Latest Florida Sportsman Article 7-12

Well, It's finally out on the shelf!

The highly anticipated July issue of the Florida Sportsman Magazine publication just arrived in my mail box today. The reason for all the excitement is, well, I'm in it!

"TARPON QUEST!" By Larry Stephens

I have been anxious to see what pictures they selected to include with the article. To tell you the truth, all the best pictures with a tarpon were of my fishing partner, Rick Edwards. Actually, I was a little worried that there might not even be a photo of me in the article. The very best picture was of Rick with a 144# tarpon that I had actually caught,. However, we did not end up with a decent picture of me with that monster.

By the way Ricky....I still haven't forgiven you for that!

The worst part and how all this started was I had posted that picture on a forum and the editor of another magazine discovered it and contacted me about possibly using it for the cover shot!  Wow, my first thought was...how can I photoshop my face on Rick's body!

That deal ended up falling through but I was able to work out a little assignment with the editor of Florida Sportsman for a short, kind of photo/essay article. 

This is in the July 2012 issue, page 32, 33 & 34. If you don't have already have a subscription to FS, pick up a copy for the whole story. In the mean time here's the photo pages:

I am not quite sure why that awesome picture of Rick with my tarpon drug up on the kayak wasn't used or even one of the other really good pic's of his own tarpon catch. I know they planned to use some of the photo's I submitted in a kayak fishing book that has just been published. I expect those pic's will show up there and I might get left out of the book, well see. I have it on order.

The book is "Sportsman's Best, Kayak Fishing" and comes with a dvd. It Should be available on Amazon shortly.

Thanks to Jeff Weakly, Editor of Florida Sportsman Mag. for working with me and including my photographs in both projects.

Tight lines,

Larry S.

Famed Fishermen Injures Self While Catching Bait!

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This horrific injury happened this morning while we were attempting to catch some pin fish to troll behind our Kayaks on the big water.

Edwards (my fishing partner) just had to take a picture of my bloody big toe!

"You take a picture of everything else Stephens, I want to see a picture of this on your blog!" Well, here it is:

You wouldn't have been laughing if that was your life's blood draining into you flip flop Edwards!

Though I quickly returned to fishing without immediate medical attention, my sense is, Edwards would have cried. 

Down but not out!

Larry S.

N. Indian River Lagoon Fishing Report 6-2-12

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After finding some trout last Sunday in the NIRL I was chomping at the bit to get back on them. I got a call from one of my fishing partners Rick, looking to make a plan for a fishing trip this morning. I told him my plan was to put in at Scottsmoor at 6:00 AM and whoop up on some trout! He was in!

The wind forcast was for very light winds out of the west but it was already stirring the tops of the cabbage palms when we arrived. We hurried and got our boats launched and paddled for deeper water. We probably launched about 6:30.

The trout have been hanging out in the deeper water just outside of the grass flat in about the 2'8"-3'6" depth.

We fished top water first and there was some action but I switched over to the old reliable 17mr pretty quickly. I probably had not made 10 casts before I hooked up a trout.

I ended up catching about 8 trout and loosing that many more along with 2 or 3 ladyfish. Rick caught about the same but the problem was they were all pretty small and we could not put one on the boat that would make the slot.

The other strange thing was the lack of ladyfish activity and the lack of bait. Later in the morning we pushed up onto the flat and headed south looking for a redfish but there was no activity at all on the flat. We did not even jump a redfish and there was almost no bait activity. I guess that's a good reason for the reds not to be there either.

Well, here's some pictures from the trip I just wish they had been a little bigger.

Larry S.