Fishing report, Everglades backcountry - Flamingo

This will be my last report for the month of May and it's been a good month... We've been mostly fly fishing, backing up occasionally with spinning gear -- tarpon the main focus. Everything else has been biting, but the tarpon are the stars at the moment. I recently spoke up about the tremendous recovery that the goliath grouper has made in the areas that I fish. From a species that almost disappeared, they've come back strong and stronger to the point that we're actually sightfishing for the small ones up to 20lbs or so in very shallow clear water up in places like Whitewater Bay. Weekend before last one of my anglers actually sightfished one that went 11lbs on the Boga Grip before being carefully released. It was caught on a purple and black fly meant for a tarpon..... When you can catch a goliath grouper with a fly rod, there's a lot of them around.... The shoreline we were fishing actually had small tarpon only 100 feet away from the grouper. I think it's high time the FWC considered re-classifying the goliath grouper (jewfish for you old timers...). A few days later, just before the Memorial Day weekend I started a six day run out of Flamingo. My first anglers were John and Tucker Kern out of Colorado. We fished three days with John using fly gear, and Tucker, his son, using spinning tackle. That first day we jumped seven tarpon from 30 to as much as 80lbs on flies, lures, and live bait. That day the fish did all the releasing.... The next day John scored on a big fish that was easily 100lbs on spinning gear. We carefully revived the big fish and watched it swim away in good condition. We also went on to jump two more on bucktails with very light (for large tarpon...) spinning gear. Both Tucker and his dad hooked up this way. We couldn't seem to get any bites on fly. We saved the best for the last day. At our first river spot, we found fish all around the skiff from 30lbs on up. Tucker started the day with a large tarpon on a topwater lure... That fish exploded on the plug, went ballistic, then tossed it back at us. His next bite was on a sub-surface lure and this time he stayed connected... It was Tucker's first tarpon, on 10lb spinning tackle, a 30 to 40lb fish - great catch! Not to be outdone John then picked up the fly rod and made a perfect presentation where fish were holding next to a river corner. A 70lb fish ate the big Tarpon Snake on the first cast and it was off to the races. Here's John and his son during the fight. Note how Tucker is holding their camera at arm's length just sighting between his two hands... it's the best way to get an action photo... Both John's and Tucker's fish were caught and released within 100 feet of each other. That's what I call a great tarpon corner... Each day we added speckled trout, snook, grouper, spanish mackeral, and a variety of other small fish to the score on the tarpon. The next two days were with Joe Huggard, a regular visitor from Europe, who's a very experienced fly angler. On our first day we hunted the big fish with flies, Joe got a surprise - a nice gag grouper on a fly... You can see the black Tarpon Snake sticking out of the fish's mouth. I've caught and released lots and lots of grouper in the rivers that drain into the Gulf from the 'Glades, but very few on fly... An hour later Joe had the perfect shot at a group of tarpon rolling past the skiff, laid the fly out, and hooked up solid... It was a big fish, easily in the 100lb class, and we got a half dozen jumps before the fish managed to slip the hook. Here's the only photo I was able to shoot ( I was a bit busy at the time....) We found other fish but none that wanted our flies and finally moved back into the interior where small snook and large speckled trout were in good supply. Joe is still looking for that triple digit tarpon on fly and will be back again in the late summer/early fall for another shot at them. My last day, Memorial day, was with Mike Feilmeier and his friend Brian, a trout guide from Nebraska. The tarpon that day were hard to find until we found good numbers up a small creek from 10 to about 60lbs. Mike jumped one of about 20lbs, but the rest proved difficult to feed. We ended that day back in Whitewater with snook and trout. It should be noted that those last six days were just after a tremendous bout of heavy rain for several days that ended the year's dry spell. We're in the wet season now and it will rain every day. There's still just nothing like the 'Glades.... Tight Lines Bob LeMay