Capt. Rey's Fishing Report Archives

This area is dedicated to archiving my weekly fishing reports on trips and includes information on the fishing conditions, types of fish seen and caught, tackle used, flies that are worked and other things of interest. If you have any comments about my reports you can either  email  me or comment in my  guestbook. Click here to go back to the  current report.

Week Ending - May 23rd, 1999 

Well, another week had passed in paradise, and although it started slow, it ended pretty well. Looking back into my youth, I'm definitely a lucky guy. Having a chance to be out on the water everyday, showing people that the fishing here in Southwest Florida is definitely a great privilege.

Early in the week the winds were high and the tarpon, and snook were slow, east and north winds slowed down our incoming tides, affecting the fish attitude. We managed to jump a couple of tarpon on fly by Tuesday. Small orange tarpon streamer was the ticket.

On Thursday morning , Mr. Danny Wheat met me at 6:00 a.m. at the dock, Mr. Wheat is from Texas, where he is an avid fisherman. If you have never fished for tarpon, it's hard to understand the beauty and power of this marvelous creature. Mr. Wheat is a fly angler, but he had never used a 10-12 wt fly rod, needed for tarpon. Nevertheless, we wanted to try to catch a big tarpon on fly.

When we arrived to our destination, there was barely enough light to see the fish, but we could hear them all around us. The tarpon were "DAISY CHAINING", fins and tails were out of the water, it was beautiful.

Mr. Wheat's cast was only 40 feet long, but a tarpon turns for the fly, and follows it until Mr. Wheat ( not seeing the tarpon) lifts the fly away from the fish. Several cast later a tarpon is on the surface, turns to the fly and opens his big mouth, just about 15 feet from us. He made a large "gulp" missing the fly.

After the tarpon slowed down, we decided to go permit fishing, there has been some permit on the wrecks and we had a 9 wt. fly rod with floating line, and a "Merkin" crab pattern on hand. We had over a 100 permit on top of the water, Mr. Wheat hookup immediately, a nice 10 LB permit gave him a great fight. I think we ended up hooking
7 permits and landing 4-5, it was lots of fun.
Certainly for Mr. Wheat, it will be a lasting memory.

I had Rene and Erick on Friday, we were trying to hookup tarpon on fly or light spinning. Plenty of opportunities came our way with no luck until Erick's "shiner" was eaten by a tarpon about 75lbs. Jumping and thrashing, the tarpon fought for about one and a half hours, Erick did a great job on his first tarpon, "ever". He promised he will be back for more "tarpon abuse".

The week ended with a great charter, Mr. Chip VanKrevelen from Michigan. He came for his first experience on the flats, he told me that "anything that will bite is okay with him". I told him about the tarpon and that I would like him to try it, he agreed.

Early in the morning was tough, it was windy, and we saw very few fish. I decided to go "inside" for some snook and reds, but we saw a nice "pod" of tarpon, "daisy Chaining". They were huge!!!!!!, was Chip's reaction, so we offered some flies to the tarpon, but no results.

We moved to a nice group of fish, we offered them a live herring, we had a hookup, the fish almost took 200yds of line, jumping all over the beach. It took Chip 2 hours to bring that fish close to the boat, his reaction was, "what a fish, WHAT A FISH THE TARPON IS!" I will be back !

See ya next week,
Capt. Rey Rodriguez

Seats are limited, so give me a call, or drop me an email, and let's GO FISHING !
Capt. Rey