Chris's 1st Redfish on fly...

It all started with a long planned family holiday in Florida. We were taking our two daughters and their three children to Orlando for a week and then sending them all home, then my wife and I taking a further two weeks on the Gulf coast without them.

My old fishing buddy, Dave King, had given me lots of advice about fishing the Gulf, so my number one target was to be Snook off the beach. However, I also wanted to catch a Red Fish on fly and reports on the area looked promising.  

We had booked a Condo on Siesta Key just west of Sarasota with it's own private fishing dock, bayside and private beach ocean side, plus swimming pool and shops locally to keep my other half content.                                          

We encountered some very heavy thunderstorms on the 2 hour drive from Orlando, typical for the time of year.  The first day was sunny and bright, but the ocean was very murky and full of weed. Not what I had expected! June 1st is officially the start of the hurricane season. The next three days were all downhill on the fishing front as the first tropical storm of the season, Andrea, got its act together in the Gulf of Mexico,
hitting us on Thursday June 6th with 7 inches of rain and strong winds. 

My fishing for the first five days was a disaster confined to  trying to catch Sheephead and Mullet from the dock on the bayside. Both seemed totally unimpressed with the fly so I have to revert to fishing for grunts off the dock with shrimp.  

The local  residents told me stories of Redfish being caught from the dock but for the first 11 days I never saw the hint of a Redfish. After the storm the ocean calmed down and fishing started to pick up considerably. I started to catch Snook, Spanish mackerel  and Ladyfish off the beach. Each morning a large heron would join me at day break and wait to be fed a couple of Ladyfish for his breakfast. Fishing was a lot better. The weed had gone and the water started to clear and I always seems to manage to catch a snook at sunset. I was happy at last. But after at least 30 visits to the fishing docks I am now thinking Redfish of the Dock are an Urban Myth or maybe it's the wrong time of year?

June 13th I managed to make the beach before sunrise to be met with a head wind. Casting my white zonker with lead eyes was hard work, even my friendly heron gave up on me and departed. So I decided to try a shrimp fly on the dropper and small shrimp crab like fly pattern on the point and go back to the docks to try and tempt the barnacle crunching Sheephead. I fished the north dock with no success and though I would just walk up and down the south dock before going back for coffee, but again no luck and as  I turned to walk off the dock to my amazement  I spotted two Redfish in less that two feet of water.
Easy cast I thought. My  line was peeled off my reel quickly and with two false casts the point fly landed absolutely perfectly 30 inches in front of the lead fish, two twitches of the line and he was on the fly like he had not eaten all week. I lifted and the line and it went tight ( in hindsight I should have done the saltwater strip strike) but anyhow I am now connected to a very angry Redfish. My first thought was I don't  want to play this fish off the dock as he will run under the dock which would be only have one outcome line severed on the barnacles. 

Chris and the prize of prizes

So I run off the dock and along the bank to get as far away from the dock as possible. I applied as much side strain as my Sage Xi2 would allow to the fish to try to get Mr Redifsh away from the dock. Redfish are real brutes like a carp on steroids.They fight long and hard. The next five minutes the battle was the fish doing all he could to get under the dock and me applying maximum side strain  to try and stop him. He got very close on a couple of heart stopping runs before deciding to take the fight into the middle of the bay.  By this time I had been joined by two onlookers. Eventually I started to gain the upper hand and the fish started to slow with shorter runs.  This then gave me another problem, I am standing on top of a wall with  a five foot drop to the water. The only option was to jump in, which resulted in a comedy moment where my flip flops fell off my feet and started to drift out to sea. So jump completed with fly rod in hand  and flip flops recovered, I am still connected to the the fish. He weakened further so I grab the leader and he is mine. I lift  the fish onto the bank. Two quick photos and the onlookers discussing how nice Redfish fillets are to eat, I remove the hook from the scissors of its jaw and slip the fish back into the water to recover and watch him swim away. 

Ambition fulfilled.   Well, for the moment.....
words by Chris..

Great to see a plan come together Chris..., awsome... beautiful looking fish

Dock at sunrise