Fishing Our Flats for Pompano

The last couple of months I spent some quiet time fishing our flats with my customers for pompano. It’s really fun to catch these strong fish on fly, either by sight fishing or like in most cases, by blind casting the channels.

For sight fishing in shallow water, I prefer a 9-foot, 7-weight with a floating line and leaders around 10-to-12 foot with a 20-pound fluorocarbon tippet. Blind casting and fishing the channels requires a different set up. In most situations I use a 9-foot, 8-or-9-weight with an intermediate line and a 6-to-8-foot 25-pound fluorocarbon tippet. For deeper channels and or faster current I use the same set up but with a fastsinking line.

The flies I use are typical Clousers in size 1 in color combination white/ orange and white/pink with different weight lead eyes. Depending on the situation and how deep the water and/ or how strong the current is it is easy to adjust the fly by matching the weight.

Fish your fly deep down at the bottom and strip it short and hard with a second-or-so pause in between the strips. Pompanos are hitting the fly short and you need a good strip set to hook them and you’ll be surprised how strong they are! Pompanos are typical in schools, so if you catch one there is a big chance for many more.

Capt. Michael Mauri www.mauriflyfishing.com michael@mauriflyfishing.com

(772) 485-3321