I’ll never forget the first jack crevalle I caught. It was April of 1989 in Belize. The fish was part of a marauding school of crevalle a few miles up in the brackish waters of the Sibun River. I’d not seen such carnage. I remember the cast, the startling smash on my orange Tarpon Glow fly followed by sheer power that blew my mind.
We didn’t have the quality fly rods, reels and lines we do now. No one fished straight 60lb leader either. Nor did I have experience with big powerful fish. It took more than 20 minutes to get that tank in. But when I did I was ecstatic. However, when I handed my guide Roy my Nikon FG 35 mm film camera, I’ll never forget what he said, “It’s just a jack”.
I’m happy to say the saltwater angling world has come a long way in 35 years. Jacks, particularly the jack crevalle, are highly prized and respected by most. Which his exactly why today, with guide Jako Lucas and friend Brian Iannacchione, we began like yesterday hunting for these vicious predators.
We didn’t change a thing. Brian kept with his big black fly. I hucked my popper. We have the up to date tackle. For me it was my 10-weight Winston (Jako prefers guests have a 12), my Bauer RX 6 reel loaded with Scientific Anglers Infinity Salt with a straight hunk of 60lb Fluoro. All we had to do was find the fish and we did. This morning we hooked four and each landed one.
The crevalle here in the Gulf have an average size – big. I’ve taken them from Florida to Texas and states in between and I brace myself every time I land a good cast. It’s funny though, while Brian’s fish slammed his fly as usual, my popper hit the water only to be sipped like a trout. It was wild. Regardless, as you can see, today’s bosses were huge.
We scheduled ourselves differently today. We fished the morning from 6 until about 11. We got our jacks, but overall as we approached mid-day heat things were slow. We went back to Jakos and relaxed till 3 then found ourselves back on the water by 4 probing strong tidal current lines for more busting fish.
We searched a lot of water. We drifted along with the blue crabs at the outlet of the bay. We blind cast the jetties. But all we found were ladyfish. The ladies were fun but our true goal were oversized redfish. “Bulls” in local terms. We finally resorted to dredging the deeper water drop-offs.
I skipped over to my 12-weight which was rigged with a fast sinking SA Sonar Big Water Taper Max Sink and tied on the heaviest fly we had on board. It wasn’t like we dropped to bottom and caught fish every cast, but we found them. Soon I was doubled over heaving on a bull most fly anglers will only dream about.
Every dog has his day. This evening was mine. Brian and I hooked at least six of these huge bull redfish and landed three. I was the lucky one. Each was huge. Each about as much redfish as I could handle for a photo!
While we by no means caught big numbers of fish today, we landed a few bull reds along with tackle-testing jack crevalle. It was another great day in Texas. Tomorrow we’ll change it up again. We’ll start with the jacks then move to the flats and try to get Brian and I our first sheepshead on the fly.
Man that looks awesome!