FL Fishing Report

Thursday’s weather was terrible but the forecast for Friday looked decent. Dr. John from Texas wanted to try some fly fishing for redfish. Unfortunately, the conditions were not as predicted. Winds of 15-20 made for some tough fly fishing. We saw a few tailing redfish but as the weather deteriorated, so did our shots at fish. We tried our best but ended up skunked.

Monday, the winds were blowing over 20. I fished the St. John’s River with friend Paul. The narrow winding stretch of river northeast of Orlando provided some shelter from the wind. We were hoping to target American Shad with fly and ultra light tackle. We caught a lot of fish but only two shad. The variety, however, made up for the lack of the target species. We landed a few speckled perch, eight or nine nice bass, redbreast sunfish, Nile perch, and a few sailfin catfish. These prehistoric looking creatures are often mistakenly called armoured catfish. They have a tough skin and normally feed on algae and other plant material. On this day, however, we caught them on jigs and mini DOA shrimp. Quite an unusual hook and line catch.