A photo based Fishing and travel blog by Sam Root of Saltyshores.com. Most fishing for Tarpon, bonefish, redfish, permit, cobia, grouper, sharks, sailfish in the waters of the sportfishing capital of the world Florida.
I shoot photos and videos of mostly outdoor and lifestyle. I love to fish so the main focus of that of fishing. I run a website called Saltyshores.com and use it to share my adventures through life. Hope you enjoy my blog.
Tri Shear line cutting tool video review. This is my first video review of a product, as just writing about it will not do it justice.
Tri Shear
I came across the Tri Shear by Innovative Fishing Tackle at the 2009 ICAST in Orlando Florida this past July. I was pretty impressed. The tool is light weight aluminum that will cut just about any line you could possible used on a fishing boat. It cuts mono obviously but it cuts mono up to 600lbs. It cuts braid all the way up to 200lb test. The most impressive is seeing it cut steel leaders all the way up to 600lb test, single or multi strand. It never gets dull so the next cut after cutting steel can be 10lb braid.
If it does get dull the company said they would replace it. For about $80 bucks, it comes with a lanyard and a holster plus a lifetime warranty. Not a bad deal.
I couldn’t get a hold of one and I’ve been looking for them in the stores ever since. Well, I started to see them in stores lately and got a hold of one. I sat in the garage and started to look for things to cut up. I got a hold of steel shark leaders, dacron, small diameter braided line. I have to say it did it’s job nicely. This tool will be staying with me almost every time I get on the water.
Locally I have seen the tool at Tampa Fishing Outfitters in Tampa and Captain Ted’s Tackle in Charlotte County.
Feb 19th 2010
I had a few minutes this morning to go through some photos from the last couple of weeks.
From the everglades mother ship trip to the Miami Boat show.
Coming up today or tomorrow a couple of lure review by my friend Rich Osgood. I got him a prototype Sebile magic swimmer. He really digs it.
I was about 10feet away from this everglades alligator. The photos was a little out of focus I was it was low light and I was shooting in f2.8 but I thought it was a cool blurry action shot.
Miami Sky Line
Calamari
Jungle Jooooooooooooose! no it was not mine. yes I tasted it.. thumbs down.
Poor man’s way of How to shoot in the rain.
Rough Day boating and fishing that day with Sebile.
Tailers with Captain Joe Harley
Most of the day was spent working on a video project that wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. It was a website corporate video about repairing potholes. Yes, not exactly jumping tarpon on fly exciting but it pays the bills so can’t complain.
I got a few request for images from the magazines so I had to search in my archives as most of the photos were sent off almost a year a go. Perhaps things are looking up for the magazines finally. I know I have been pretty busy with request for video and photography lately. Who knows this could be the year the economy stabilize. I know many guides that are hurting pretty bad right now due to the slow down. The recent fish kill did not fair well for the fishing industry either.
In the afternoon I had a studio shoot with Tom of Wanganchor.com lined up. We were to shoot some product shots for his new website. This time we got Jackie a local model to make Tom’s product even cooler than it is. After all, his motto for the product is “Hang out with your wang out”. The shoot went very well and Tom was very pleased with the results. We even shot some cool video clips with Jackie saying the motto. I will be editing that footage here in the next few days. Mirrolure is Tampa Base lure company. Their product has been proven time and time again as one of the most popular fish catching lure in our local waters. My personal favorite of theirs is the ever popular mirrodine. They had just came out with some scent soft plastics called lil Jon and provoker. I was talking to Mike, one of the guys over at Mirrolure he will be sending me some to test out, review and use here in the next couple days.
They are also sending products for us to give away for the saltyshores newletters readers. They will be sending Soft and hard plastics to give away to our readers. So if you have not join please do so by clicking on the menu link above.
When I first looked at it, I thought it was a big drum of some sort but a closer look reveal it is definitely a snook.
This Giant snook measured 60″ long. Yes that is a real 5 feet long snook not just a fish story. This leviathan was found dead on the side of the Manatee river after an unprecedented freeze that took the lives of millions of fish.
I just back from fishing Flamingo, Florida aka Everglades National Park. I got good news and I got bad news. Bad news is the fish kill is very very serious and unfortunately 9 out 10 of the game fish that were killed were snook. I went out there with Honson and his friend Luigi(yes like in the Mario brothers). It's been a couple weeks since the freeze so we wanted to see what has come back. We only took fly rods to see if we can get into some sight fishing.
The conditions were slick calm that morning and we could see for miles, except for one thing. Super fog! We took our time running around the gulf side of the Everglades. Once the fog lifted we saw lots of death drifting in the glass calm waters. We would pass by anything large we saw on the water. I am sorry to say most of the large fish we ran by were breeder snooks that never made it through the freeze. A very very sad sight when you see hundreds of dead fish floating knowing most of them were breeder size snooks.
While stopping at one carcass we did see lots of life compared to one week ago. One surprise was a bunch of Palolo worms. These were the same type of worms that are found in the keys during the summer months. The Tarpon just love them. There were small bait fish slurping these little guys up all around us. This was breath taking to see. Life starting to come back once again. Hopefully tarpon would follow soon.
We poled the flats in some of the creeks and saw only a couple reds. On the way out we did bump into Honson's friend Brian. Brian was using jigs with shrimp and saw some reds and snook earlier in the day. He did manage one redfish before they spooked off. We followed Brian back into the creeks and he caught a few snappers and groupers in the deeper holes. During the run we did see a few dead Goliath groupers that did not fare well in the cold.
Although it sound like no one should ever fish again, all is not lost however. There were plenty of reds and trout being caught that day. The water temperature was rising and the bait were showing back up on the flats. The fishing can only get better I believe. The only species I'm really worried about are the snooks. There were just way too many breeders dead. Not even seeing one alive all day is never good. I did not see any dead redfish and compared to the snook the Tarpon did fine considering. When we got back to the ramp later that day the researcher told us no one has caught a snook all day.
I will be checking out Chokoloskee later in the week. I am afraid I will be seeing the same thing. Hopefully, it should be warm enough for the fish that did make to safe haven offshore, to find their way back once again.
Photo notes: Dull and dreary day filled with images of dead fish. As you can see my images reflect that. The edits are very monochromatic on purpose. My camera still have color. :)
This was the scene at the boat ramp at flamingo, hundreds of dead baby tarpon and snooks. Sadly this was all too familiar. The smell was rancid.
How to photograph a boat from a helicopter:
Well I got out today in Sarasota Florida to do a helicopter Boat shoot. The boat happens to be the new for 2010 Andros 32 .
At 6am this morning I wa making the drive down to the Sarasota airport. To meet up with the helicopter pilot. It was fridget 38 degrees out side. I bundled up and got out into the gulf of Mexico. We found the 32 feet Andros and started to do all kinds of crazy maneuvers. The pilot was awesome, he ws like 50′ from the boat at times and I had to ask to be backed off it was crazy. We even flew under a bridge following the 32 back when we were finished.
To shoot a moving object you have to have a fast shutter speed. So I set my camera to Shutter priority at 800/s or 1000/s or more if you have enough light. The faster the better. I set my ISO between 200-400. 200 if you have plenty of light 400 is low light setting, like this morning.
Since the chopper was costing $700.00 per hour I had better not screw up! I set my camera to shoot in bracket mode. What bracket mode does was shoot multiple exposure shots with one push of the button. In case there was bad lighting one out of those 3 shots would have been exposed properly. It’s kind of a insurance policy, just in case.
I also set my camera to meter center weighted. This means it meters the scene using what is near my focus. Since all I care about is exposing the boat properly and not worrying about the water etc. Since were shooting a dark colored boat a general 3D matrix exposure probably would not have worked as good.
By the end of the hour I was at almost 600 shots fired.
Here’s a little Iphone clip shot from the boat, Yes that’s me in the chopper: (warning: turn down your audio, it’s loud)
Here are some I had a chance to edit. Very little editing as the morning light was great. I did not use the shadows and highlights at all, as evidence in the lack of the famous halo effects. New for 2010 Andros 32 More details as I get them. They are just 30 minutes from me so that should not be a problem.
