Fishing With Steve, Part 1

On Sunday night, Aaron and I drove to Everglades City to fish with Captain Steve Huff. After hitting a wayward alligator on 41, we arrived safely at our hotel and inspected the Goose (astro van) for damage. There wasn’t much, and we retired by 11:30 for a 6:30 breakfast meeting.
After a great breakfast and some laughs, we headed out to the fishing. The weather had been quite warm leading up to our three scheduled days, and we were ready with 3 kg (6 lb) tippet and the attendant flies and equipment.

At our first stop, we immediately had a shot at sliding tarpon on the surface. While we didn’t hook this fish, we all thought for a moment that we might get over the tough visibility from cloud cover and stained water by seeing the fish on the surface. This turned out not to be the case, and the difficulty of seeing the fish came to define our next three days.

That said there were fish around, and all were larger than 100 lbs. We eventually hooked a large fish in the afternoon. This fish jumped a few times before throwing the hook, and we fished through until the light was low enough that we couldn’t see anymore. We then headed home for dinner and rest. Our plan the next day was the same.

Read part 2 for more….