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Valentine’s Day Post

February 13, 2021 by · Leave a Comment

Valentine’s Day Post

This means Valentines Day to the true fisherman!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Thank you for reading this week’s Valentine’s Day post.

One year I procrastinated with the Valentine’s thing. The night before, I was at the card rack at Publix, with 18 other loser guys. All of us were looking for the perfect card in a completely picked-over selection. Lesson learned.

I hope you got what you needed before the mad rush started.

John Gilbert, engaged.

Tuesday found me in the Bang-O-Craft on the St. Johns River. John Gilbert was my guest. It took me about three minutes to get our first shad, so naturally I expected “great things”.

Taking a break…

We were there four hours, got seven or eight between us, definitely not “great things”. All on spin tackle. Could not buy a strike with the fly. Gilbert surprised me when he said the first one he got was the first one he ever got!

The happy man. Fish, not so much.

I thought the sunset would be killer so I went back out to photograph it. It was only OK. Yes, I am being so presumptuous as to grade the sunset. It was awesome, of course, but not what I had hoped for. I made the best of it.

Pretty killer for not so killer.

The rest of the week I ran a couple errands, worked on the wiring for the van (I should be finished by month’s end!), and spent time on Instagram. Not an exciting week!

Love the palm trees!

Except the Bucs won the Super Bowl!

Thank you for reading this week’s Valentine’s Day post!

Life is great and I love life!

Every day is a blessing. Don’t waste it- Go fishing! or walk on a trail!

John Kumiski, author of Fishing Florida by Paddle- An Angler’s Guide

Purchase a signed copy of Fishing Florida by Paddle- An Angler’s Guide at http://www.spottedtail.com/fishing-florida-by-paddle/

All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2021. All rights are reserved.

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Orlando Area Freshwater Fishing Report

April 18, 2014 by · Leave a Comment

Orlando Area Freshwater Fishing Report

Blog Posts This Week- Port Canaveral’s Giant Jack Crevalle

It has been a long time since all my fishing in a week has been in freshwater, but it happened this week. There you go.

Sunday afternoon I went kayak fly fishing in Lake Pickett. I had always heard it was a good lake. It looked good, except for the jetskiis, water skiers, and various other types of pleasure craft. Sunday afternoon, what did I expect? About a dozen bass to 12 inches fell to a variety of flies. That 12 inch fish was big enough to have broken someone else’s line, since I removed a plastic worm hook from its jaw. All in all the lake had too much traffic for my liking.

Monday found me bass fishing on the St. Johns River. It was cool, cloudy, and windy and I got rained on twice. On top of that the fish were not biting. I got one small bass and a fish I think was a warmouth. If anyone could verify that ID I would certainly appreciate it. Since the fishing was slow I took some pictures of water lilies. I was done by noon.

orlando area freshwater report

What is this mystery fish?

water lily1

water lily

Tuesday son Alex and I took an AHA class in CPR/1st Aid/AED. Now we’re certified for another two years. Everyone should be.

Thursday’s Mosquito Lagoon trip was cancelled due to weather.

Friday’s Mosquito Lagoon trip was cancelled due to weather, so I went to the St. Johns River with Capt. Tom VanHorn. He had told me about the schooling bass, and now he was going to show me. Show me he did! We got fifteen or so to about four pounds on plugs and fly, and were off the water ahead of most of the rain by about 930 AM. It’s good to be fishing close to home.

orlando area freshwater report

orlando area freshwater report

Capt. Tom Van Horn with a fat little bass.

And that is this week’s Orlando Area Freshwater fishing report.

Life is great and I love my work!

Life is short. Go Fishing!

John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com

All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2014. All rights are reserved.

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Orlando Area Saltwater Fishing Report

February 28, 2014 by · Leave a Comment

Orlando Area Saltwater Fishing Report 3114

Upcoming Events-

-Mosquito Lagoon Show and Tell Fishing Seminar, March 15. Visit this link for more information or to register…

-Mosquito Lagoon On-the-Water Show and Tell Fishing Seminar, March 16. Visit this link for more information or to register…

Blog Posts this Week-

–A New Mobile Marine Service for Central Florida

The Mitzi is still for sale!

The azaleas are blooming. Pines drop prodigious amounts of pollen. Soon the oranges will blossom. Spring is coming to central Florida.

This week illustrated why Orlando area saltwater fishing is so great for anglers, why this is such an awesome time of year.

On Sunday Miamian Tim Wright joined me for some shad fishing on the St. Johns River. We tossed and trolled 1/16th ounce crappie jigs. We got a dozen or so shad, and two stripers (or hybrids) too. All in all a good day.

orlando area fishing report

On Monday Scott Radloff and I went out of Port Canaveral hoping to fish a cobia or tripletail. We found some flotsam and there was a tripletail under it. I tossed a shrimp and a few minutes later he was mine. Then Scott got one. Then we each got another one.

orlando area saltwater fishing report

We found some floating sargassum that was devoid of fish.

We idled up to a buoy. I didn’t see anything there. Scott cast a shrimp at it. A big cobia came around from the far side of the buoy and inhaled the shrimp, not ten feet from the boat. A melee ensued. It was near ending when I netted the fish, except I couldn’t lift it over the gunwale of the Mitzi. Scott helped and the beast came aboard. It flopped around a bit, but did not beat things up the way it would had I gaffed it. All in all a really good day.

orlando area saltwater fishing report

 

orlando area saltwater fishing report

Tuesday morning I met the Tamazon. She put a bag over my head and spun me around until I puked. I had to swear in blood on a Bible on my mother’s grave to never reveal where she was taking me.

When she took the bag off my head I was sitting in a kayak, on a flat, with a flyrod in my hand. There was nothing there in the way of fish.

Then Tammy took me through a portal into another dimension. In this dimension there were tarpon rolling like crazy. I thought maybe she’d brought me to Hell for a while, since every strike led to a miss. No, it was just incompetence, because I finally caught one, on a small gurgler. Then she hooked and broke one off. Then she got one. Then I got another one. Then she got another one. Of course in between there were lots more misses and jumped-off fish. And then, in the manner of tarpon everywhere, they shut down. But it had been an amazing hour.

orlando area saltwater fishing report

When we re-entered this dimension we did some blind casting on the flat. She got two redfish. I got one. They were all small. Then two pinfish attacked my flies, hitting so hard they almost ripped the rod out of my hand. OK, that may be a fish tale. But I did get two pins on fly.

Then she put the bag back over my head and brought me back to our meeting spot.

Wednesday morning Scott Radloff and I went to the Indian River Lagoon for some scouting, hoping to find some redfish and/or trout. The loss of grass is continuing. I sure hope there’s not another algae bloom this summer. I’m not optimistic, since none of the causes have ben corrected.

We looked in several areas without seeing much. At the last spot there were actually some redfish tailing. We crossed a white hole out of which we spooked at least a dozen nice trout. I wonder if we would have spotted them had the sun been out. At any rate Scott got a red on a jerk bait, thus keeping the skunk of the Mitzi and the week’s streak alive.

orlando area saltwater fishing report

When I got home I fired up the smoker and smoked a bunch of thick cobia chunks. Yum Mee!

Thursday found me at the fly tying desk, cranking them out.

orlando area saltwater fishing report

Friday fly fisher Domenic Catanese and his friend Tai joined me for a day on the Mosquito Lagoon. The day started cold and windy. It would stay cold and only got more windy, although the water temperature rose almost three degrees through the day. There were quite a few fish at the first place we looked. They got out of Dodge as soon as they realized we were there.

For the rest of the day we would see a fish here and three there, but never in time to make a decent presentation. We did not get a bite, or even get close to a bite. We did see two boats hooked up in the Haulover Canal on the way in. One guy pulled in a big black drum. That was our fishy entertainment for the day.

And that is this week’s Orlando area saltwater fishing report.

Life is great and I love my work!

Life is short. Go Fishing!

John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com

All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2014. All rights are reserved.

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Orlando Shad Fishing- Orlando area fishing report 2/5/11

February 5, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

The Report from Spotted Tail 2/5/11

Upcoming Events

February 22- I’ll be speaking to the Florida Fly Fishing Association in Cocoa.

March 5- MINWR Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details.

March 6- Mosquito Lagoon On-the-Water Show and Tell Fishing Seminar. See this link for details.

*******************************************

Every day this week saw me on or in the water. Fishing wasn’t very good.

Monday I went scouting on the Mosquito Lagoon in the Mitzi. It was mostly sunny and at first there was no wind. I saw that and headed straight to a big fish spot.

They were there, finning out and tailing sporadically. I donned waders and stalked them on foot. I had two superb casts with a crab fly, casts I was sure would work. Neither did. The fish moved off and rather than use a lot of time on them on a scouting day I went scouting.

I did not see much else.

There were five boats at the south end of Tiger Shoal. I could see one chasing some fish around, but didn’t see anyone hook up. I poled the entire way across the flat. All I saw were tailing mergansers, nothing with fins.

I ended up with a small black drum taken on a Son of Clouser and several marginal sized seatrout on a chartreuse DOA Shrimp.

Tuesday afternoon I went to the St. Johns River to try for shad. I walked up to the Econ and started fishing. My six-weight had a floating line. I got one crappie and hooked and lost one other fish.

I hitched a ride back down the river with Bill Mieli. Bill, using a #3 sinktip line and a pair of flies, had gotten nine shad. Ah-HA!

Wednesday David Cushman, a fly caster from Virginia, and his brother-in-law Clark, joined me for a day on the Mosquito Lagoon. It was cloudy and breezy. I was hoping for better luck than on Monday, but no such luck. We scoured the south end of the lagoon and most fish that we saw we saw as they fled. We just couldn’t see them. Not that there were many around. It was very thin, numbers-wise.

Clark tossed various spinning lures all day without a strike, and David did no better. He really had only one legitimate shot all day. We were victims of a good, old-fashioned skunking.

Thursday afternoon found me back at the St. Johns, this time with a sink-tip. When I got there Tom Van Horn was there already. We fished together for about three hours. Total tally- two bluegills, one shad. We talked to a guy who had been fly fishing up by the Econ. It was slow up there too.

Friday I went back to the St. Johns. The fish come up the river in waves. If you hit the wave you do very well. Between waves there’s not much going on. Some years the waves come one after another and other years there are days between waves. I figured if I kept trying it I was bound to hit one of those waves.

When I got there Ron Presley and Paul McGinnis were staging Ron’s boat for launch. I hitched a ride with them up the Econ a ways, then hopped out and fished my way back to the SR 46 bridge.

Ron and Paul tossed tandem rigs with Tiny TerrorEyz from DOA. They got seven shad between them. I was throwing a chartreuse shad fly. I got one bluegill, one redbelly, one crappie, and one shad. I passed several other fly casters along the way and none of them was doing much.

I like the stretch of river between SR 46 and the Econ because you don’t need a boat to fish it. But Thursday and Friday at least there were no waves of fish there. You could get one or two but you’d better be prepared to work for them.

Embrace simplicity.

Life is great and I love my work!

Life is short- go fishing!

John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com/

All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2011. All rights are reserved.

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