Fishing with Justin, this morning with Aaron

After the day with John and Thom, I spent a day on the water with Justin Rea. Given the cloud cover the day before, I was hoping for a visibility break. This looked like it was about to happen, until a giant storm blew up south of us and blotted out the sun for the duration of the day. We decided to fish through it.
Our shots were limited, and here are the highlights: As we were bonefish fishing, we spotted a large jack crevalle on the back of a stingray that we couldn’t resist. As soon as I hooked the jack, however, a large bonefish appeared on the white sand and promptly parked in the middle of it while we fought the jack. We hurried the jack, hoping to release the fish and get back in the game with the same fly before the bonefish vacated the white hole. When I got the jack boatside, however, I was unable to sedate the totally non-compliant jack before the tippet broke. I quickly re-rigged another fly, but by this time (and with the struggle surely not adding anything to the chances of it sticking around) the bonefish was gone.
Later, we had a shot at a few bonefish, then another, and then a shot at two permit passing behind the boat. Despite my leader not turning over as I’d hoped (at this point, I was pretty aware that I was having a less than perfect angling day) the fish both turned on to the fly and tracked it, eyeballing it before they took off.
Following that we hooked a bonefish, which I reduced to a break off when I wrapped the line around the reel seat when he came at the boat instead of putting the rod tip in the water. This was getting painful, and I would like to thank Justin for putting up with some seriously junior varsity angling on my behalf.
Our last run in with a gamefish came when we were almost through, right after I decided to take a bathroom break. As I was taking care of personal business, a tailing permit popped up on the edge of the flat, and while I was able to get the fly near it the fish blew out before the cast landed. With that our fishing (and my ego) was done, and we headed home.

Thanks again to Justin for putting up with me that day.

This morning I fished with Aaron Snell. We met at 530, and took down the Borski canoe from the ceiling of the shop. He had seen some redfish, tarpon, and snook in a nearby area yesterday, and we were there when the sun rose. By 615 we were in the canoe and covering water as the sun rose. We saw numerous snook, a pocket of redfish and many tarpon. Aaron caught a small pon, I caught a few snapper, and we had a great morning.
It’s worth noting that the refugee boat we saw washed up, wrapped in foam filled bladders, upon which was painted “Dios es mi proteccion” was oddly pretty in the sunrise.

Tuesday and Wednesday with Justin, Thursday with Aaron and Friday is the Superfly. More to come.

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