Sunday, May 10, 2009
5/5 Afternoon - Reds on the Fly!
This afternoon I had the pleasure of fishing with Win Edwards and his brother Dave onboard. Unfortunately, we had a drizzling rain and 20mph winds to deal with but, these guys are tough and they really wanted to catch a fish... Win is part of a Flyfishing group that has a yearlong contest on catch and releases for saltwater species.... well, as if things weren't tough enough... Win breaks out his flyrods and he's wanting to put that little fly into a redfish's mouth regardless of the wind and rain.... how about this.... first stop, I'm tying on a popping cork... Win hops on the bow and starts working his fly to a nearby edge... just a couple of whips of the rod and wham! he's hooked up with a redfish! DARN GOOD work Win! We work the area for a while and catch a few more then, move on to try and locate some more fish. The rain fizzled out... the skies turned clear... it's late afternoon just before sunset and we're the only boat on the water, ANYWHERE... gotta love those afternoon trips! We're catching redfish on the fly, topwater, on jigs, under popping corks! We found two schools of reds this afternoon holding in some areas that there are currently no flounder gill nets in...
Capt. Jeff Cronk
FISH'N4LIFE
For those that aren't out there all the time...I watch all of our bays in the area each season... certain bays hold large schools of reds... I and others catch and release these fish and take an occasional fish home. The fish are there day after day, week after week... until large mesh flounder gillnets are dropped into these areas in mass amounts. Then, within a matter of days the schools dwindle in size, we often find quite a few dead fish (with gillnet scars) floating or lying dead on the bottom, and the few fish that are left are tiny... then, quickly the remaining fish leave the area. Of all the reds we caught and released today, not one died... all were turned back lively, no blood, no injury... I'm not sure where the Division of Marine Fisheries gets there 10% mortality rate from but, onboard my boat and most folks I know... I can honestly say that there is not 1in 10 released fish that die but rather 1 or 2 in 100. These are the most hearty, durable fish swimming in our waters. The only problem is that they can't survive, gills closed all day or night in a gillnet. Instead they die and are discarded. You know, these commercial netters average only about 50 to 100lbs of flounder a day when everything is good.... and yet, I personally know of several commercial flounder giggers that can put that many in the boat without having the bycatch associated with the gill net.
