Captains Corner: Ed Walker

The Tampa Bay Times

Saltwater fly-fishing has evolved over the years. No longer is it primarily for stalking tailing redfish in a foot of water or casting at tarpon on a sandy channel edge. Nowadays any species is fair game for a creative angler.

Over the past few years, we have taken our passion for fly casting to the offshore arena. With quite a bit of trial and error we have come up with techniques to catch just about anything that swims using a flyrod, regardless of depth. Most of the time this involves chumming with variety of attractants. Sometimes we use a frozen block or chum, others it is cut bait that brings them up from the depths. When they start to be visible from the surface we start tossing free live baits to really fire them up. Perhaps the most important factor when trying to chum fish into casting range is not putting any lines in the water until the fish are completely fired up and eating behind the boat. If you show them a line too early, they wont come up all the way and will be reluctant to go into a real frenzy.

With a lot of experimentation and persistence our boat has caught more than 20 International Gamefish Association world records in the last 3 years out of Tarpon Springs. Most of them were caught on the fly rod, including amberjack, gag grouper, bonito, red snapper, and mangrove snapper. Offshore fly fishing is exploding in popularity and is now a big part of our regular charter fishing program. If you like to cast the fly-rod do not be afraid to carry one along on your next run offshore. You never know what might swim into casting range out there.