    
Capt. Scott Sparrow
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 | | Posted on Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 12:18 pm: | |
Subject: fishing report
4/30/03 It's hard to find time to update the report, but I just had to let you know how great the fishing has been. On Monday and Tuesday, I had the pleasure of guiding for the third time Don Massey from Dallas, and his brother Cal from Utah. The Masseys were not into numbers, and were simply thrilled to be on the water. Although they were easy to please, the first day was a fly fishing guide's nightmare -- wind and clouds from daybreak onward. The men managed to catch a couple of nice trout on topwaters, but the redfish were nowhere to be seen. As a consolation for a difficult weather day, the men caught some more trout under the dock lights after supper.
On Tuesday morning -- after Don managed to catch a red near Three Islands -- I headed for a flat known for its tailing pods in the spring. The wind was dying, and I thought that reds just might be tailing. I came off plane and poled into the area, and spotted a pod tailing near the boat. Cal slipped off the boat and began wading toward the tails. About that time, we began to see other pods tailing nearby, so Don headed off on his own. For the next couple of hours, the Masseys enjoyed classic tailing action. Don managed to catch three more reds in the 22-24 inch range, and Cal caught three reds and the first ladyfish of the year. Except for one red caught on a pink Mother's Day Fly, all of the reds were caught on orange VIP poppers.
Today -- Wednesday -- I guided John Wilson of Taos. John is a guide up that way, and is considering relocating to the Lower Laguna. I took him back to the same flat where the Masseys had done so well, and the action was even better! Pods of 10-30 fish were everywhere you looked -- tailing and feeding in virtually calm conditions. A few birds were working over them, but the wind was so calm that the birds couldn't stay aloft over the pods. There wasn't another boat in sight, either.
John stalked several pods, and landed four reds up to 25+ inches on an orange VIP popper. It was "storybook" fly fishing, and I expect we'll be having a lot more of it, since it's already been that good for over a month.
4/11/03 It's not every day that you wake up to an absolutely calm morning without a cloud in the sky. As we had breakfast with Chris Brandt and his buddies from Austin and San Antonio, I said, "This is a one in 50 day." When Chris asked, "Where do you think we should go?" I answered "Anwhere," but suggested that they go north. My client and I went south.
It's hard to explain what 1000 redfish look like, if you've never seen it. But for several hours, My client Eric Laird from Houston, and I and did not move more than 200 yards. Meanwhile, Eric -- who had never sight cast to a redfish -- had shot after shot at groups of redfish from 10 to 300 in size. It was almost unbelieveable. We were in a foot of clear water, and everywhere you looked, the glassy surface was punctuated by "swarms" of redfish, sweeping this way and that. Tails were everywhere, but most of the reds were just cruising along, feeding on the shrimp that has suddenly appeared in the flats. At one moment, I watched 30 reds rolling over each other, with their heads coming out of the water gulping shrimp noisily. Talk about happy fish! There wasn't a boat within a mile of us, either. Of course, I had my "megaphone" out, and didn't stop yelling advice and cheers from the boat. Whenever I waded alongside Chris, the reds kept approaching me, and I had to keep going back to the boat to keep them from swimming up to me and spooking. We saw some giant trout, too, but did not catch any.
Meanwhile, Chris and his friends had landed in another piece of heaven north of the Arroyo. For hours, they had single tailing reds, and were able to catch around a dozen. The only drawback was that Chris caught most of the fish on one of my Glassy-Eyed Shrimp (see www.lagunamadre.net for instructions), which was suddenly elevated to "Most Valuable Fly" status, so I had to tie flies for the guys after dinner. I tried to tell them that it wasn't the fly, but they wouldn't hear of it.
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