I got a call from a friend of mine about a nice herd of non molested Redfish in the Tampabay area so I made a phone call to my buddy Capt. Clay said when was the last time you picked up a fly rod. Well I told him to meet me at the ramp at 7:00AM and I’ll give you a few lessons. He said great and I was in the water at 7:00AM and a little while latter we pulled up on the flat with no one around and it just looked to good so I got out my 8wt G Loomis with my Islander Reel and handed it to Clay and said start casting and let me see what I’m in for. I was surprised he did pretty good so I gave him a few pointers so I grabbed the push pole got up on the platform and said get ready we poled up on the flat around a 100 yards and said it looks like my friend was right it looked like about 6 nice schools of Redfish. We got a little closer and got set up for a few cast and I said to him cast to the outside fish what ever you do don’t cast in the herd will you know what happens when you see all those redfish coming at you will he got buck fever and landed in the middle of them we chased them around for 20mins with a few more shots just no takers so we moved on to find those other herds will we didn’t have to go to far and it looked like a few of those Redfish schools joined up so I got set up on them and it looked like around 200 fish and told Clay don’t screw this up and he made a perfect cast right in front of the lead fish and striped it a few time and he got ate fish on will about 10 seconds later he came unbuttoned o-will. The good thing the school moved 50 feet to the left and took one more shot at them and had a few followers and no takers but I guess it was just not Clay’s day for his first Redfish on fly. I asked him how many Redfish he saw he turned to me and said their must be around 300 and I must have had 50 shots at them but I just sucked today so we poled off the flat before we got busted by a passer by so I asked him if he wanted to check a few more spots on the way back to the ramp he said sure so we made a few stops but they all had a few boats on them so we just called it a day and went back to the ramp.
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Tagged as: fishing report, fly fishing redfish, Fly Fishing Tampa, fly fishing tampa guide, Redfish, tampa charter fishing
Kyle Lemke Tampabay Redfish on Artificial
