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