Life on the Water, Tim Gleason
May 2024
Presummer Bait - If it is too windy for tarpon fishing this time of year, I will look around for significant concentrations of glass minnows and fry pilchards bunched along the mangrove shorelines of points, bays, and creek entrances. The snook are usually never far behind. This is a situation where a fly rod really shines. You can create very small flies that really match the look of these tiny bait fish.
Twenty plus snook mornings are not uncommon. If you are not a fly person, rig up the smallest artificial you can cast and do the same thing. Any small plastic in whitish or baitfish colors should do the trick. A suspending hard bait like a MirrOlure Catch 2000 would also work. It is really a sight to see when a school of snook goes ballistic on a bait ball. Nothing will be happening and then all of a sudden, 20 to 50 snook will be blowing up bait, flying out of the water and generally wreaking havoc. Even if you don't catch anything, it is worth the price of admission just to see that alone. If you can get your fly or lure into the mayhem, just start it moving and hang on.
An interesting phenomenon during this kind of fishing happens on the bite though. Most of the time you actually barely feel the strike. Since the bait is so small and concentrated, I believe the snook are just swimming through the bait with their mouths open and sucking it in. Stay in close contact with whatever you are using and if you feel anything abnormal or just get tight, set the hook.
Small Olive and White Flies/Lures – When these glass minnows get concentrated like that, the snook get really fixated on that particular small size, profile and color. If it isn't less than 3 inches long, slim profiled and some variety of green and white, they usually aren't eating it. When I first stumbled across the phenomenon of massive concentrations of bait with snook voraciously attacking it, I threw the kitchen sink (my usual flies) at it with little to no success. I couldn't believe it. There were snook flying out of the water doing back flips and I couldn't get bit. I tried it all. I went home that day and put on my thinking cap and came up with a few glass minnow variations. If you are a fly fisherman, you can use all kinds of different materials (as long as they are some variety of greens and white) and hooks to control your sink rates and vary the look somewhat but my favorite fly for this type of fishing is a deer hair slider on a fairly light wire hook.
This fly swims in or just below the water's surface film and when you get bit, you more often than not see the fish on the strike. Tell me that isn't cool!
Since the water is typically fairly shallow this time of year where the glass minnow are congregating in the morning, an added bonus is this fly will tend to stay above our lovely new bottom hugging algae. Anything that sinks more quickly will leave you with a hook full of green mung. So, get out there early, look around some quiet areas out of the wind for dimpling bait, slide in quietly, throw something small, green and white and hang on!
Fishing a Glass Minnow School – A good example of this was a few days ago. The wind came up out of the south, southeast and the tide was a bit higher than the typical crazy north wind lows of winter. A perfect day to go look at some protected creek mouths and coves I thought. I was cruising the back country and saw a few pelicans tucked up tight to the mangroves periodically lifting off and immediately diving right back down. I'm thinking bait! I slid in on my trolling motor and sure enough there was lots of dimpling glass minnows. I started picking at the edges of the bait and picked up a couple of 20” class snook. As I worked my way up the shoreline, I saw a small cove with LOTS of bait in it.
I pitched a fly in the middle of it and got inhaled. I thought I had a similar class fish until all of a sudden the fish took off towards the trees like a rocket and broke me off. Not sure I have ever seen a fish move that fast. Since I had to retie, I dropped my power pole at the outside of the cove but still in casting distance. Once I got squared away, I figured whatever fish were on this bait were scared away but why not make a few casts while I was there. The fish weren't scared away. I sat on that power pole for almost 3 hours casting every time I saw a shower of bait getting pushed to the surface. I bet I hooked close to 30 snook up to 35 inches. Most were smaller males in the 20 to 24 inch class but I have never been able to stay stationary like that on a snook bite before. That is usually only in the domain of the white bait guys. I'll take it!
Tarpon Catch Streak Continues to 52 Month in a Row – A quick update. I got through the toughest time of year to catch a tarpon and have now caught a tarpon every month for 52 months in a row. Hopefully the next 6 months shouldn't be too difficult and I'll be closing in on 5 years. This month (April) was interesting. April 1st I got out in the dark and hit a docklight with some tarpon on it in my neighborhood. They were actively feeding so confidence was high. I pitched a tiny white fly in there tied on a size 2 light wire hook. I got the first cast in front of a couple of fish and they fought each other over it with the bigger of the 2 (about 15 to 20 pounds) slurping it down like it has never seen a fly before. I quickly set the hook, the fish flew in the air and jumped off. I was bummed. I thought I was going to quickly land the month number 52 tarpon. I figured I either broke it off or the hook never set. Upon stripping in my stuff, I saw the hook was still on. Upon closer inspection, I saw the light wire on the hook was bent in half. April Fools on me!
Well that’s it for this edition. See you out on the water. To follow some of my fishing life check out my Instagram account @timgleasonphotography
Tim Gleason
https://www.timgleasonphotography.com/