Myakka Morning

I set out yesterday morning to fish and drift the Myakka river. I put in at the Carlton Reserve kayak launch which is located on Border Rd. in Venice. This was the first time I have fished this section of the river. My plan was to paddle up river and fish and drift my way back to the launch. I brought my fly rod with intentions of targeting bream and bass.

I made it about 3/4 of a mile before I decided I wanted to start fishing. The current was slow if not non existent, but I still did manage to catch a few fish. I found this one cruising a rocky edge along the west side of the river bank.

I paddled on picking off bream here and there from fishy looking spots. There wasn't much surface action as far as boils or bait movement so I had to rely on intuition as to where to cast. Being in the kayak forces me to be more thorough in each spot as the ability to rapidly motor on to the next spot is non-existent. I had to pick and choose my spots. I found that most of the fish I caught were hanging out in the shade under overhanging branches. The biggest fish came where there was cover over the river as well as submerged branches. I did manage two small bass today. The larger of the two struck my bug ferociously along a weedy stretch of shoreline.

It wasn't a large fish but did manage to startle me by striking right as I looked the other way towards a mullet splash. All of the fish except for one were caught on a #10 BoogleBug popper. These are rapidly becoming my favorite topwater fly. The fish are rough on them but they hold up very impressively. I purchased two to test out, and I will definitely be buying more.

Most of the bluegill were in the 6-8 inch range with about six of them over the 8 inch benchmark. The bass liked a faster popper retrieve while the bream seemed to prefer a motionless popper twitched on about a 10 count.

I really enjoyed this stretch of river and spent just as much time enjoying scenery as I did fishing. I saw turtles, pileated woodpeckers, many species of wading birds, and a few raccoons. I surprisingly did not see a single alligator, likely due to the colder weather. Overall I managed two small bass to go with around two dozen bluegill in 4 hours of fishing/sightseeing.