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 Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
Posted by marshallD on January 23, 2010
(1241 reads)
January 12, 2010. The Naples, Florida air temperature was an unusually cold 34 degrees. It is very sad to hear of a large fish kill when abnormally cold air temperatures hit a generally warm weather climate such as Florida. We knew the surviving fish would eat after they warmed up. Bruce and I wanted to see for ourselves, test some new flies that we had tied and it was warm enough to cast. We headed down The Tamiami Trail after noon.
Before the cold front hit Florida, I had fished for Tarpon several times at various spots along the trail and there wasn't much activity to speak of. Sure, we had the occaisional bump, but we were not seeing rolling fish or fish chasing bait. On this day, we saw rolling tarpon right away and there were schools of small baitfish here and there in the shallows.
The canal system we fish is open-ended to the Gulf and fish that wander up the river will eventually get to where we fish. We theorize that the cold water temperatures in the Gulf might drive fish up the creeks in search of warmer water and food. This day we were right on the money.
The hardest part about landing bigger tarpon on foot is being super careful not to break their jaws by supporting their bellies. The full weight of a bigger tarpon suspended from his jaw can actually break the jaw. Luckily, a passing biologist-guide came by as we were fighting this larger tarpon and lended us his Boga Grip.
We swabbed some DNA from the slime on my hands after releasing
the fish and sent it off to Florida's Tarpon Research Center.
This was one of our best days of fly fishing on the Trail.
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by jeremy on January 23, 2010 http://www.fliesandfins.com | Hey Marsh,
Glad to see your perspective of the situation where you fish down in Florida. I hate to hear of any fish kill anywhere in the world. All fish everywhere, already have enough problems to deal with - they don't need mother nature stacking her cards against them too. Glad to see you're still catching some and especially glad to see that the little baby tarpon (bottom of pic) is alive and well. |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by Boz on January 24, 2010 http://www.maineriverguides.com | Marshall,
Thanks for the update. It is encouraging to know that despite recent reports of the casualties of that cold snap, that the baby tarpon are still hanging in there. Course they have been around longer than us, so I guess it is no surprise.
Love the picture of the baby-T, don't think I've ever seen one that small before...very cool little sliver of silver.
Thanks for sharing. |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by kory_k on January 24, 2010 http://www.fliesandfins.com | | Interesting how a negative situation like that can actually be beneficial to the fishing or at least your theory of the cold water driving the fish further into the warmer canal waters seems to support that. It is never a good thing when something like that happens, but if you can figure out what it does to the fish's behavior you can often capitalize as you did, nice work! Sounds like a good day. |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by joey on January 24, 2010 http://www.fliesandfins.com | | Marshall That is quite a poon to get from foot. You have got that trail dialed in for sure. Will the biologist let you know what they find from the swab? Congrats on that great fish |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by Shaq on January 24, 2010 http://www.theanglersnet.com | | Congrats Marshm It's a special place! |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by hedrush999 on January 24, 2010 http://www.worldangling.com | | hey marsh. I finally got to get out the other day and to my surprise had one of the best days of my life. The fish kill wasn't the best thing that could happen, but all the hype makes it seem like it was the worst thing possible. Like flava flav once said...don't believe the hype. I think he also said yeah boyeeeee! |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by greg on January 26, 2010 http://www.fliesandfins.com | Great fish Marsh! glad to see all is not lost in Fla. Great story and you were right about fish moving to warmer water. Enjoy
Greg |
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Re: Florida, Tamiami Trail: Post Cold Weather Tarpon Bite
by rustayy on January 26, 2010 http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/derek.rust1 | | Nice poon indeed Marshall! Good to see some pics of the survivors from the cold front. I was on the Tamiami Trail in December, I had a friend show me around down there. What a beautiful area. You are very lucky to live near there. We didn't do to well, we fished basically at the start of the cold front. No poons just some Lady Fish, ut we still had an awesome day. Great work, and great poon on foot! |
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