Perverts, Pogies & Red Bikini's!

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I ran to the beach yesterday to scout for bait around 6 PM.

I only checked the North end but I did find some flipping bait pretty much all the way up. It appeared to be pretty small schools and not bunched up. I could not see the schools in the water, I could only see them flash when they would flip.

They were a little to far out to see by eye, so as usual, I was glassing for them with my 10x36 Nikon's. Apparently, this type of activity attracts police attention! I was watching some bait to see if a fish would strike in them when something told me to look around. There in my rearview mirror sat a Flagler Beach Police Officer. I should add that I just happened to glassing in the direction of the only person on that part of the beach, a women in a red bikini!      Perfect!

So.... the Officer comes up to my window and asks what I'm doing?  Officer, I'm looking for pogies!" I explain. Of course he has no idea what the heck I'm talking about, (Guess he missed my Tarpon Quest article) I explain, it's a small bait fish that Tarpon and other fish feed on and I'm scouting for bait schools to fish.  Lucky for me, while conducting his investigation he misses the fact I have no fishing poles!

Officer-"what are you looking for, I don't see anything but that girl in the red bikini? I thought you might be stalking her!" Unfortunately, for me, the bait is all of the sudden..... gone! 

Me -"well....they were just there but they must have went down. I don't see any just now but what you want to look for is them flipping out of the water"  There was nothing but flat surf as far as the eye could see, couldn't buy a flip out of a flippin' pogy!

I had to do some quick talkin'....explained the in's & out's of tarpon fishing, locating bait, etc. and over whelmed him with fishing procedure to the point that no pervert could have made up. 

At one point I thought of asking if looking at half naked women on the beach with binoculars is illegal but I thought better of it and figured I better keep my mouth shut and leave well enough alone. That's just the kind of stunt my buddy Steve-O would pull. He' almost got me a full body search by the TSA once on a turkey hunting trip to Illinois. That's a story for another day!

But...... I had finally convinced the Officer I was on the up and up and saved myself from a ride down town in his black & white! 

Would have had an even harder time explaining that one to my bride, Tammie!

Moral of the story.........Always have a plausible excuse ready when glassing girls in red bikini's at the beach!

That was a joke...I wouldn't do that!

Be careful out there!

Larry S.

Classic Kayak Wreck!

After an unsuccessful outing fishing for tarpon this morning one of us had the bright idea to do a little kayak surfing!

One of the group....and it wasn't me, though that is my yak, had a big wave chew him up and spit him out!

It was an awesome wreck and we had one hell of a laugh out of it!

This was over in about 2.5 seconds..........

Damn that was funny!

Larry S.

Kayak Surf Fishing Report 7-21-12

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The pogy schools have been passing by us here at Flagler Beach for about two weeks now. The only problem is there has been only a little tarpon action in them that we can find. Several were caught off the Flagler Beach Pier this week.

Pogy bait school with a fish strike

One of my fishing partners Rick, scouted Flagler Beach for pogies Friday afternoon and came back with some good reports. There was a pile of bait pods and even got to see a few tarpon strikes.

Of course that meant were would be fishing Saturday morning and we planned to meet at the beach at 8:00 AM.

As soon as I rolled up on the beach I could see bait schooled up on the surface. I scouted and glassed the North end but only saw a couple tarpon bust into the pods.

Rick arrived and we decided to go ahead and launch at the aliki condo and see what we could do. Strangely enough, no sooner did we get in the water and the bait  A L L  went down at the same time! It was a checker board of small and medium sized pods all the way down the beach but all at once, they disappeared.

We were able to catch a pod on top here and there and probably saw 8-10 tarpon but it was tough fishing. We got a few baits bit off's by small sharks but did not officially catch a fish other than the bait we snagged.

The highlight of the day was the exit from the surf. There were some good size breaker rolling in and we couldn't resist a little romp in the waves.

T.R. lost his custom rod when he got dumped right at the beach after expertly surfing his yak right past me, upside down in the breakers. A do gooder found it washed up on the beach about 50-60 yds north of the accident and returned it!

No injuries, no losses but no fish!

I am very confident that the action will heat up shortly however.
Larry S.

Sportsman's Best Series - Kayak Fishing!

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It's finally available!
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The Sportsman's Best Book & DVD Series - "Kayak Fishing" has just hit the shelf and is available on Amazon. Florida Sportsman Magazine publishes a series of books on various fishing subjects. The latest is on Kayak Fishing and I was lucky enough to have a small part in it. They included three photo's I had taken while Tarpon fishing off Flagler Beach in August of 2011.

One of the photo's was of me straining against the pull of a big tarpon and takes up two full pages. The second is about a 110-120 lb. class Tarpon drug up on the side of my kayak and the last is a photo of an explosive tarpon strike into a pogy pod with the pogies getting blasted into the air.

The book covers pretty much all the subjects related to rigging and fishing from a kayak.

If you're in search of a good source of information on this subject you should consider this book. Here is a link to it on Amazon and is the best price for the book that I could locate.

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Best of Luck,
Larry S.

Kayak Fishing Report, Flagler Beach Surf 7-7-12

I scouted North Flagler Beach Friday afternoon and found at least a dozen small pogy pods about 3:00 PM. There were likely more but it was cloudy inland and shading large parts of the surf making them difficult to see. I did not see any strikes in them. Still, I was glad to see some decent bait activity finally turning up.

I made a plan for this morning to fish with Rick Edwards. We met at the beach about 8:00 AM and fell right into bait at our first stop. Much of the bait was not schooled very tight.

We ended up putting in up by the Aliki Condo on some scattered bait but it was not looking promising for a tarpon. There was absolutely nothing striking into them on the surface.

Rick did have one tarpon roll about 15' from his boat and I saw something large boil the water but could not see it for an ID.

Rick ended up catching one 3' or so black tip shark and that was about it. We had a couple baits bit off but overall it was really slow.

The surf was starting to get pretty large at the beach so we decided to call it about 11:30. Other than the large breakers at the beach the conditions were pretty good. Luckily, I timed it coming in just right and missed all the big breakers and rode it in all the way to the beach without so much as a splash.

That's some angry breakers right there!

Where are the Tarpon?

My dad whooped up on some big Black Drum in the Halifax River yesterday evening just before dark. He had a limit and three were over 10 lb. I might have to hit the drum and take out some frustration on them!

Larry S.

Kayak Surf Entry and Exit, How Too!

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I was on one of my favorite forums recently and one of the new members, a new comer to kayak fishing in the surf asked for some advice on how to get in and out thru the surf without getting rolled. I see a lot of questions about this so I decided to ad some advise on my blog regarding this.

One of my fishing partners, rolled on a baby wave!

Here are my suggestions for getting thru the surf zone without getting chewed up and spit out!

First, unless there is some really good action out there I don't  usually try to fish the surf when there are some serious breakers.

Going out is no big deal. the key is just to stay perpendicular with the breaking wave. If you get a  little sideways your in trouble. This is not to hard to do, even in pretty large breakers. It is the ext that gets most people. If you are fishing a 12-14'+ yak, leaning back will not shift enough weight to keep the nose up. If you have a shorter yak it makes all the difference in the world.

Timing is important to ext but only if the surf is breaking with one or two breakers at a time. If there are 3-4 sets and they start 100 yds out, your not going to be able to get in fast enough to avoid taking one in the back. Then it lifts the back of the yak, the nose digs in, you go side ways and your up side down.

There are three methods to deal with this that you can try but each takes a different skill level.

Very rough surf:
1- get into waste deep water and bail out, grab the back of the boat, hang on and ride it in. works great. Not cool but it works.
2.- you can try a brace but it is difficult to perfect. check this out on line but you will have to practice it a lot. I avoid it personally.

Medium surf (and below):
3. Keep straight by braking on the opposite of the direction the nose is starting to go. The wave gets the rear going faster than the front when the nose get slightly out of perpendicular with the wave. This makes the nose start to come around and you ge rolled. If the nose starts to come left, brake on the right by putting your paddle in the water until the yak straightens  back out. It is not nearly as hard to do as bracing and leaning into the wave.

Obviously, you need to have all your gear leashed but if it is real rough i recommend you bail out and float the boat the rest of the way in. Your body will act like a drift sock and the yak will not turn over. That's a major plus and saves your equipment.

One thing that is very important during the summer months is to keep a close eye on the weather! Afternoon thunder storms can build up fast and sneak up on you even faster! Also, surf conditions can change in as little as 30 minutes and be completely different from what you launched into.

Last year my fishing partner Rick and I got caught sleeping. Man was that a serious mistake! Rick was hooked to a 125lb. tarpon that was headed due east (away from the hill) as hard as he could go. About the time we got the tarpon landed we heard a rumble of thunder! Back inland there was a thunder storm coming and it did not look gentle.

We took a quick photo, stowed our gear and took off for the beach. The tarpon had pulled us so far out it took 15 minutes of paddling as hard as we could just to get back to 45' of water. About then the wind hit us and within 5 minutes it was blowing 40+ mph and pouring rain. The swell went from flat to 4' just that quick also. Waves were breaking a foor and a half over the bow. All we could do was stay square with the waves and paddle as hard as possible, hoping we could out last the storm. Luckily, I had sonar and was able to read the depth once in a while other wise there was no was to know if you were getting closer or further from the beach. After about 20 minutes the conditions started to ease up and I could tell we were going to make it out alive.

Once we had the boats back on the beach, we just sat there, rested and drank our water ration. We joked about how we'd rather not do that again and brushed off the hole incident but both of us knew what a serious circumstances we had just braved.

The thing I remember the most was the intensity of the wind blowing on the paddle each time it came out of the water! Incredible!

Good Luck,
Larry S.

Flagler Beach Fishing Report 6-30-11

Finally, the surf conditions have turned favorable, the wind has turned west and after a day, has really flattened things out. One of my fishing partners, Rick and I made a plan to meet at the beach Saturday morning. There has been just a little bit of scattered bait around but I believe it is all mullet and no pogies yet.

I went over Friday night to try to catch some pin fish for bait, hook and line. That didn’t go as good as I had expected and I was only able to catch a couple pins and two pig fish. The highlight was the small goliath grouper I caught. With all the fishing I have done that was my first Jewfish, though he was not so goliath yet.

I ended up catching a bunch of perfect size mullet first thing Saturday morning to supplement our bait supply.

The plan was to troll and drift some baits around looking for some kings, sharks or bluefish.

We launched about 8:30 AM after scouting North Flagler beach looking and hoping for some pogy pods. Nothing! We put in in front of the Aliki condo as it makes a good land mark. It was so flat that I didn’t even take a wave over the bow paddling out.

We made a number of drifts and paddled north and south but the bite was slow. We only managed a couple of small sharks and two sail cats.

I had rigged my main rod with a stinger rig but still couldn’t hook one of the fish that kept biting the back of the baits off. I had a rod rigged with a buck tail jig and decided to trail a small mullet on it to increase my odds. Unfortunately, that only resulted in a bunch of bodyless mullets.

We had a couple of small schools of mullet come by but they swim so fast you can’t hardly fish them. They are shy of boats also so you can’t get that close. We did not see any striking action on the surface.

About noon time we decided it just wasn’t going to happen today so we called off the dogs and paddled for the hill.

Hopefully, the pogies show up soon so we can have some real action.

Larry S.