“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
Abraham Lincoln
The trip south from my first night’s stop in Columbus Ohio would entail a journey of over 500 miles through the cities of Cincinnati, Louisville, and Nashville, before a final overnight stop in Alabama. A deep front was sweeping eastward as I made my way south, bringing more heavy rains, high winds, thunder and lightning, and even tornado warning sirens south of Nashville. After my final overnight stop, I was up early, coffee and sausage egg McMuffin on the go, and on my way to Destin.
Destin welcomed me with warmth and sun, and after arriving at our place, I set about unloading, provisioning, setting up and settling in. Once that was done, I rigged up my 8-weight fly rod with a big wooly bugger on a floating line and scouted the Horseshoe Lake shoreline for largemouth bass.
Horseshoe Lake is one of several man-made freshwater ponds/lakes situated in the Sandestin resort in Miramar Beach, Florida. Horseshoe Lake is the biggest, the others like small golf course ponds but all home to abundant bluegill and largemouth bass, and both species can get quite large.
Our place is just steps away from Horseshoe Lake – all the Beachwalk Villas border it, in some cases with a sloping bank, in others, like ours, with a bulkhead. In either case, one can sight fish to the largemouth as they prepare to spawn. Post-spawn is a different game as the spawn-weary females drop back into the depths and the smaller males guard the nest until the fry are about 2 weeks old. Then they too take refuge in the depths to recharge. The timing of this activity is dependent on water temperatures, which is dependent on the weather – colder springs delay it – warmer springs hasten it.
As is always the case, the vicissitudes of temperature and attendant gulf and bay water temperatures, wind, and rain, all make their mark, good or bad, on the fishing. Fortunately, as chronicled in this blog before, Destin offers diverse fishing options – freshwater lakes, saltwater bay and surf – so there are usually always options to keep one in the game.
From the start, the weather did not cooperate for fly fishing the surf. The winds prevailed from the south and east, making for a turbid and high surf and difficult sight fishing. For the first time since purchasing our property in 2016, I took my small fishing kayak along on this trip to better fish the bay. In all my previous outings, I waded the bay shore, which can still be effective but can be difficult depending on the bottom type. I had personally experienced a few cases where I sunk deep in marsh muck. The kayak removed that risk, while allowing me to explore a variety of bay habitat.
Neighbor Dale, a regular snowbird, would scoff at me and my fly rod. “Oh, forget that thing, get some bait, and fish the dock”, he’d say, claiming there were big redfish to be had. While I wasn’t going to go “bait-dunker”, I witnessed what he was talking about on the several occasions I ventured forth in my kayak. I saw no big redfish caught, but fishing within earshot of anglers on the dock indicated they were getting hook-ups only to be broken off when these big burly fish ran back under the dock.
On the bad surf days with winds prevailing from the south, I’d launch my kayak on the protected bay side at Baytowne Marina. There, from a sugary sandy beach adjacent to the marina, I’d paddle out to the waters off the marina and around the boat channel that leads out to the marine expanse known as Choctawhatchee Bay. The game here was all about fishing clousers and other weighted streamers on an intermediate line to spotted sea trout and redfish, as well as being ready for marauding jacks that could show up in an instant, brutish marauders busting bait.
I made three trips with my little kayak to the bay. I fished the edges of the channel off the marina the first time, picking up scores of “jacks” – juvenile spotted sea trout. Another kayak angler fished near me with spinning gear and did the same. I’ve always felt any time I can keep up with or even best the gear guys, I’m doing well. The fishing was great when you found these fish that tend to school when they are smaller, but they are also a moving target.
Bottlenose dolphins inhabit the gulf, the harbor, and Choctawhatchee Bay. They reach sizes of 6 to 13 feet and weigh between 300 and 650 pounds and consume as much as 4% to 6% of their body weight (12 to 40 lbs!) each day. And they love fish. On my first outing I spied a mother dolphin with her calf, hunting the water around Baytowne Marina. From a distance I had no issue with them, but when they got close, I suddenly felt intimidated by their size and power, especially considering I was in their element, at eye level, and in a 10′ kayak. In several cases I’d be fishing and catching, but as soon as they were around the fishing completely shut down, for obvious reasons.
My final trip in my kayak proved exceptional. On that fine day, I observed huge schools of baitfish close in to marina structure. I focused on casting clousers of different colors where I saw baitfish getting busted. I was using a full intermediate line on my 8 weight – I’d cast and allow the fly to sink, then strip back erratically, sometimes allowing the fly to pause on the retrieve. It wasn’t long before I was hooking up, and these were good sized spotted sea trout…
Spotted seatrout, also known as speckled trout or just “trout” in southern waters, are a great gamefish and good table fare. Their northern cousin is known as the weakfish. Though they have the name trout assigned to their order, they are actually a member of the drum family. They are typically found in bays and estuaries where they hunt crustaceans and baitfish.
While I did not hook any redfish, in two cases I saw two giant bull reds slowly pass just beneath my kayak. They, like the dolphins, made me feel downright diminutive in my little kayak, the Cape Breton fisherman’s prayer coming to mind – “Lord protect me – the sea is so large and my boat is so small…”
My brother-in-law, Jeff, was able to visit for a few days. He arrived one morning after having visited his daughter at college in Tampa. It wasn’t long after getting him settled that we were out the back door like young kids to fish for largemouth. Jeff is originally from Pennsylvania – Claysburg to be exact – and cut his fly-fishing teeth on the creeks and streams of the southcentral PA mountains. After high school, Jeff headed West to Southern California where his brother lived and worked. The rest of his formative fly-fishing years were spent plying the mountain streams of the Sierra with far-flung guided trips to Alaska and other fabled rivers like the Green, the Yellowstone, and the Bighorn. Bass are not in his blood.
As it was for me the first time I fished the lake, he was amazed at the size of some of the bass as they staged for spawning. The females were often twice the size of the males, the males doing all the work and waiting for the females to move up to them. They built nests close to shore, but favored sites near cover, such as tight to a bulkhead, around the pilings of the bridges, and under trees. In the early stages of the spawn, the males would aggressively chase streamers fished around the nest. Once on the nest, the males and females would continue to bite, but as the spawn progressed, the bite would slow. Even so, the stage of the spawn could be different across the lake, so it seemed there were always some willing players. As the spawn wound down with increasing water temps, the females left the child-rearing to the males and after roughly 2 weeks, both parents were gone, sulking in the depths to recharge, while their black needle-like fry held in loose schools around the nest, and then dispersed.
I fished one small pond adjacent to a golf course with Jeff. We cast big buggers to the deeper water as we saw no fish on beds. It was an intermittent bite, but we did hook up with some more nice bass. I believe these were post-spawn fish and back in an active feeding mode. It’s likely the smaller pond’s water temp was higher than Horseshoe Lake, and the spawn is all about water temperature.
Jeff and I also booked a guide for redfish by the name of Cleve Evans with Shallow Water Expeditions. Cleve met us a daybreak at a boat launch off St Andrew Bay in Panama City. It was a cool morning, and Jeff and I were a little underdressed for the high-speed cruise on Cleve’s flats boat. I shivered uncontrollably but suffered through it. The day would warm with the bright sun soon enough.
Cleve gave us excellent instruction on casting from the platform on the bow – Jeff and I would alternate all day long. Cleve would coach us in a low-key way, calling out fish we he poled us along expansive marsh and flats.
We started the morning with a promising sight – a big redfish was tailing right along a marsh bank, his back partially out of the water. Here and there baitfish would scatter as he worked his way along, seemingly ambivalent to our presence. Jeff was on point and the guide told him to cast. Jeff is an excellent caster, perhaps too excellent in this case as he bonked the big redfish on the head, sending him off to deeper water like a jetboat on nitrous oxide. Unfortunately, despite Cleve’s best efforts, this scene would repeat itself all day. We saw plenty of fish – I’d estimate up to 50 – and we had many shots, but the fish were extremely skittish and usually scooted with any cast that landed even remotely close to them. Cleve fished us hard and towards the end of the day Jeff and I had already resigned ourselves to a redfish beatdown. We were tired and bug-bitten by some type of tiny biting fly that was particularly fond of Jeff’s exposed ankles. Cleve expressed his own frustration with the day – “we had eight yesterday” – but he added that redfish on the panhandle can be that way.
Jeff departed the following day, and I enjoyed a few more days of fishing the lakes for bass…
and beautiful Choctawhatchee Bay for trout.
Soon enough it was my time to leave too. I took the same route home and arrived in the still cooler weather of Lake Ontario. Memories of warmth, white sandy beaches, dark green and gleaming silver fish now faded. But rather than being despondent leaving the great fishing of Destin, I had cause for happy days ahead – the smallmouth pre-spawn bite loomed in the offing.
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