Adventures of the Flats_ghost

Not every adventure is about fish! It was super windy this day and I had been wanting to see the flock of Flamingos that had been blown off course during their migration by a hurricane in Cuba. They have stayed longer than normal and the group has grown in size. There were 11 total Flamingos that had gathered this day. So cool to see a non native bird on the east coast of Florida! 

It was a beautiful morning in early August as I pushed my skiff off from the dock. The 60hp Mercury slowly idled my Waterman away from the dock towards the rising sun. Joining me on this eventful day was my buddy David. The winds were light and hopes were high as our last outing had provided valuable insight on where a school of rather large redfish were holding. We started the morning catching a few smaller fish because we needed the sun to be just right to pursue our goal. Around 11am we decided to adventure over to the flat where we had last spotted them the day prior The flat we had our eyes on was located near deeper water, but in the middle of the flat was a large patch of grass. The zone to target these big redfish was the stretch of water where the deeper water meets the grass. The bigger fish feel safer there as they feed off mullet and crabs on the edges of the grass. We get within distance of the grass and I can see our target was already waiting for us. The sun was almost a...

It was Memorial Day weekend, I remember taking the wife n kids to the sand bar early in the day on the bay boat and texting David to see if he was up for an afternoon fishing session on the skiff. We arrived at the ramp as a wave of fisherman were coming off the water. “It was tough” was a common phrase we heard, but that didn’t deteriorate our hopes. We had a spot that we had been seeing schools of Bulls feeding late in the afternoon on the edge of a bar. Very few people in our area venture off shorelines, so a bar in the middle of open water was probably untouched all day.  We arrived to our spot and it was a memorable late afternoon! There were tailing bull redfish everywhere! David started on the front with his fly rod. First cast he had a 40inches fish chasing his fly all the way to the boat. Unfortunately the fish never committed and in the process spooked a bunch of others.. 2 more shots at other fish and none would commit. For some reason we all think we can convince the fi...

I’ve been fishing redfish tournaments since 2014, but this tournament had already started off different. Good ol work decided to deny my leave so I had given up on hopes to fish the March 2022 Powerpole pro. Well a cold front moved in on Friday causing conditions for Saturday to be detrimental for a tournament, pushing it to Sunday. I left work excited Saturday afternoon and headed to the captains meeting for the tournament.  My tournament partner Joe picked me up Sunday morning and we headed to Jacksonville with 0 prefishing done but with high hopes in landing two fish. The cold front had dropped the temps to 30 degrees, but the tides were just right for our style of fishing. We pulled boat 34 out of the bucket and headed off to our spot. Our first spot was 45 minutes from the ramp so the sun was already above the horizon and the water was rushing off of our spot. The wind was howling when we arrived and the temps were still around freezing. I look at Joe and we go to work. Castin...