On the Line

Pick the Right Stick  

by Mike Conner, Editor-in-Chief

A trip to Flamingo on Florida Bay this past Sunday further solidified my fishing philosophy: Pick the Right Stick. Though my plan was to fly fish for tailing redfish, andI fact did hook and land the first redfish I spotted and cast to with my 8-weight rod, things changed in a heartbeat.

The wind died, and the flat looked like an ice skating rink--not a ripple. The sun was now high enough to light up our world, which makes fish-spotting easier, but in a tradeoff, fish see you better, too. The reds were all singles, and as my host Richard Kernish said: "They aren't tailing as much as yesterday. Yesterday they were "flopping over" standing on their heads. And we had some wind and a light chop.

Translation? Easier fish to approach and feed. "Dumber" fish.

We would pole silently to within 70 feet of a fish, and it would feel us and would move off irritably, pushing a wake as it did. After a dozen refusals on long, long casts, and showing them the fly pretty darn well most times, we knew what time it was: Spinning rod time!

I jumped on the poling platform and Richard tied on a nice, fat plastic jerbait, Texas-rigged. A single red tailed up 120 feet away. Richard launched a long cast just beyond the fish, which had no clue. Richard twitched the bait. The redfish pounded it. Richard's rod bent double. And he looked back at me with that look that said, problem solved. And we repeated the scene a half dozen times in the next 15 minutes until the water rose further and the fish dissappeared.

"We would have caught 20 fish if we made the switch earlier," Richard commented later. No doubt, we would have. But that's okay, we have scored big numbers many times on fly. But on this day, casting from even a full fly line's distance just did not cut it.

Do I prefer fly casting? Sure. But I also like to catch redfish after going to bed at midnight, rising at 4 a.m. and driving 170 miles to fish for maybe 6 hours. So, I will do what it takes without reservation. I pick the right stick. Every single time.