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.

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.