Back to normal

Everyone that has up coming trips on the books can all take a deep breath. The weather has appeared to have returned to normal. I will keep you posted on the tarpon migration but I am sure it will be in full swing soon. We did land a nice tarpon on fly today, the fish was caught in the Indian River. The other highlight of the day was a big trout 8.5 pounds on the boga grip but we will call it 9, what do you expect this is a fishing blog. Stay tuned hopefully some good tarpon pictures soon. I apologize to everyone last week that we had to cancel, I lost a total of six trips last week!

my guide service website http://stuartflyfishing.com/
my photography website http://pbase.com/stuartflyfishing

what the Tweet!

Here is a photo I took on my last nice weather day here a week ago.


Everywhere I turn I hear about "tweeting" on twitter, so curiosity got the best of me and I checked it out today. Now I must admit it is not the first time I have been on twitter, about 5 months ago one of the followers of this blog told me about twitter and suggested that I started "tweeting". I checked it out and at that time did not really get it? Now on the other hand, I am much wiser to this social networking thing and I do get it! It is quick and easy and very informative. I love this blog and it has been a great source of entertainment for both me and you the reader but, the biggest complaint is that I don't post often enough. Problem solved, a mini blog, known as twitter. It takes time for me to post something here, I have to edit photos, try to come up with something creative to write and then put it all together, total time is usually over a couple hours per post. On twitter I can type something in about 2 minutes and keep all my clients and fishing buds up to speed. Now don't worry this is definitely not the end of this blog, just another tool for you to stay in touch with what I am up to in between blog postings. Like for example, over the last 5 days I could have "tweeted" that it has rained like hell here and I have lost 5 charters. This is the unfortunate reality to my job. However, the weather is getting better and hopefully tomorrow I can "tweet": (Great day, jumped 2 tarpon and landed a bunch of snook.) You get the idea.
Many of you are already on twitter and you know how it works you just have to sign on as a friend of mine. If you have never been on twitter give it 5 minutes sign up and follow what I am doing on a daily basis. I consider everyone I fish with a friend and I am giving you open invite into my day to day life. My user name on twitter is StuartFlyfishin but I think you can just search my name John Meskauskas to locate me. You can also "tweet" back if you like and let me know what you are up to. The one negative I have found with twitter is locating people. I know it is because my main email is not done through Gmail or Yahoo or any of these other main stream emails, so please look me up and follow my "tweets"

my guide service website http://stuartflyfishing.com/
my photography website http://pbase.com/stuartflyfishing

Fishing report 5-14-09

I have had loads of positive feedback about the new website design and this blog but, if there is one complaint, it is that I do not post as many "fishing reports" as I use to. The main reason is time, there just does not seem to be enough hours in the day. I am also falling victim to my own critiquing. Basically I want to have good photos before I post something and many times I do not have pictures that I think are good enough to post. Photography is a lot like fishing, you catch lots of fish but only some are keepers. So I decide to mix in a good old fishing report every now and again. They will be titled Fishing Report with the date, no special photos just a few grip and grin snapshots.



I must get asked ten times a day, "So how's the fishing been lately?" Do you know how hard that question is for me to answer? Lately? Do you mean lately like today or yesterday and today? Or do you mean like newspaper lately? You know the fishing report that the local tackle shop posts in the paper which is usually some guy that fished 2 weeks ago and he told the tackle shop guy that he caught some dolphin the other day. Basically what I am getting at is that everyday is a new day and if you ask me the fishing is always good, and most of the time great. The last couple of weeks have been a prime example of what I mean. I have had some tough days that we had to work very hard to catch a handful of snook, followed by days were we landed tarpon, giant jacks, snook and cobia all in a half day. The weather has been great up until yesterday when the easterly winds picked up. The beach is full of cobia, some tarpon and still plenty of jack schools, while the river has had plenty of snook. I guess all in all the fishing has been good and great a handful of days. Yesterday it was overcast and windy and we only managed a few snook, today we hooked 3 tarpon, caught a nice grouper and landed a handful of snook but we had to work very hard for it. I would have considered today a tough day but everyone has different expectations, so as long as you get out and have a good time it is a successful day. Here are a series of pictures from this past week.

my guide service website http://stuartflyfishing.com/
my photography website http://pbase.com/stuartflyfishing

I'm an equal opportunity angler

I know this is blog is titled flyfishing and photography but, I must be honest with you, I am an equal opportunity angler. I don't care if I or my clients catch fish on fly, artificial, or bait. Yes I said the dreaded four letter word. I also consider a gummy minnow a fly! As we move into summer here in Stuart there are loads of opportunity, I recently had a charter where we caught snook on fly, plugs, and bait all in the same morning. I like consider myself versatile. I took these sunrise shots this morning while my friend Scott Cormier and I were catching bait for our charters.


I could have titled this post, "old dog learns new trick". Over the last couple years I have found more and more situations where Hogy lures come into play, from tarpon in the river to snook on the seawalls and the absolutely no brainer, cobia on the beach. However a couple weeks ago I helped Mike Hogan, founder of Hogy Lures, with a seminar at Bass Pro Shops and I learned many new ways to rig his baits. Well one quickly became my favorite so I thought I would share it with you.

It is so simple it is almost stupid! He sells a small wire spiral that you can crimp onto any circle hook and simply twist one of his hand poured baits. My favorite is his 9 inch skinny. I now always have one rigged and ready and last week it came in handy. After beating up on a jack school with plugs they became very spooky, so I tried to pitch a live bait into them, (there is that four letter word again) and they even ran from the bait! So I said to my clients, "before we leave them let me see how they react to this Hogy rig?" All I can say is, WOW! they jumped all over it, so needless to say I have thrown this rig at them a few more times. I am not saying that these Hogy lures are the only thing you need but I will tell you that they should be part of your arsenal. Take the time to check them out. Hogy Lures

Here is a nice big jack that attacked the 9 inch skinny Hogy on the circle hook rig.

Big jack taken on fly!

Yesterday we landed this 60 pound tarpon on BAIT!

I am kind of pissed because this tarpon was perfect to photograph and my settings were wrong on my camera. This is the best one I got but, my shutter speed was way to slow. You should have seen the ones that had motion blur they would have been very cool. Oh well, the quest continues for the perfect jumping tarpon shot!

my guide service website http://stuartflyfishing.com/
my photography website http://pbase.com/stuartflyfishing