Fly Fishing in February

I had the pleasure of fishing with Gary Spielmann who was visiting Amelia Island with his wife and staying at the Elizabeth Pointe Lodge. Gary's fly fished all over the world -Russia, Alaska and the Northeast and he wanted to try his hand at the fly rod here on Amelia Island. I picked Gary up at Elizabeth Point and we drove to the south end boat ramp, launching around 12:30pm. The tide was due to be low around 1:45pm so we headed up to Broward Island and caught the last of the outgoing. As usual, the current was really ripping, but Gary was making some beautiful casts up around the downed logs, limbs and stumps. We didn't get any strikes so we moved around to a small feeder creek in Pumpkin Hill but didn't see any movement. The tide finally bottomed out so we cranked up and ran back to Broward to catch the incoming tide. I asked Gary to give the jig -n-shrimp a try and it wasn't long before he hooked up to a fiesty fat 18" trout. Gary had never fished with the jig-n-shrimp combo but he quickly got the hang of bumping the bottom and picked up a few more trout. There were a few times when he hooked up and fish broke off in the limbs. After a very cold week, Saturday's sunny weather was wonderful. We saw an otter, porpoise, an osprey and tons of other birdlife.