January 2017 Fishing Report I spent the first two weeks of January in Cashiers, N.C. We had a project completed at our cottage so we took a trip up to inspect the work. The day after we arrived, I fished the Chattooga River in South Carolina. There was a decent blue wing olive hatch coming off a long with some small stone files on the edge. (This sentence is probably fine, but I don’t know what it means. Can you explain so I’ll know for future reference?) Fishing was tough and I only caught two rainbows on nymphs. It was very cold that morning and my fingers were a bit numb, which made changing flies a challenge. By 2 p.m., the snow really started to fall, and by the time I made it up the mountain to Cashiers, driving was a challenge. We then ended up snowed in for 5 days. After the snow melted, the water temperature really dropped, making conditions a challenge. I fished the trophy water in Cherokee, North Carolina and landed a few rainbows up to 20-inches on Woolley Buggers. I also fished the delayed harvest sections of both the Tuckaseegee and the French Broad Rivers where I caught multiple trout 12-16 inches on Stone Fly and Hair ear nymphs. When I returned to Sarasota, the weather was beautiful, which doesn’t always equate to great fishing, but anglers fishing with me caught very good numbers of a mix bag of Pompano, blue fish, mackerel and Seatrout In deep grass flats off Whale Key and Tidy Island. The lady fish were so thick we had to move around a bit to get away from them and get our baits down to anything else. Most fish were caught using DOA deadly combos, Cal shad tails and assorted color clouser minnow flies. Later, a small weather front came through, and despite high winds and murky water conditions, we still landed a nice mix of fish, although not in great numbers. Toward the end of the month, anglers fishing with me in Charlotte Harbor around Gasparilla enjoyed excellent fishing. With the warm winter we’ve been having, water temps were still around 70 degrees, which kept the snook bite strong. We landed multiple snook up to 30 inches, along with a few redfish and a number of very nice Seatrout on the pothole edges. All fish were caught on Cal Shad Tails and Zoom super fluke jerk baits.