The conference ended early on Thursday March 25, 2010, so I grabbed my stuff and went to the Ponce Inlet. I was ready, brought waders, sandals, my new JP ROSS ONYX Rod, my Teton Reel, flies, my stripping basket, sun screen, polarized sun glasses, and drinking water. Had my new JP Ross hat on and I was ready to go. I surveyed the area and could tell that high tide was on the rise. Low tide was around noon, I arrived around 2, so the tide was on the rise. The highest tide was going to be at 6pm. From my understanding, when the tide was rising, the fish would be coming in with the tide. So I felt like I may have a good chance to connect with some saltwater swimmers. The weather wasn’t quite at perfection, a cold front was moving in and the wind was very gusty. I always get nervous when it is windy, that is when my casting gets a little sketchy and I become king of the wind knots. So I decided to find a little cove that was partly protected from the wind. At the point of the cove, I had a great view of the Ponce de Leon Inlet lighthouse. 

 

It turned out to be a great spot. My casting was incredible with the ONYX fly rod. I was able to shoot more line than I normally do, even with the gusty winds. It may have been my imagination but I think my casts were over 10 feet further than normal. I still had some wind knots, but that is because I had mangrove trees surrounding me and had minimal space for casting. (Yes I did catch a few mangrove trees with my back casts, I hate when that happens!) In most cases, wind knots develop when you aren’t waiting long enough for your back cast to unfurl. For me knowing is half the battle, now I just need to improve ;-).

 

My approach for successfully fly fishing this saltwater area was to cast and wait 8 seconds for the multi-colored clouser minnow to sink.   Then I would short strip the minnow quickly, about 6 inches 2 to 4 times to gain the fishes attention. Next I would quickly strip 12 to 18 inches of line at a time until only a few feet of fly line remain off of the rod tip or until I had a hit. Of course I was experimenting with different approaches, but this one seemed to do the trick. My casts were landing just off the rocks that lined the shore. The first hint that I was on something was when I was stripping the line in quickly and all of a sudden there was a boil. The fish missed my minnow, but I was excited to see that there was some fish around. I had a few tail biters too, they would pull the tail but just didn’t get to the fly quick enough, maybe they were smaller fish. In the hour and a half that I fished this one spot, I caught 5 fish from 10 to 14 inches. I found a school of bluefish from the Pomatomidae, BLUEFISHES family. After catching 3 or 4 fish the bluefish teeth destroyed fly didn’t have much deer hair left on the clouser, their small teeth were sharp. For their size, they were good fighters and fought ‘till the end. Even when they were out of the water for pictures, they were spaztastic. Not bad for a few hours of fishing. Tight lines.

Joe