly fishers for decades. It’s also a favorite day-trip destination of South Florida light-tackle anglers of all persuasions. I caught my first saltwater fish on fly, a seatrout, from a pothole within spitting distance of the marina nearly 30 years ago. I was happy to catch it, though it was a consolation prize after my errant casts scared the daylights out of a half-dozen reds and a very nice snook, the first time I had ever cast a fly to either species in a foot of water. You see, I wasn’t very good, yet. Getting a fly in the air I could do. Putting it where I wanted quickly was, in those days, beyond my expertise. In my defense, may I mention the parabolic fiberglass noodly rod I used? It took some doing to make a loop at all.

Since then, Flamingo has given me ample opportunity to get better. Flamingo is a bipolar fly fishery. First, there’s the shallow-water, multiple-species sight casting. That’s the biggest draw, but anglers without a shallow-draft boat aren’t out of the fold. They can soak flies for trout, tarpon, snook, snapper, tripletail, mackerel and more over deeper grassflats, channels, is- land moats and wide-open western Florida Bay.

Sight fishing is a year-round deal, and you can get the job done on every species that swims the flats out front of Flamingo with a couple of fly rods, floating lines and a handful of basic flies. You don’t have to be a crack caster able to dump 80 feet of line. If you can muster a 35- to 50-foot toss with reasonable accuracy, you’ll show the goods to plenty of fish. Of course, you will need a shallow-draft boat and a pushpole. Wade here, and you’ll sink in mud up to your hairline.

April through October is prime time to sight fish with a fly. November through March can be a little dicey, depending on our winter. For the most part, spring, summer and early fall mean light to moderate northeast to southeast winds. Even on the windiest days of spring, the shallow grassflats to the east of Flamingo keep soft bottom sediments in check, and the water stays relatively clean. From November until March, winter can rear its ugly head. Pre-frontal westerly winds churn up muddy bottom west of the area, dirty rising tides muddy Flamingo waters in no time, and it can take a few tide changes to clean things up.

Besides good sight-fishing water clarity, spring and summer also pro- vide your best shot at the most common Flamingo flats fish--redfish, tarpon and seatrout. If you’re lucky, you’ll see them on the same flat. For a synopsis of Flamingo’s shallow-water fly fishing let’s take it species by species, and bring the calendar into the fold.

By October, redfishing is in post-sum-mer decline, but they’re still dependable through late November because early cold fronts have minimal effect. There is no Best flat for redfish at any time of the year. Take a gander at a Florida Bay chart and locate Snake Bight, Palm, Frank, or Murray keys, the Oyster keys, Clive Key, the high spots on Dildo Bank, First National Bank out at Sandy Key, and the many island flats from about mid-bay to within eyesight of the Keys Overseas Highway. That’s a long list of fishy places, but whichever of these areas are richest in food sources--shrimp, crabs, and baitfish to a lesser degree--that's where you’ll find the fish. Flamingo’s hotspots move continuously. Its your job to follow.

Unless you’ve got the day-to-day lowdown on the fish, you’re spinning your wheels if you hunt reds at high tide on all but the shallowest flats. During the last of the falling tide and first of the riser, flats edges are the place to pole. Your chances soar on flats with wading birds and mullet schools, stingrays, and believe it or not, catfish.

When I pole into an area where catfish are mixed in with mullet, I almost always see reds. Gin-clear waters with few signs of life rarely produce. Although reds don’t tail as actively in fall as in summer, there will be enough tailers to keep you happy. As a trade-off, you’ll see more 10-plus-pounders. Expect to see some single cruisers, especially by December, as cold snaps become more common. Try casting bigger flies for fall and winter reds--finger mullet flies or attractor patterns such as Sea-Ducers, rabbit-strip muddlers and Bendbacks tied on No. 1 to 2/0 hooks. Your flies must be weedless. Some days it doesn’t matter which pattern you fish. Reds aren’t selective in general, although many veterans like brown-and-orange color combinations with gold or copper flash. Some days, white streamers work. I’ve had black flies light their fire, especially in murky water or in stingray muds.

From April through September, reds venture higher on the flats, tail vigorously, and show a preference for dime-sized crabs and small shrimp. Some days, I’ve seen them refuse the larger streamers that they usually gobble, and stomach checks confirm the fishes selectivity. At such times, try a No. 2 or No. 4 tan or brown crab pattern of your choice, or a shrimp fly two inches long at most. The smaller flies also allow you to cast in tight without spooking fish as readily. Drop your fly on a redfish’s nose as it comes off tail, and it may charge it as it sinks, so be ready!

In fall and winter, tarpon large or small aren’t numerous enough to target on the flats out front, but a few fish can usually be found in the island moats. They roll and feed best at sunrise, especially when the tide’s moving. I like the last of a falling tide in this situation. Locate a concentration of rolling fish, stake out or anchor downtide of them, and fish a medium- or fast-sinking line. If the fish are rolling fast and Kicking their tails over, they’re plunging right back to the bottom. Many flies work, but a white, yellow, purple or black marabou or rabbit-strip Muddler or other high-profile streamer tied on a No. 2 to 1/0 hook is deadly. Tie a 30- to 50-pound shock to your tippet, and keep your leader length to four or five feet at most.

Classic flats tarpon action can start as early as April out front of Flamingo. The biggest fish, those between 75 and 100 pounds, first hit the banks southwest of Flamingo along the National Park boundary. Same goes for First National Bank and Sandy Key Basin. Directly out front, it normally takes until May or June to kick things off. When mosquitoes siphon a pint or two before you get away from the ramp, figure that it’s time. In many basins and channel edges, you might cast at 10-pounders one minute, 75-pounders the next. This is a sunrise and sunset proposition in the summer, and calm, sticky mornings are best for spotting rollers gulping air on top. If the wind blows the previous night and on the morning you fish, the fish have all the oxygen they need, and will roll less or not divulge their location at all. In that case, consider doing something else.

As the tide floods the flats, schools of baby tarpon in the 5- to 40-pound class will follow, rolling nose-to-tail, even dorsaling like bones as their bellies scratch bottom. These are the most gullible tarpon on earth. Get a buoyant weedless streamer or deer-hair Muddler in their line of travel and enjoy the fireworks. If you have a sunrise falling tide, check out the 3- to 6-foot-deep basins (also called lakes), especially around mullet muds. There, shrimp are plowed up by the burrowing mullet, and little ladyfish are thick--both favorite tarpon foods. The fish won’t roll continuously like they do over shallow flats, but well-placed casts can score. A monocore or conventional sinking line gets your fly a bit deeper. You can blind cast, but that sometimes results in too many ladyfish, jacks, and trout, if that’s a problem. This past summer, June and July were best from Snake Bight to the basin south of Dave Foy Bank, the shoreline stretch directly in front of the campground, as well as scattered areas farther south. But the fish thinned out in August, and it became a hit-and-miss proposition.

Have a 9- and 10-weight rod rigged and ready for tarpon, and if the fish are under 15 or 20 pounds, reach for an 8. Of course, consider the fly you’re casting too. Floating lines suffice on the flats, and 12-pound class tippets and 40- to 60-pound fluorocarbon or mono will usually last through the fight. Most standard tarpon streamers tied on No. 2 to 2/0 hooks work when the fish are eating. My favorite Flamingo tarpon fly is a black or purple deer-hair-headed rabbit-strip Muddler. It works most of the time, but then, I use it most of the time. Otherwise, a Cockroach, Apte II, Sea-Ducer or Deceiver will take Flamingo tarpon. They will punish a popper too, but their head wakes often push the thing away as they strike, and your hookup ratio suffers.

Seatrout stocks are booming in Everglades National Park waters. This past spring was terrific for both numbers and size. Reports of 3- to 5-pound fish were common, with a few as big as seven, and the fish were still plentiful in August. As a rule, you’ll catch more trout by blindcasting in mullet muds in the basins, along flats edges, in potholes, and along channel edges year-round. However, as of late, a lot of trout are venturing shallower than normal, even through the heat of the summer.

I enjoyed classic sight fishing for trout in as little as a foot of water while redfishing this summer, but expect most trout to be in two feet of water or slightly more, mainly near potholes and channel edges. A lot of sight-fishing anglers tend to come off plane in a couple feet (or much less, which is a bad idea in most cases) before idling in with the motor up before poling, not even realizing they’re passing trout water by. If you pole in from slightly deeper water, you can sight fish the trout a while before going shallower for reds. Besides, there are often more reds on the deeper edges than you think. This past summer, I saw trout on flats where schools of small mullet or marine minnows were present. Most of the time, the bottom was mixed turtlegrass and bare mud with deep water nearby.

Don’t expect seatrout to cruise around as much as reds--they prefer to lie just inside grassy edges. You have to pole very slowly and cast carefully because trout are spookier than reds. If you spot a trout facing you, land your fly a couple feet short. I’ve had trout glide over as my fly sank, and eat as soon as I moved it. I have some success poling into the tide, spotting trout facing the opposite direction, partially hidden by the grass. In this case, the fish cant see the boat or your casting motion. The trick is to land the fly uptide of a fish without lining it, then strip it with the current toward the fish in a non-threatening manner.

I know this goes against conventional logic (fish don’t eat prey that approaches them) but when a trout feels that it’s sufficiently camouflaged, it expects to surprise an unsuspecting victim.

You can have the shallowest-draft boat, the best tackle and deadliest flies and still strike out if you don’t use common sense and practice common courtesy. Fish venture into the shallows because they find lots to eat there. If they could find as much food in deeper water, they would stay there, where they are not so conspicuous. Their guard is up against predators at all times, and there’s no bigger, fearsome predator than a flats skiff roaring into their dining room. If you run around haphazardly out front of Flamingo, you’ll miss some of the subtle, and even the obvious signs that point to fish. Run over the shallows indiscriminately, and you’ll put fish on the alert, hurting your chances and the fishing for others around you. You’ll tear up the grass, sand your propeller to a nub, set a bad example, and just plain infuriate those who go to the trouble to stalk fish the right way. Other than in Snake Bight Channel, there are few channel markers or PVC stakes to help you differentiate between flats and navigable water (and sadly, many National Park markers sag in disrepair, lying on their sides in the channels, a dangerous situation to be sure) so low tide is the time to learn the layout of the place. By sight fishing Flamingo around the calendar, you’ll understand the rhythm of the place, and fully appreciate how unique a fly fishery it is.

FS

Our largest estuary offers some of the greatest angling anywhere.

Florida Bay can be heaven, or it can be hell.

It’s heaven for those who know it well and can navigate the endless unmarked flats and the hundreds of islands scattered across thousands of acres between the tip of South Florida and the Keys. And it can be hell for a first-timer, who is likely to spend most of his time pushing off mudbanks and sandbars trying to locate the navigable water between shoals that run sometimes for miles. For those who know it, like Capt. Tom Haynes, the brackish backwaters offer a true cornucopia of fishing opportunities. In fact, on a trip last year, Haynes guided Jim Lee and me to a couple of amazingly unique catches.

We were fishing for snook at the mouth of one of the hundreds of unnamed creeks that make into Florida Bay west of Flamingo. When we spotted a couple of big shadows cruising just off a mud beach, we were sure we were about to connect with some nice linesiders. And sure enough, as soon as our sardines landed near the fish, the corks went down. But neither Jim nor I could get a hook into the fish, despite repeated bites.

I'm going to let him chew on it a while this time, said Jim.

He did, and sure enough, this time his rod doubled over.

Heavy fish he grunted. Feels like 20 pounds

He wasn’t wrong about the weight. But the species confounded all of us.

Looks like a stingray I said.

Maybe a cobia, said Tom.

Its no snook, that’s for sure, said Jim.

And indeed it was not. It was one of the rarest of all Florida fish these days, a small-toothed sawfish. The scrappy four-footer came up swinging his sharp-toothed saw like a battle-axe.

How the heck do you get one of these off your hook said Lee, keeping the furious fish at roods length.

We'll give him the hooked-pelican treatment, suggested Haynes. He pulled out a towel, whipped it over the slashing saw, and then hauled the fish aboard. It was truly an amazing sight for backcountry fishermen; about four feet long, the body shape was somewhat like a nurse shark, but flattened more as it approached the head. The mouth was much like that of a ray, obviously designed for bottom feeding, which might have explained why it had a hard time catching the sardine. The teeth on the saw were conical and very sharp, and appeared to be made of a yellowish-brown, ivory-like substance.

We released the fish, seemingly none the worse for the wear. And about 10 minutes later, I hooked and landed the twin of the first. Actually, I didn't truly hook my fish--it simply got its saw wrapped up in the leader, and I reeled it in.

Sawfish, which can reach lengths of 20 feet, were recently the first marine fish placed on the endangered species list. Seeing one caught in a lifetime would be worth remembering. Seeing two caught in one day? It’s an example of the magic that sometimes happens at the edges of Florida Bay.

On that same trip, we caught Goliath grouper to 85 pounds, snook to 30 inches, bull sharks of all sizes, and barely missed catching an aggressive alligator that tried to run down the live mullet we put out for trophy snook. The abundance and diversity of this estuary still has the power to amaze, despite the fact that, like others, it has had its problems in recent years.

Florida Bay, Florida’s largest estuary at some 2,000 square kilometers, is unique among the states estuarine areas, a bay once very brackish, now very saline, resulting both from rising sea levels and reduced freshwater flow. Much of the fresh water that feeds the bay begins as far north as Orlando, following the Kissimmee River Basin through Lake Okeechobee and then southward through the Everglades to meet the coastline. Or, at least that was the way nature designed the system. Man has changed it considerably, sending much of the flow to either coast to prevent flooding sugar farms, developments and other interests.

Unlike most estuaries, which have a seaward flow of water year-round, Florida Bay actually has what hydrologists call a negative flow during winter and spring in most years, when rain is typically scarce. There’s more salt water coming in from the Gulf than there is fresh water coming out of Taylor Slough and Whitewater Bay, and thus the bay gets very salty at times.

The series of mud banks, thought to have been thrown up by long past hurricanes, create nearly enclosed basins in some areas, where salinity builds to excessive levels, and where seagrasses have died out in vast acreages. The defining bar is Nine Mile Bank, which is yep, 9 miles long, and that’s just the east side. It is cut by a channel, and then the bar extends for another 10 to 11 miles north and west, effectively creating the west wall of Florida Bays blessing in that it helps break storm waves, but a curse in that it shuts off the tidal flushing that would occur otherwise.

And, the bay appears now to get only about half its historic freshwater flow according to Bob Johnson, hydrology expert for Everglades National Park. Some 1,400 miles of canals and levees have cut off much of the normal sheet flow, sending it quickly to the Atlantic and the Gulf rather than allowing it to filter through ENP to its natural outfall in Florida Bay.

According to Dr. Paul Carlton of Florida Marine Research Institute, the bay took a major hit in the late 1980s and continuing to the late ‘90s, with some 68,000 acres of seagrasses dying due to high salinity, the growth of slime mold on the leaves, and possibly a buildup of hydrogen sulfide in the bottom mud. The rotting grass caused an algae bloom, creating miles of green water where sight fishing was impossible. The mold infections were highest near the west end of the bay, where salinity was highest, indicating a probable connection. Interestingly, though, Carlton said that it’s possible that the bay may have gone through similar periods of cloudy water in the past, not as a result of man’s meddling, but through natural causes.

It appears that the bay historically varied from murky to clear, but went through a period of extraordinary clarity in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a result of very low rainfall and to some extent the diversion of the natural water flow, says Carlton. That was when sight fishing became very popular throughout the area, and anglers were among the first to notice when the grass started to die around 1987.

Efforts to increase the freshwater flow to the bay now under way are likely to improve the conditions since these should decrease salinity. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan--the world’s largest-ever ecological restoration project--includes billions of dollars in new projects aimed at restoring sheetflow southward.

Among the efforts are plugging canals that now flush some 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water direct to the Atlantic daily, building "cleansing" marshes to clarify runoff, adding culverts under roads in many areas, and storing billions of gallons of water underground, to be pumped back into the marshes in times of drought to keep the river of grass flowing. Not coincidentally, the latter project is also expected to alleviate the problems of supplying water to the exploding human populations along the coast of Southeast Florida.

But some scientists point out that the sea is rising, and has been for a long time--it's up 12 inches since 1846. Continuing that trend--and there are some indications that the rate of the rise is actually increasing--the water will be up another 3 inches by 2025, another 10 inches by 2100. That much of an increase in the nearly flat topography here would send salt water miles inland, possibly blocking the outflow of fresh water. The changes could have a major impact on the Florida Bay our children and grandchildren will know.

For the time being, however, the water is clearing, grass is coming back very fast in many areas, and fishing is excellent.

The excellent fishing is largely due to the elimination of commercial catches dating back to the early Õ80s. Sportfishermen led the charge to phase out commercial gill nets in the park, along with all other for-profit takings. The hard-fought reform has produced a fishery-management system that many anglers say is the best in the world, providing, along with the commercial ban, an aggregate bag limit of 20 fish and no more than 10 of a species, plus stricter state laws when applicable.

Captain Tony Traad has fished out of Flamingo for 18 years, and has seen some tough times, but everything seems to be coming back strong now, says Traad. Traad said his favorite waters now extend from Dump Keys to Rabbit Key and Nine Mile Bank, and up all the major rivers.

Tarpon start in March in warm years, and they're going good by April and into mid-July, says Traad. We also have a really good January to March tarpon fishery, for big fish, in Whitewater Bay, and then there are small fish in the bigger rivers year-round.

Anglers new to the area can sometimes do well by setting up at the major cuts through the big bars, such as the 8-footer at Rabbit Key Basin and another just west of Man of War Key, as well as some smaller ones on either side, and letting the fish come to them.

Traad says snook around offshore wrecks can be great in late summer and early fall. These are big fish, 15 to 20 pounds at times, says Traad. Most people get them on pinfish or sardines.

Captain Pat Kelly, who fishes out of Chokoloskee, says that he has run into schools of big snook a mile or more off the beaches in recent years. They hang around the baitfish schools and you can see them blasting them like jacks, says Kelly. You have to be lucky to get on them, but when you do, it’s gangbusters.

Fishing deep corners and points also produces plenty of snook from the dozens of creeks throughout the area.

Reds are found throughout the upper bay, with more of them in the more brackish areas nearer to the mainland.

I’m looking for water around a foot or a little more, so that will be on a falling tide on some flats, and on a rise on others at other times, says Traad. ÒI like to sight fish, and thats what you need to spot them. Trout are abundant off the beaches anywhere theres grass in water three to six feet deep.

The best part, says Haynes, is that here on the edge of Florida Bay, you can still feel what Florida once was like.

You wake up out here as the sun comes up and you don’t hear a thing but frogs and birds and fish jumping, says Haynes. That's worth a long boat ride to enjoy.

FS