By Terry Gibson
The first Wednesday of every month, the Stuart Fly Rodders meet to discuss what’s biting, listen to speakers about how to improve your fly-fishing skills, and learn how better to conserve and enhance fisheries. It’s the Treasure Coast’s oldest fly-fishing club, and usually the meetings are packed with friendly local and visiting fly-fishing experts and enthusiasts.
That’s because Martin County offers some of the best and most diverse fly-fishing opportunities in the state. Thanks to the area’s unique confluence of estuaries, nearshore reefs and offshore reefs–all connected by currents–you can catch more saltwater species that you can shake a fly rod at. You just need a little advice about where to fish, when, and with which fly-fishing tactics and tackle to employ. Here are four personal favorite Martin County fly-fishing opportunities that are huge reasons why I live here.
Beach-Walking for Snook
Here’s a fly-fishing opportunity that involves a relaxing as a walk on a pristine beach, punctuated by some of the most exhilarating sight-fishing opportunities in saltwater flyfishing.
May through early September, fly casters catch snook from the beach in the “suds.” During low-light hours, we blind cast baitfish-imitating streamers into the shallow waters just off the beach, as well as popping bugs and “hybrids” such as the venerable Dahlberg diver, typically around rips, reef and jetties.
Later, as the sun rises and penetrates the water column, we sight-cast to snook cruising the beaches. The smaller fish move stealthily up and down the beach in small schools. Sometimes they race each other to the fly. The bigger fish—females—cruise alone. It’s spawning season, so the fish are hungry, but wary. You have to make a pinpoint presentation, and be willing to accept rejection and try again to catch the lunker linesiders in plain sight.
Typically, we use small baitfish imitations or even bonefish flies to fool these wary fish. We prefer 9- and 10-weight rods, intermediate-sink lines, and six- to eight-foot leaders depending upon water clarity and whether the sun is up. Best flies include the Clouser Minnow, Gotcha patterns, and the venerable “Eat Me.” Flyline baskets are helpful in keeping the shorebreak from dragging and twisting the line, which interferes with casts and causes tangles.
The most productive beaches include Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, Bathtub Beach, and Jensen Beach.
Mullet Run
Right now, as I type, the annual fall mullet migration is in full swing along the beaches, in the Indian River Lagoon, and up the St. Lucie River. Mullet are one of the most important types of forage fish. There are several mullet of species, which provide hundreds of species of predator fishes, birds and marine mammals the energy to migrate, reproduce, and feed their offspring.
While fishing the mullet run, you are likely to see squadrons of pelicans and gannets diving into the huge, tightly packed bait schools, witness blacktip and spinner sharks vaulting airborn through them, sending mullet flying hapless through the air, and see dolphins corral them into balls so tight you wonder where there’s room for water.
Yes, the mullet is one of the world’s most spectacular migrations of wildlife. It begins in early September and lasts, weather depending, until mid- to late October. It tends to peak late September and early October. On calmer days, fly anglers target snook, tarpon and jumbo jacks in the surf, with bluefish, Spanish mackerel and acrobatic sharks showing up as bonuses. This is big-game flyfishing. Tackle should include 9-foot, 10- to 12-weight rods, large-arbor reels with plenty of backing, and intermediate- or fast-sink lines. Leaders should be 20-pound or heavier, with a bite tippet. Best flies include Muddler-style mullet imitations, silver baitfish imitations in the four- to eight-inch range, and giant popping bugs.
Inshore, predators corral mullet up against seawalls in the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon, and against mangrove shorelines. Anglers do best working popping bugs, Dahlberg Divers and mullet-imitating streamers tight to structure, especially as the tide begins to fall, or approaches high tide.
Night fishing along the bridge shadow lines with sinking lies and mullet patterns also produces spectacular strikes by snook and tarpon.
It’s a wildlife migration you’ll never forget.
Disco Docklight Fishing
When you step on this dance floor in the dark, in this case the bow of a skiff for a night-fishing trip, you better have your moves down. Simply navigating the inshore waters of the Indian River Lagoon and St. Lucie River at night is challenging unless you know the waters well, and have a powerful spotlight onboard. I strongly suggest you hire a guide a couple of times before you attempt fly-fishing at night on your own.
The focus is on docklights hanging over the water and bridge lights and the shadow lines they create. Snook, tarpon, and spotted sea trout are the target species, but the dazzling, inchoate tides of the night also produce redfish, bluefish, and ladyfish, among other opportunists. In fact, you can catch every species of snook that occurs in the Atlantic, including common and swordspine, plus fat snook and tarpon snook.
Fishing docklights is really challenging. This style of fishing requires good balance, casting accuracy and quick reflexes on the part of the angler on the bow. The captain running the boat must be adept at positioning the boat at angles and distances that allow the fly-caster to make optimal presentations in very tight spaces in swift currents. The fish hover in and around the lights, among pilings, periodically erupting into feeding frenzies as the current carries shrimp and baitfish into the cone of light. The melee is enough to unhinge even the most veteran of fly anglers. But if you keep your wits about you, make careful presentations with small flies, and get that fly moving immediately through the strike zone, you are in store for heart-stopping strikes and tug-of-war contests that will bend your rod to the hilt. Keep ‘em out of those pilings.
Fishing the shadow lines along the bridges doesn’t quite require the same level of casting accuracy, but the snook are big around the bridges and it’s not uncommong to hook a tarpon in excess of 100 pounds in the pitch dark.
False Albacore Fever
In June, Martin County’s nearshore waters are invaded by huge schools of a small tuna locally called “bonito,” better known among flyfishermen as “false albacore,” and properly called “little tunny.” (The scientific name is Euthynnus alletteratus.) The fishery remains gangbusters into early September, though there are always “albies’ to be caught offshore.
I’ve fished for “albies” in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, and wondered why I ever left home to chase that species with a fly rod. The fish here along southeast Florida are significantly larger than anywhere I’ve caught them, except North Carolina. They come in very close to shore—so close that they are caught from the beach during the minnow migrations of August. And fly-fishing conditions are typically perfectly windless with high sun while they are here in force. Moreover, nobody except for a handful of fly-fishing guides and fly rod diehards here even bother to target them. Though the species is a vitally important player in the foodweb, feeding on smaller forage fish and fed on by larger predators including sailfish and marlin, they are widely considered “trash fish” by locals.
Typically, by late June, hoards of albies ranging from five to 25 pounds and larger gorge themselves on fry and small baitfish flushed out of the Indian River Lagoon through the St. Lucie River. The feeding frenzies, or “blitzes,” are visible from great distances, and fishing tactics typically include “running and gunning” after those ravaging tunas, or chumming the fish to the angler if the fish are shy. Using 7- to 9-weight rods and intermediate-sink lines fly anglers cast small streamers including Eat Me patterns, Schminnows and epoxy minnow patterns into the melee. These fish will take you deep into your backing within seconds after the hookup. It’s an electrifying way to fish.
Frankly, there are world records to break here, both line-class and all-tackle records There isn’t a more comfortable and accommodating place to base yourself for a run at a record than Martin County