Fishing outside of Flagler County

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Every so often, I like to take a short road trip to see what other areas have to offer in the way of fishing. Recently, I took one trip to the north, and one to the south.

On the first trip, I drove to the Villano boat ramp in St. Augustine to meet Capt. David Borries, of Jasksonville. Our plan was to wade/flyfish the flooded Spartina grass flats that line the Intracoastal Waterway — north of the ramp.

I had never done this before, but Borries is experienced at it so I listened and learned. He explained that the grass flats flood during the September full moon. Unfortunately, the lack of an east wind didn’t quite get the water as high as he would have liked, but we were still able to get some fishing done.

After pulling up to the first spot, Borries pointed out what grass to look for that would have solid footing. We had to what a bit for the tide to come up, and when it did, the view from the boat didn’t show signs of fish. So we tried a couple of other spots, but we had the same results.

The next spot looked good, so we got out and waded to a spot that looked productive. As we were approaching the spot, we could see a couple of tailing redfish. But as luck would have it, they disappeared by the time we got into casting range. The last placed we tried produced a 4-pound tailing sheepshead that Borries caught on a black fly.

The next trip brought Steve Carl and myself to the Indian River, north of Titusville. The first spot we stopped at that morning produced a 6-pound tarpon that I caught on a topwater plug.

After the fish was released, the small tarpon started rolling all around us so I pulled out my eight weight fly rod and started casting to them. I had a couple of good strikes on the fly but no takers.

When it slowed down, we moved on to find some redfish. I landed two on the fly rod and Carl landed three reds on soft plastic jerk baits. We had plenty of other shots at tailing reds, but they wouldn’t eat. We returned to the same place the next day, and I had two tarpon on a black Rainy’s bubblehead fly and one on a black and purple fly. Steve landed a 25-inch red on the soft plastic bait. When it started raining hard, we decided to call it a day and return home.

This past Sunday, Carl and I fished our same old Flagler spots on the full moon, and I landed three snook on a fly — the largest measuring 17 inches. Carl had the big fish of the day: a 23-inch trout that was also caught on a fly.