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I have always been one to believe that if there is not scientific evidence to prove any given topic that it must be filed under silly superstition. I do have one exception to that belief. I will never knowingly allow a banana onto my boat ever again. In the past I have had days that things were not really going my way and after discovering the presence of the offending fruit and disposing of said offender the fishing immediately improved. One particularly slow day I quizzed the crew about the possibility of bananas on board. No one came forward, but soon after a bag of dried plantain chips came out to be passed around.. Aha bananas!

When presented with the opposite argument that “We had bananas on the boat and we had a wonderful day”, I can simply wonder what world record or banner day would have ensued if the fruit was not along for the ride. As I would later learn, not all banana effects are immediate either.

A fellow captain often recollects a day from his early days fishing in the tuna fishery off of Maryland, The boat was a 1.5 million dollar battle wagon and the captain, the top skipper in the fleet. He did not work that day and the usual banana inspection chore fell to a fill in mate. The captain had a strict no bananas policy and a fill in mate that day neglected to inspect the coolers. The bite was hot for the entire fleet with the exception of them. Of course around lunch time the angler brought out the offending fruit and was immediately instructed to jettison it overboard. The client refused, stating that they did not believe in such things and their bananas would remain on board. After refusing the direct order from the captain, he turned the boat around and headed to the dock. Before they had gone far the boat picked up a floating trap line and the twin screws wrapped together in a tangle of line and the struts were immediately torn out of the bottom of the boat. It quickly went to the bottom. This friend, here in the Keys, and now a top flats skipper in his own right, is a staunch believer. Once he was fishing a prestigious permit tournament and his angler reveled that he had not brought a banana on board but had consumed one for breakfast. The angler was instructed to vomit up the banana or they would not proceed that day. By the way, a sure fire way to remove something from your stomach is to drink salt water until you puke. Besides the obvious detriments to health, they did go on to do quite well in the tournament.

Since the hurricane that did so much damage to the Keys I have had a series of events that have cemented my resolve that bananas, are for me anyway, a certain kiss of death.

EVENT 1. My beloved FUNYET was destroyed by Irma. Bad enough you say, but what does that have to do with bananas? When the boat was raised and dry docked on the salvage lot I was given the opportunity to inspect it and to salvage any personal property left on board, and decide if I wished to salvage or abandon the vessel. On the deck, on top of the tangled mess of cast nets, anchor line and seaweed; lay a black, over ripe Chiquita banana. That a banana was deposited into the boat by the storm is a bizarre and unlikely coincidence. While the presence of the banana was by no means the only factor in deciding not to attempt repairs on the FUNYET, I can tell you that it did weigh in strongly.

EVENT 2. My girlfriend had a 21 foot center console that was also destroyed by the storm. It too was recovered, salvaged and brought to the state run salvage lot. She too was given the opportunity to inspect and recover any personal property. As we walked to the boat, the first thing that we saw was a banana peel lying on the bow. While this was obviously not deposited by the storm, but more likely by a salvage worker disposing of his waste from lunch, it still was two boats destroyed and two bananas involved.

EVENT 3. While not directly storm related there was a residual effect. A below the water line through hull fitting on my flats boat the KNOTYET was cracked in the storm by another boat banging into it. The leak was little more than a drip and the automatic bilge pump kept the bilge dry with little effort.

Every year, I donate a trip to the IGFA for their annual fund raising auction. The winner of the trip and his wife went out for a great day of trout fishing where everyone got a limit of really nice fish. Only on returning to the dock did I find that there was a banana on board. I let them know about the banana and luck issue for future excursions. Of course they stated how could bananas possibly be bad luck if they have had such a wonderful day. Even I was doubting the possibility of negative effects by banana contamination as all had gone so well with the trip. Of course when boat number three sunk to the water line that evening due to a small piece of zip tie finding its way into the impeller of the bilge pump did I realize my mistake of even doubting the days negative effects of allowing a banana to sneak past my watchful eye.

Therefore and in conclusion, three boats sunk and three bananas later, there will be a much more militant lookout for interloping bananas. True Story!

The most productive time of the year to drift and jig the backcountry flats and channels is now. By drifting over these productive areas, in between 5 to 8 feet of water, over grass flats, and even deeper over the channels, you are likely to catch a wide variety of fish.

The main target for many anglers is the sea trout. Fortunately, there are plenty of them to be found. Also, there are many other great fish to catch. Mangrove, mutton, and lane snapper, cero and Spanish mackerel, all make up the more popular eating fish that you are likely to come across. Every now and then I have even encountered some yellow jack; a favorite table fare fish for sure.

There are plenty of fish to encounter; less in the table fare category, but great game fish nonetheless. Jack crevalle, ladyfish, sharks, bluefish and barracuda, are there to offer a great challenge on light tackle. Occasionally, a full-size tarpon will gulp a jig in the channels and offer a surprise jump near the boat. On more than a few trips, oversize sharks have shown up and helped themselves to a smaller fish as it nears the boat. If the toothy fish are cutting you off more than the table fare fish are coming to the boat, you are advised to put a few inches of light single strand wire between your hook and the line. It will cut down on strikes from the more persnickety creatures, but you will have more fun with the toothy ones.

All of this fun can be had with a very simple rig and basic light tackle. I prefer Gulp brand bait from Berkeley. These scented baits come in many sizes, colors and shapes. Most of which work well. I have fished many of them and have been successful. Of course, I do play favorites and have had the most success with a New Penny colored 3-inch shrimp pattern. I have friends who prefer the white shrimp and others who prefer the tapered minnow pattern, and I have seen great fish caught on all. As far as I know, all of the bait patterns are the same flavor and work well on a standard jig head. I like to use the lightest jig that I can get away with and still keep the bait near the bottom, without snagging the bottom too often. I have jig head colors that I like to start out with. I say ‘start out’ because, after a few fish, the colored paint is usually chewed off and I am left with a lead-colored jig that seems to work just about as well as the brightly colored jigs that I start out with.

Using braided line will increase your success rate. The thin diameter and near 0 stretch allow for the most sensitivity, farthest cast, and best sink ratio per pound test when compared to monofilament line. I usually spool with 20-pound test braid. While this may seem overkill for light tackle jigging, it has a diameter equivalency of about 8-pound test monofilament, is easier to tie knots in than lighter lines, and knots less in repeated casting than lighter lines. This, of course, works much better when a fluorocarbon leader is spliced between your leader and jig. I like between 15 and 20-pound for my leader.

Once you’re set, all there is left to do is find some productive water and start jigging. If there are a few knots of wind blowing your boat, you do not even have to cast very often. Just find a cadence to jig by and jig from the wrist. On the days when there is not enough wind to move the boat through the water, you just have to resort to the old-fashioned cast and jig method. Which, by the way, will keep the Fishing ADD afflicted anglers happy anyway.

It is hard to make a poor choice this time of the year. It seems that whichever way you decide to venture, it will be fruitful with just the minimum of preparation and execution. For the Fishing ADD afflicted angler, the jump from one venue to the next can be seamless.

Fishing inshore, reef, and offshore in a day is an easy proposition. If either you or a guest have the desire to chalk up a tarpon, you need only get an early start on the day. You will be hard pressed to find a channel or bridge leading out of the Lower Keys that does not have an active population of tarpon cruising for a meal. If you can get settled by dawn, you will have about an hour of prime time to target a silver king. Having a supply of pinfish, crabs, or mullet on hand from the day before will save precious time, allowing for either more naptime or fishing time, whichever you desire. Floating a bait behind the boat a dozen yards or so should get you the attention that you desire. Once you either release a fish, or the sun has been up for about an hour, it is time to move on to the next stop on the Fishing ADD train.

Fishing the reef this time of year is a sure-fire way to put some mangrove snapper in the boat. The fish are on the reef edge now and the spawning activities that they are engaging in definitely give them an appetite. There are plenty of shallow patch reefs that are holding schools of amorous fish, but the majority will be found along the drop-off in between 40 to 80 feet of water. Here, pinfish again are a go-to bait. One sure-fire way to test the waters, if you will, is to start a chum line. If there are not any mangroves visible behind the boat within about twenty minutes, it is best to move on to another reef until you attract the attention of a school. I have found that the larger fish will linger behind and under the smaller and more aggressive fish. A medium live pinfish or a large pinfish cut into steaks will draw out the larger fish. If this summer is anything like the winter and spring of this year, the catch should be outstanding--at least in regard to the size of the larger fish. While chumming the reef, you just may encounter a school of ballyhoo in your chum line. Whether you prefer hair hooks or a cast net, you should obtain as many of these as possible. It is practically impossible to find a better bait than fresh ballyhoo plugs on the reef for just about everything that swims.

Bringing fresh or live ballyhoo offshore is a sure-fire way to interest all fish you encounter. Pitching a live ballyhoo is sure to get attacked by a hungry dolphin. If your ballyhoo do not survive your livewell, they are still the go-to bait for rigging and trolling for dolphin. If you have been a busy beaver in the morning, the rest of the fleet will have had a chance to venture out and, hopefully, have already found the depths where the dolphin are holding. By using your VHF radio to listen in, or to inquire of other anglers, you can narrow down the depths that you should start looking for fish. Also, whether the fish are on structure such as weedlines, or are moving fast under birds, can also often be determined just by listening to the radio.

Most anglers will have had a great day on the water by now. If you are truly afflicted by Fishing ADD there is one more stop for you while you are already offshore. If you are in the area of the ups and downs, there is a great opportunity to drop a bait to the bottom and try for the tastiest of all Keys’ prizes--the great variety of fish that are caught by deep-dropping. Snowy grouper, tilefish, barrelfish and rosefish are all rich and buttery goodness with fins. If the currents are not outrageous, it only takes a couple of pounds of weight and a couple of circle hooks on a chicken rig to present an assortment of baits including squid, mackerel and cut bonito. If you can top the rig with a flasher or deep-drop light, all the better. Drifting along one of the many depth breaks or rock piles in the area will surely deliver a reward. If you do not have access to an electric reel, do not worry. I have been successfully deploying a spinning reel loaded with fifty-pound braid for years with great success. Take it from me. It is no big deal reeling even the biggest snowy grouper up from the depths. The hard part is reeling an empty line up from the depths. The adrenaline assist when there is a fish on the line is not to be dismissed.

If you have not properly treated your Fishing ADD after a day like this, then all I can suggest is that you get wet on the way in and grab a few lobster to round off the meal that I refer to as…surf and surf! 

Never in my over forty years of fishing the Florida Keys waters have I seen a year like this. Mangrove snapper, and I do mean BIG mangroves, have been just about everywhere. On the nice days that I have been able to make it to the patch reefs, there has almost always been at least a few outsized snapper coming over the side. Most trips have produced a limit of larger fish, but, even when the limit is not reached, it only takes a few of these fish in the five to six-pound range to make up for any shortcomings. The days that the wind has limited our ability and will to venture outside of the harbor (there have been many of them this year), the Gulfside edge of the flats have provided similar catches. If it has been this great during the traditionally off season for mangroves, I can only imagine what it will be like when the mangroves return to the outside of the reef to spawn this summer.

The bait and rig of choice has been the tried and true pinfish. Both cut and live fish have been performing admirably. When you can get the classic silver dollar, “snapper candy”, sized live pin, that is always a great start. If you are getting pinfish that are just too large to put down whole, simply cut them into large steaks. Divide the pin into two and then remove the head and tail. This two-bait cut works well for most fish. If you have a huge pinfish, just divide it into three pieces. I am in the habit of not using the heads, although I admit that I have seen them work on plenty of occasions.

I have a battery of dedicated patch reef rods that are completely spooled with thirty-pound fluorocarbon line. The disadvantages are the cost of the fluorocarbon and that it is much stiffer than most monofilament line. Fluorocarbon’s invisibility property more than makes up for the inconvenience of twisted line that wants to jump off the spool when new. The real reason that I use a spool filled entirely with leader is that I am both too lazy and busy to want to splice on a piece of leader every time that I lose a rig to the reef.

With my preferred knocker rig, consisting of simply an egg sinker allowed to slide all the way to a hook, I only have to tie one knot for each rig that I need to replace. Boom! Both fast and effective. A 3/4 oz. sinker and a 4/0 bronze 9174 Mustad hook are my go-to tackle.

When looking for the perfect mangrove spot, you should not be afraid to look to the shallow water to find a great spot. On the Gulfside, I am usually fishing in less than six feet of water, and, on the patch reefs, you can usually find me in less than twenty feet. Once I have chosen a place to set up shop, I start by deploying a limited stream of chum. Unlike the outer reef, when fishing for yellowtail snapper, you do not want to chum heavily; just a trickle of scent to keep their attention is necessary.

Here is the kicker. If you are chumming for over twenty minutes and you do not have at least a few smaller mangroves in the chum line, it is time to change spots. These “indicator mangroves”, as I call them, are not the fish that you should be interested in. The big boys almost always hang far back in the chum line and as far as you can cast is where you should place your bait.

Big mangrove snapper are notorious for being picky eaters. They will tap, nibble and study a bait for a long time before committing to eat. If you attempt to set the hook before the nibbles have stopped, you will only succeed in taking the bait away from your fish. Wait until the tapping has stopped and the fish is swimming steadily away before you attempt to set the hook. Mangroves are homebodies. They like to stay near the cover that they live in, so make sure that you set the hook hard and keep them coming up as soon as you commit to set the hook, or they will rock you up without fail.

On a full-day trip, it is a hard decision whether to fish for the snapper before, or after, heading offshore. The advantage of fishing the patches before heading out is that you may get ballyhoo in your chum line. A cast net full of ballyhoo will greatly increase your chances for success when heading offshore. Fishing the patches in the afternoon is a way to wind down from the day and catch both your breath, and some dinner, if the day offshore was a bust. Either way, an ADD afflicted angler will have no trouble filling a day this season.

If you prefer the skinny water, the flats are alive with every option. Bonefish, permit, tarpon, barracuda, shark, jack, and the list goes on. The water temperatures are more stable. It rarely gets hot enough to chase fish off of the flats in the afternoon. Likewise, it is rare for a cool front to get the water cool enough to start the day off slow. The only nemesis for the inshore angler in April is the possibility of higher winds. Those days, you may have to hide behind an island to sight fish, or work the channels for fish that do not have to be seen. Those same channels and bridges hold the vanguard of the migrating tarpon. Mornings and evenings give shots at some of the larger tarpon found in the Keys.

Inshore is also a place to find oversized mangrove snapper. These fish are gathering around the inshore waters of the Keys, where they will migrate to the reef line this summer to spawn. Wherever water is moving and spilling into the deeper Gulf water, you can find fish gathering to feed on the snacks being flushed from the bays. Besides the mangrove snapper, there are cero mackerel, mutton snapper, yellowtail and, a personal favorite, the porgies. Although, finding mutton snapper over the new 18-inch size limit inshore will be a challenge. Here, both live and cut pinfish are the bait of choice--although, if you can find fresh or live ballyhoo, that is a bait that is impossible to beat. Taking the time to learn to properly throw a cast net, and have the forethought to have a cast net available, will make acquiring ballyhoo much easier. So far this year, we have had the best catch of oversized mangroves that I have seen in all of my 31 years of professionally fishing the Keys, and even the previous 10 years of amateur fishing here.

Offshore, the first waves of dolphin should be moving through the Keys waters. Moderate depths between 250 feet and 600 feet will hold the fast-moving fish. Look to find dolphin moving downwind fast, at speeds usually associated with schools of tuna. On more calm days, finding any floating debris can put you onto large schools of school-sized fish and will most often have a great chance of also holding a wahoo or two. If you have your heart set on tuna, you should move farther offshore, past the 600-foot mark, and look for the flocks of fast moving terns.

Closer to the reef, you will find mutton snapper gathering for their annual spawn. The deeper edge of the reef line will be the area to drift, or anchor and chum, to get your share of these oversized snapper. On the shallower patch reefs, there are plenty of mangrove, yellowtail, mutton and lane snapper to target. The only thing missing form making the perfect month is the inability to retain any of the grouper species off of the waters of Monroe County. We have to wait until May to again target the grouper clan from our home waters.

With this huge list of possibilities my recommendation will always be, to be flexible. Choose the activity best suited to the weather conditions. Blowing out of the north; fish on the south side of the islands. Wind south; then fish on the Gulf side. If the wind is hard out of the east, as it is often in April, staying inshore and fishing the protected waters between the Keys is the safe bet--pun intended. If you are lucky enough to have fair skies and calm winds, the sky really is the limit. There is no reason that you cannot experience several of these different fisheries in a single day.

Remember that there is no cure for Fishing ADD, and the only treatment is to keep fishing. Stopping can be detrimental to your health. I always remember the immortal words of a Tampa Bay fishing celebrity, Salty Saul Flechman, who obviously knew about Fishing ADD before any of the rest of us. He would sign off of his show with the admonition, “Get out and go fishing ‘cause it is goooood fer ya!”

This is a great time of the year to leave your comfort zone and try something different.  I know that a lot of our winter residents get pigeon-holed into one or two types of angling.  A good percentage of the people will, day after day, go to the reef line and fish for yellowtail and the small assortment that comes along for the ride.  How about trying live baiting for dolphin, tuna or sailfish outside of the reef?  Go to the backcountry basins and channels and jig for trout and snapper.  Try your luck at one of the many bridges that hold tarpon.  Try vertical jigging over some deep reefs or wrecks for tuna, almaco, or amberjack.  After April starts, you can probe the depths for snowy grouper and tile fish.  The possibilities are endless.

You may say that you have no idea where to start learning the skills and techniques necessary to try something new.  Well, you are in luck.  We have never had so many ways to learn in history.  The pages of this magazine are bursting with information and helpful hints.  The computer has a “how-to” video on just about every technique, from tying on the hook to fileting the fish.  Our community has several venues that hold seminars that offer lessons, from everything from Advanced rigging to throwing a cast net.

 Lower Keys Tackle holds a seminar every Thursday. They invite captains from all schools of angling to present on topics of interest to the community.  These free seminars are a way to gain invaluable insights to types of fishing that would otherwise take a great amount of time, energy, and resources to explore.   Even though I, personally, have over 30 years of professional experience on Keys waters, I try to attend the seminars as often as possible when I am not presenting myself.  There is a lot to learn from other captains here and I, for one, still have a lot to learn about just about everything.  I like to say, when I was younger, I hope no one knew how much that I did not know.  After several years, I began to think that I knew just about everything that I needed to know.  Now that I am getting older, I am back to hoping that people do not figure out just how much that I have yet to learn.   I was asked at a recent seminar, “Just what makes you someone that we should be learning from?”   After thinking about the question, I realized that, among other things, it is that I am willing to share the knowledge that I have spent a lifetime learning.  There are many accomplished anglers who jealously hoard every tidbit of information that they have ever acquired.  These guides may be able to get you that bucket list fish, but they are not the ones who I recommend spending time with if you would like to learn.

Of course, the best and fastest way to learn is to get out on the water with a captain who specializes in the type of angling that you are interested in.  Make sure that you communicate with your captain that you are primarily interested in learning the techniques involved, including rigging.  While there are a few notable captains that are better at doing than teaching, most will be happy to teach as they go.  Also, by stating your purpose beforehand, the captain will be sure to teach you how a spot is chosen by showing how it appears on a bottom recorder and generalities on how to look for your own spots.  While most captains have a spot or two that they are willing to share to get you started, they will know to keep their secret spot for another trip.  This way, they will not be “tricked out of a personal spot” and there will be no hard feelings the next time that they want to fish it and you are sitting on the secret hole.

Learning and trying new spots, techniques and just getting out of a fishing rut, are the best ways that I know of to treat Fishing ADD.

What exactly are those possibilities, you might ask? Offshore, but not far offshore, the sailfish, tuna, kingfish, wahoo and dolphin will all be making appearances. The northern winds following a front, will serve to push schools of bait offshore. The game fish will be stationed usually within 250 feet of water to take advantage of the, if you will pardon the expression, “windfall”. Your very best opportunity will be to bring live bait with you. Ballyhoo are my favorite live bait, followed closely by pilchards. If you have trouble obtaining either of these two, do not panic. There have been plenty of fish caught on pinfish and they are almost always available. Even if you find yourself with no live bait at all, you can still drift a dead ballyhoo and have some luck.

Trolling is never out of the question. Even though trolling is not quite as productive as live baiting, there have still been decades of successful excursions trolling the reef line. Rig much like you would for trolling offshore for dolphin in the summer. The main difference is that if you are targeting sailfish and tuna, you should rig with fluorocarbon and, if the kings and wahoo are cutting you off, you should place a trace of wire in front of your bait. Dolphin, on the other hand, are possibly the least fussy fish when they are hungry, and any leader is fine for them.

If you prefer fishing the reef, there are a myriad of possibilities for you too. First and foremost, if you have any desire to eat a grouper it is your last chance for four months--at least for grouper coming from Keys waters. Grouper can be found anywhere from just yards from the shore, to all the way out past the reef edge. They are indiscriminate eaters and you just need to find them to get a bite. Wrestling them away from the safety of the bottom is the hardest part. When I fish the reef, I like to use “busy lines”, as I call them, with around thirty-pound test for mangrove mutton lane and yellowtail snapper. I will win the occasional battle with a grouper on this tackle, however I prefer to keep one meat stick with fifty-pound braid and a long sixty-pound fluorocarbon leader directly under the boat, with the sole job of stopping any grouper which ventures close.

As with any stationary reef fishing, you need to chum. Besides calling game fish from far down current to your position, it also serves to call in bait. When ballyhoo come into your chum line, you are all but guaranteed to have plentiful action. Catch a few ballyhoo, either on hair hooks or with a cast net, and you are in business. Let a healthy ballyhoo out on a trace of steel leader and any cero mackerel in the area will not be able to refuse the offering. Mutton snapper are also often taken this way; either from the top or, more often, when the ballyhoo loses strength and starts to sink deeper in the water column.

Trolling the reef is also popular this time of the year. Lipped plugs pulled slowly over the reefs will produce grouper, as will trolling rigged ballyhoo on a downrigger. On the surface, I troll rigged ballyhoo also. Cero mackerel are a favorite of mine and should be plentiful. Do not be surprised to find grouper and mutton snapper striking surface bait even over slightly deeper water. Even flag yellowtail snapper will strike a trolled bait on occasion.

For those days when weather is not permitting, or you are just one of the smaller mosquitoes in the fleet, there is always the backcountry. Gulf side channels are active this time of year. There will be great catches of mangrove, mutton, lane and even a few yellowtail in the channels. Here, the cero mackerel and a few Spanish mackerel will appear to harass the ballyhoo in your chum. In the back channels, I also like to deploy my meat stick directly under the boat--except that my hopeful prize is a cobia.

Drifting and jigging the deeper flats and basins for trout, ladyfish, jacks, and snapper are also very productive. My friend, Kinsey, at Lower Keys Bait and Tackle, is a true trout addict. He stocks a wide assortment of artificial jigs and scented rubber tails. He is always happy to help you select a variety of tackle to assure you the best opportunity of success.

Trout are found all over the backcountry in mainly six to eight feet of water. They can be spread out over miles of flats. One way to pinpoint their location is if you can find a mullet mud. Mullet muds are the telltale whitish discoloration left behind when a school of mullet are feeding on the bottom. Their activity stirs the bottom, displacing forage like small fish and shrimp. By concentrating your drifts on the edges of these muds, you have the best chance of hooking up. Look for the leading edge of the mud as far as the current is concerned, and there you will find the heaviest concentration of feeding activity.

So, “weather permitting” there is no shortage of activities for someone who suffers from Fishing ADD to have any excuse to spend much time on the shore. Get out there and get yourself some treatment for what ails you!

The number reduction will not affect most mutton anglers, except around the mutton spawn in the spring, where it was possible to reach your ten-fish bag limit working spawning aggregations in the deeper water. By the time muttons are mature enough to spawn, most, if not all, will have reached the eighteen-inch size limit. It is the anglers who regularly encounter mutton snapper in shallower water on both sides of the Keys who will be most affected by the size limit change.

During the scoping meetings regarding the mutton snapper workshop, the consensus within the recreational fishing community seemed to be leaning strongly toward reducing the bag limit even further, say two or three fish, to protect the fish during the spawn when overharvest is easiest. Regarding the size limit, most agreed that keeping the size limit at sixteen inches would protect the interest of inshore fishermen, who only occasionally see snapper over the sixteen-inch size range, and, with a reduction in bag limit, would do no harm to the fishery. It is doubtful that, with time, the inshore fish will become larger where inshore. As the fish mature, they naturally tend to move away from in and around nearshore haunts and find their place offshore. However, the bureaucrats in the fishery disregarded the input and this is what we must live with.

Targeting larger fish should be the primary objective if you want to stay in the mutton game. Fortunately, it is not hard to find larger muttons when fishing outside of the reef line. Drifting in water over one hundred feet deep can be productive if you are anywhere near either natural bottom structure or wrecks. The primary challenge to overcome when drifting in deep water is keeping your bait at or near the bottom. If there is any wind at all, you may have to slow your drift. Deploying a sea anchor or drift sock is one way to accomplish this. Another, is to constantly back into the sea. For many boats with low transoms, this can be quite a risky maneuver. Remember to err on the side of caution, as swamping your vessel will assuredly ruin your day. If you do back into the sea to keep your bait down, your primary chore will be to keep your lines out of the propellers. Good luck and be prepared to stop regularly to clear lines.

Watching your depth sounder as you drift can indicate a congregation of fish. By marking the position of these congregations, it is possible to go back and anchor to target these fish. Doing so in deep water requires, at a minimum, three times the length of anchor line as the depth of the water. Significantly more line is required if it is blowing hard or the current is particularly strong. If you choose to chum, it is probably much more effective to do so by staging your chum near the bottom.

Choosing your bait selection wisely will also lead to a larger-sized catch. It is very difficult to find a pinfish that is too large for a mutton snapper to eat. While their mouths are seemingly not that large, they are able to consume a bait fish that you might reason is way too big. The same can be said of fishing over the reef and in inshore waters as well. A favorite bait for inshore and reef is fresh cut ballyhoo. Here we use plugs cut from a bait. Normally, I suggest no more than two baits be cut from a fish. Cut the head and tail off. Then, divide the bait into two. Fishing for larger fish simply dictates only cutting one bait from a ballyhoo. If, by any chance, you are starting with a live ballyhoo over the reef, I like to put one out with a trace of single strand wire and let them swim on the surface. This rig is usually deployed to target cero mackerel, however, you may be surprised just how often a mutton snapper rises to the surface to accept the offering.

While muttons tend to be found near structure, they are seldom found over the said structure. Muttons tend to wander out into the grass beds and sand flats near the reefs. If you are working a patch reef for grouper and other snapper, it pays to deploy at least one bait out and away from the structure to tempt any mutton cruising the proverbial prairie.

Keeping the Fishing ADD afflicted angler quite busy is easy to do; not just by fishing all of the wonderful environments that the Keys waters have to offer, but by trying to keep up with the changing regulations we encounter here too.

Inshore fishing really takes off in the fall.  While the opportunities to target the larger migrating tarpon have passed, the rest of the fishery is still available.  Juvenile tarpon in the backcountry are available along the mangrove shoreline throughout the Keys waters.  In the deeper harbors and channels, the local big boys are still plentiful.

The generally calmer waters and reduced boat traffic make targeting bonefish and permit easier than most of the rest of the year. Setting out early, and late in the day, will allow you to fish the cooler waters of the day for bones that are a bit more temperature shy.  The permit will tend to feed even through the heat of the day.

You do not need to get off of the water in the middle of the day, however taking a dip for a few hours and snorkeling around in the backcountry waters might just give you an opportunity to bring home a few lobsters for dinner.

Speaking of dinner, the majority of mangrove snapper are done with their annual spawning event out on the reef and have filtered back to their usual haunts on the Gulf side.  Mangrove and lobster are what I like to refer to as “Surf and Surf.”

If you have more of an affinity towards the oceanside of the Keys, there are opportunities aplenty for you too.  While a lot of the mangrove snapper have moved back to the Gulf side of the Keys, there are still plenty of snapper to target on the reef.  Both mangrove and mutton are done with their spawn and, along with a few yellowtails, are going to be easy to target on the patch reefs.  Of course, the majority of the yellowtail, including the larger fellows, are going to be found in deeper water.  If you have a school of yellowtail chummed up, you can bet the big bucks that there will be at least a few larger grouper waiting patiently for just the right opportunity to make a meal out of a wayward tail.

If you prefer the blue water, there are plenty of opportunities for you too.  Dolphin have started their return trip through the Keys and they tend to stay closer to shore this time of the year.  This is good news for your fuel bill.  Joining them are wahoo and the other mackerel, like king, cero and a few Spanish.  The sailfish and mackerel will be easier to target if we get an early front or two.  A bit of north wind will tend to concentrate these offshore fellows a bit closer to the reef.

The deeper wrecks should see less pressure this time of year also.  If you can manage to wrestle a few amberjack away from the sharks that have seemed to take up full time residence on the more productive reefs, you can have a great time with muscle busting fish.  Snapper, grouper, and almaco jack, to name a few, are also available near the bottom.

In mid-water look to tangle with a few blackfin tuna.  The vertical jig is the easiest way to get them going.  If you happen onto a baitwell full of live pilchards and can get a bit of live chum going, so much the better.  

Of course, if you are anything like me and suffer from “Fishing ADD” you can just get out there and target a bit of everything and just chalk it up to medicinal necessity.  Now, if I could just figure out a way for my health insurance to cover the expenses...

I will just have to start with fishing for dolphin.  Dolphin fishing is the most requested trip that I get in the summer months.  The promise of lots of hungry fish available on multiple types of tackle, in a variety of depths, gets people from all over the country heading this way for a chance at the tasty treats.  While this year has seen some hot and cool fishing days, there have still been plenty of fish if you put in the dedication and miles to find them.  Hopefully this summer will see a return to the normal migration patterns and the fish will move closer to shore and be more accessible to the mosquito fleet. There have been less than the normal number of slammer and super slammer-sized dolphin caught this year, so let’s hope that the summer will more than make up for the moderate size fish that we have been experiencing.

Usually an add-on to a day out dolphin fishing, but I love to do a deep drop or two when the conditions are right.  Calm to moderate winds, and a knot or two of current, make deep dropping on medium spinning gear not only possible, but an easy affair.  A chicken rig with three to four droppers, lead by three to four six ounce sinkers, are all that is necessary to land a great supplement to the fish box.  If you think to bring squid along, so much the better, if not, dolphin belly or bonito strips make excellent bait.  There is not much chance of getting exhausted, as the Federal government has decided, in all of its wisdom (insert sarcastic expression), to limit us to one snowy grouper and one blueline tilefish per boat, per day.  You never know what you may find when dropping to 550 to 750 feet of water.  A few black-bellied rosefish or a barrelfish are great extra treats.

Getting out in the late afternoon, just before sunset, is a great way to end the day.  That is, if you can silhouette a giant tarpon jumping against the setting sun.  The last hour, before and after the sunset, will see the best opportunity of the day to put a giant tarpon into the air.

Whether you are floating big pinfish, crabs, or mullet you will have a great chance of hooking up with a tarpon along most of the Keys’ bridges and deeper channels.  Just note where the areas’ shallow bays are dumping off into the channel, and set up shop there.  The tarpon will move off of the shallows and into the channels before dark.  If the current is moving hard, you can often get away with drifting your bait back without a float.  If the tide is slacking, you will need a float to keep your bait out of the bottom and up in the strike zone.  Personally, I recommend heavier tackle than most.  I believe it is an injustice to fight a fish to exhaustion on light gear; the fish is more deeply exhausted and has less of a chance of recovery, and the predators are just being invited to an easy meal.  Fifty-pound braid on matching spinning gear gives both the angler and fish a good tug.

Last, but definitely not least, is snorkeling for lobster.  Mini lobster season will find lobster jammed into just about every ledge and coral head in the Keys.  Mask, fins, snorkel, gloves, measuring device, net, stick, and dive flag are all that is required for just about anyone to have a great time. Whether from shore or boat, just about anywhere that you can find hard bottom or a rocky shore, there will be lobster.

I know that you do not have to do it all in one day, but for the fishing ADD afflicted, it is just hard to decide where to stop.

For my first case in point, there are different allocations of the resources between recreational and commercial fishermen.  Being that there is only a way to count what the commercial fishermen sell, and no real way to determine what the recreational anglers of the state land, the numbers are bound to be questionable at best. Because of the lobbying power of the commercial fishermen and the relative lack of voice in the recreational sector, the division of the resources is not always fair.  A prime example of that is the seasonal divide of the snowy grouper.  The commercial season started January 1st, while the recreational anglers do not get to fish until May 1st, with the limit for recreational vessels being one per boat. This ridiculous limit came about because of a sampling from the waters off of Georgia.  Ironically, we in the Keys waters have an abundance of these tasty fish and we may not reasonably access them.  To cure this problem, the Federal South Atlantic council could simply divide the sector into sub groups--possibly South Florida, the rest of Florida, Georgia, and finally, the Carolinas, which total the South Atlantic council. This would give anglers a voice in regulation of the fisheries near their home waters.

In my humble opinion, there should never be a point in time where the resource is divided such that one can buy a fish from a commercial fisherman, but not be allowed to catch one for them self. Another issue occurred in relation to the snowy grouper season closure and, in a lesser extent, to the small limit.  Most anglers who catch blueline tilefish do so in conjunction with fishing for snowy grouper. When anglers do not fish for the grouper, they rarely venture offshore just to fish for the tilefish.  When the tilefish landing numbers went down, fisheries biologists erroneously concluded that the tilefish numbers were in decline and opted to close the season on them too.  Simply taking samplings, or asking for opinions of anglers with experience in the fishery, could have solved these problems.  Also, once a regulation has been enacted, it is overly difficult to have it rescinded. The vast majority of deep water fishing is done in federal water.  The State of Florida shows more common sense in this topic; however, the more liberal limits imposed by the State do not help in this instance. Another topic is the regulations involving dolphin.  The current dolphin regulations allow 10 fish per angler, and a twenty inch size limit.  My argument is that when trying to control smaller fish long enough to get a reliable measurement, the fish thrash around so violently that they do irreparable harm to themselves.  Therefore, many fish that are released do not survive.  I cannot believe that the biologists involved in the rule making have ever fished and had to handle small dolphin, or they would know better.  My solution is to rescind the size limit and, if necessary, reduce the bag limit.  The result would be a reduction in dead fish.  Since dolphin grow so fast, the fish taken at under the current size limit would have been legal in a matter of weeks anyway. When dealing with mangrove snapper there is a difference on both size and bag limit in state and federal waters.

Currently there is a bag limit of five fish in state waters and ten in federal waters.  Mangrove snapper are our most common and prolific inshore food fish.  In this case, changing the state limit to match the federal limit is only reasonable.  In regards to the size limit, the federal twelve inch size limit makes more sense that the state limit of ten inches.  Also on the topic of snapper, both state and federal limits on mutton snapper are way too liberal.  I feel that cutting the ten fish limit in half, or even more, would save us from what might soon be a seasonal restriction during the spawning season. Sharks are another hot button issue these days.  The vast majority of sharks are being protected solely because of political pressure exerted by environmental activist organizations.  The Keys are actually experiencing an unprecedented over population of sharks these days.  Sharks are not the mindless killers that many make them out to be.  Sharks have learned that taking up station around anglers is an easy way to get a meal without working for it.   For the few species of shark that are actually endangered, I am more than willing to support restrictions.  For others that have been thrown into the protected list for no real reason, it is high time to get them removed.

Finally, in regard to the inshore grouper seasonal closure for Keys waters (listed under the Atlantic rules for federal waters and the state rules for Monroe County), our closed season is from January one until April 30th.  For Keys residents, this closure coincides with when the grouper are most available in our waters.  However, it allows the rest of the state to fish when the fish are most accessible to them.  Not an equitable division of the state resource in my opinion. These topics barely scratch the surface with what is wrong with the industry.  The rules are so complex, and changing without sufficient notification, that it is practically impossible for the lay angler to follow them.  Even professional anglers, such as myself, often come uncomfortably close to inadvertently breaking a regulation, that it is scary.  I have always prided myself in being a law abiding citizen and intend to always fish within the rules, but I do work to achieve more common sense in the drafting of those rules.  I urge all anglers to follow along with what is going on in the industry and to attend the meetings of both the State and Federal offices.  Unfortunately, common sense seems to be increasingly uncommon and so, for an angler like me with Fishing ADD, it results in more than a few sleepless nights wondering what unnecessary or ill-conceived regulations the powers that be will come up with next.

His mother and grandfather had chartered the FUNYET to take Jordan out for a half day of reef fishing.  The weather was good and the conditions seemed like there would be plenty of activity to make a day of it, but it was just not happening.  The current was flowing painfully slow and so was the bite.  Some short grouper and a few keeper snapper were all that we could manage.  Into the second hour it was looking like it was going to be an exceptionally slow day when a barracuda showed up and helped himself to what promised to be one of only a hand full of keeper sized snapper for the day.

The barracuda left nothing of the yellowtail but gills eyes and lips.  It would be near impossible for an angler with the best filet knife to clean out a fish head that skillfully.  The thought of putting out that particular head as bait was dismissed out of hand.

The next Yellowtail snapper that the barracuda helped himself to was taken off cleanly just behind the pectoral fins leaving enough meat to resemble bait.  We put the head out on a stand up spinning rod with 50 lb braid and a trace of steel leader.  We just tossed it behind the boat and allowed the head, with leader in tow to sink naturally.  My hopes of hooking this big and wary reef cuda were dashed when the head finally made the slow sink to the bottom and line ceased to pay out of the open bail.

We had just gotten back to the chores at hand when the line slowly started to pay out of the spinning reel.  It seemed like a longtime between the when line started to move and the bail was closed but it was probably only a few seconds. When the rod was struck the hook found home and the fight was on.

It was not a clean and easy fight, but one taking a trip to the bow and around the anchor line twice before heading back into open water. A few minutes later the fish was securely on the gaff and in the boat. The fish measured out to 54 inches and was the second largest taken on the FUNYET in 25 years.

Jordan was winded and immediately started to take his own pulse incase the fight had started another episode of heart arrhythmia.  In a few minutes his pulse came down to a manageable level and he could enjoy examining his fish. It was only a few inches shorter than his shorter than normal height.  It was a no brainer to the family that the fish was destined for the wall.  When we returned to port the mount book for Grey Taxidermy came out and the paper work filled out.

While there are provisions for doing a release mount with all synthetic parts including teeth.  Grey Taxidermy will use the real teeth of the fish if supplied.  There is a world of difference in the fake and real version of the teeth in a barracuda mount.

That very afternoon Craig Geovani from the charter Boat Grand Slam, who also happens to be our local representative for Grey came by and picked up the head for processing and placement into Jordans mount.

What started out to be an uneventful day of fishing for this young man turned out to be the highlight of his life.  (His words not mine)

These fisheries are all bait driven. What drives the bait is the wind. For the fisheries on the south side of the Islands, the primary bait fish is the ballyhoo. As the north winds of the passing cold fronts come through the Islands, they push schools of ballyhoo through the Keys and out over the reefs where waiting grouper, snapper and mackerel get first crack at the moveable feast. Those ballyhoo who happen to make it past the first line of assault, find themselves just outside of the reef, in between the deep reef and about two hundred feet of water, where they find the pelagic predators waiting. Offshore, sailfish, dolphin, wahoo and king mackerel make short work out of the unlucky ballyhoo.

I like to start my morning on the patch reef with a chum line and some live pinfish. The pinfish are a great second choice bait until the ballyhoo show up in the chum line. Getting a net full of live ballyhoo is as much the goal of the morning stop, as is getting a crack at the variety of grouper and snapper there. Putting a few ballyhoo plugs on the bottom with a knocker rig, and swimming a ballyhoo on the surface with a trace of wire leader, will usually get the action going strong. Once we have enough fish for dinner, it is time to up anchor and head offshore. Drifting or slow trolling live ballyhoo make an irresistible treat for any passing sailfish. Do not be surprised to also find dolphin, tuna, king mackerel or wahoo helping themselves to your offering. 

I like to use a long fluorocarbon leader, up to twelve feet, tied to a circle hook, for my slow trolled ballyhoo. I place the hook up through the lower jaw and use a trace of copper wire to connect the hook shaft to the ballyhoo’s lower bill. If cutoffs from the toothy critters become a problem, simply put a trace of thin single strand wire leader, up to six inches long, and Albright it to your fluorocarbon leader.

While many successful Keys anglers deploy kites to maximize their presentation when drifting offshore, I find that I can stay quite busy with a couple of flat lines on the surface and one more fished from the down rigger.

On days that the wind makes the offshore fishing uncomfortable, or for those fishing from smaller vessels, the backcountry offers plenty of bait driven action. While there are usually plenty of ballyhoo in the backcountry, it is the mullet that drives a lot of the fishing on the gulf side. Trout, ladyfish, jacks, and both Spanish and cero mackerel, can be found feeding in and around the mullet muds. A lot of the feeding activity is not directly related to the mullet themselves, which, in their own right, are great bait, but more an effect of the mullet themselves feeding on the bottom. As the mullet feed on algae and small invertebrates, they disturb crustaceans and small bait fish which are then easy prey for the game fish that we are interested in.

These mullet muds are usually several acres in size and can be found throughout the Lower Keys. You should easily recognize the muddy, whitish water as compared to the cleaner, clear surrounding water. As a loose rule, the trout are usually found on the periphery inside of the mud line, while the ladyfish tend to stay in the heart of the muddy water.

Artificial lures, my favorite being Berkley Gulp Lures, out-fish natural bait in these conditions by a mile. Artificial lures hold up much better to the onslaught of bait stealers that are always found over the grass bottom. The best variety of artificial jigs and jig heads that I have found anywhere, is at Lower Keys Tackle on Big Pine Key. Bill Kinsey, the owner of Lower Keys Tackle, who is best known for his offshore skill at sword fishing, is, in fact, a closet Trout Junkie. He and his staff can help you choose the right jig from the dizzying array to peruse. I choose a jig head weight that is just enough to keep my soft body lure from getting into the bottom at the depth of the water and the speed that we are drifting.

As with many lure selections, you will do best with what you fish most. Everyone has a favorite size, shape, and color of jig tail. My habit is to use lure tails that are both shrimp shaped and root beer colored. Admittedly, many other color combinations and shapes work well; but, as I say, old habits are hard to break and there is little incentive for change when the habit works well.

As a loose rule, I tend to get the best action during the tide changes and on the outgoing tide. If the wind is moving your boat fast enough, there is not much need to cast and retrieve your jig. Simply get your jig out a hundred feet or so, and twitch it every few seconds as you drift. If the boat is not moving well through the water, you will have to retrieve your jig just fast enough to keep it off of the bottom. I find that a trace of ten to twelve pound fluorocarbon leader will greatly increase your bites, even though the water is often quite muddy. I also prefer to use braided line so that I can feel even the slightest nibble.

There are plenty of other fish mixed in with the trout and ladyfish. Mangrove snapper and cero mackerel being among the best eating of the also ran category. It is also not unheard of to pick up a cobia while drifting the back channels and, now and then, full sized king mackerel have been known to make a surprise visit as well.

In any case, there is plenty for the Fishing ADD afflicted angler to stay busy with while waiting for Santa to visit.

The bottom line is that every fish bites best under certain conditions and you can get such a wide variety of conditions in November that it is difficult to call in advance what will be happening. Some years the conditions are very summer like and the dolphin bite is going strong offshore and the tarpon are still feeding well inshore. Other years the Witch of November really does come on time and the conditions are identical to what you would find in February. When this happens the shallow patch reef fishing will be on fire, the sailfish will be busting just over the reef line and the trout fishing in the Gulf side will be hot.

There are precious few months that you can target and keep grouper while they are actually feeding well on the shallow patch reefs of the Keys. As I have mentioned, the north wind is the factor that turns on the most aggressive feeding habits of the shallow patch dwellers. If you are lucky enough to get cooler winds from the north to the northeast I would then recommend that you spend time on the patches. The mangrove and mutton snapper bites should be hot. The grouper will also be available and November and December are the best months to target them when you may actually land a few for dinner. A reminder that closed season on shallow water grouper in both State and Federal Atlantic waters starts in January and runs through April. The governing powers that be have decided to steal from Keys anglers only to gift these same fish to anglers in counties north of us later in the year.

If on the other hand, we are blessed with more summer like weather this fall, then continuing with the summer fishing will be the plan for the day. So far this year the dolphin bite has been going strong right into the beginning of fall and I would expect this to hold true as long as the warm weather continues. This will also hold true for our inshore fisheries. The permit, bonefish and tarpon will stay available as well as the other skinny water inhabitants that are temperature sensitive.

Of course what is most likely is that we will get a mix of conditions ranging from the very chilly to the sweltering. This makes it difficult to plan in advance the best course of action until immediately before the time to push off from the dock. As an old scout master of mine used to say “We need to be rigidly flexible in our plans”. I keep this in mind and “load for bear” as the saying goes, so that I can be prepared for whatever opportunities I might find. The reality is that the conditions will be something in between and our plans will not be as important to the fish as they are to us.

The shallow flats are still going strong and with the passing of the lobster mobster peak assault, the back country is a great place to get away from it all.

Time for a little bit of finesse.  The pursuit of bonefish and permit are the prescription for what ails me. Fortunately there has been a recovery in the bone fish population from over the last few years.

While no one is quite sure why the bonefish numbers were down, it is speculated that the cold snap that we experienced a few years ago had much to do with the drop in numbers.   While the population has not fully recovered, it appears that we are well on the way to a full recovery.  Fortunately for the backcountry fishing, over the last few years the permit population saw no such drop in numbers.

The calm sunny days of fall allow for some great visibility.  Sight casting is easier  when there is no wind to fight.  The only drawback is that while it is easier for you to see the fish it is also easier for them to see you.  Fish that spend time in shallow shark infested waters are some of the most wary animals to be found.  A short lapse in attention can be a fatal error that turns them into a tasty treat.   While you are not the threat that a shark is, a bonefish will not want to stick around to find out what that big shadow is moving into their space.  Suffice it to say, stealth is key to approaching a bonefish or permit close enough to present a bait.

On an outgoing tide, the washes between shallow flats will be the only water deep enough to hold fish.  While low tide is great for concentrating fish it is also a danger for you to get stranded in a wash as the tide continues out. Waiting 4 to 6 hours to be re-floated after getting trapped is not fun.

By slowly moving through the washes you will be able to see schools of bones and often small permit traveling through or just feeding their way through.  Casting a live shrimp will get a response as long as you do not present your bait so close as to spook the fish.  Here live shrimp are just fine for both the bonefish and the smaller permit.  Learn to cast your bait softly.  A side arm cast that travels horizontally will land more softly than a lobbed high pitch that plops down with a huge splash.  The use of a small split shot or light jig head will help with distance in casting.  I also like to make my shrimp weed-less by removing the tail fins, then inserting the hook in the end of the shrimp body, then doubling the hook back into the body to form a kind of Texas worm rig within the shrimp.  Make sure that you slide the split shot right to the shrimp so as to present only one not two splashes.

For the larger permit you will need to present a small live blue crab to get these fish interested.  The larger permit will also be found in slightly deeper water and will have left the flats to congregate on the Gulf side of the flats until the tide gets deep enough to return.

For the purists who prefer to use fly or artificial bait you simply need to exchange the shrimp or crab with an artificial version and then have the patience to suffer through many refusals between each successful hookup.

The best part of all is when I return from a flats trip. There are no coolers of fish waiting to be cleaned.  That is what I call civilized fishing.

Whatever you call them, I just call them plain fun.

I started coming to the Keys back in 1974 after a three day field trip with my elementary school to the Sea Camp on Big Pine Key. I grew up on the water in Sarasota, Florida so I was fairly well indoctrinated to the general way of life found near the Gulf waters, however when I got to the Keys, the difference for me was that I could now see through the water as the visibility was at least a factor of twenty compared to the stained murky waters of home. After returning home from that trip I summarily declared my intention to my parents to move to the Keys.

After a few months of constant nagging I somehow convinced my parents that the family summer trip should be to the Keys. As it happened, my father’s attention span waned around mile marker 70 and we landed at the KOA. It coincidently also just happened to be the first day of lobster season, which until then, no one in the family had heard anything about. We rented a small skiff and putted a few hundred yards into the channel. With mask, fins, snorkel and gloves I plopped into the water with a back flip over the gunwale Sea Hunt style and when I popped back to the surface I was firmly holding a lobster in each hand. As my 12 year old self remembers it, the current had bent the sea fans over and the lobster were just sitting there in the shade of the soft coral.

To my father, who traveled on his stomach; seafood, lobster in particular being his favorite food uttered something akin to Eeeeewwww!...and a family tradition was born.

It took about ten years but I finally made good on my declaration to move to the Keys where I started my career teaching diving full time in Marathon. Come hell or high water I have yet to miss an opening day of lobster season in my 52 years of life.

In my forty years of diving for lobster things have evolved greatly in the methods and madness of what has evolved into Lobster Mobster Days. When I first started, it was only a gloved hand and a careful look for moray eels before plunging a hand into the back of the hole to wrench the bug out by the horns.

Very few lobsters were landed ashore with both antennas intact. Within a few years, the black spiny sea urchins were experiencing a population explosion before their inevitable collapse and every lobster hole in the Keys was surrounded by the dreaded sentinels. The first tickle sticks that I used were not to tickle the lobster but were to move the moving sea of needles away from the entrance of the lobster holes.

I really do not remember what year it was that I was introduced to the venerable combination of net and tickle stick. This combination greatly reduced the cuts and scrapes from fire coral, punctures from sea urchins and bites from moray eels. I am pretty sure that it was in Marathon at  Knights Key with the son of one of the owners of the park. Eugene Kyle or better known those days as EG, was somehow to become one of my longest lived friendships. As we currently joke these days, we are stuck with each other as it is now way too late to make “new, oldest friends”. Every bad habit and unsafe diving skill that I currently am trying to break, I am positive that I learned from EG. We somehow lived through those early days on our own exploring the Keys around the Seven Mile Bridge. It took a few summers, but between the two of us we methodically managed to dive every single piling of the Seven Mile Bridge.

Without a personal demonstration, the best that I can do to coach a new tickler is to try to explain that the stick is not used to pry or scare a bug from its hole but to coax it. Tickling is a very accurate definition of what you are trying to accomplish. Try to get your stick into the hole without disturbing the lobster and then gently touch its tail and gently walk it out of its hole. Failing to do so will send the lobster scurrying to the farthest regions of its hole where it will be much harder to extricate. I prefer the aluminum tickle stick with the slightly bent end for maneuvering into the hole and getting behind the lobster. Once the lobster has cleared the hole you deploy the net. Use the net and stick in unison to control the lobster and set the edge of the net on the bottom while using the stick in front to back the bug under the net. Once the lobster is under the net quickly push the net to the bottom. By this time most free divers are wanting for a breath of fresh air. There is one more thing to do before ascending.  Grab the lobster firmly in your free hand BEFORE you lift the net toward the surface. While the scoop and go will catch a few lobster, there will be a large percentage that will prove to be slightly faster than you and will quickly outrun you into the vastness of the sea.

Though not without a few close calls, and more than a little loss of blood, I have evolved my technique of catching lobster. I have had the pleasure of passing these skills down to hundreds of other divers. With a little luck those techniques that took me a lifetime to acquire will be passed down to a few hundred more.

One way to beat the wind and cross sight fishing with big game fishing is to target sharks on the flats.

The expansive flats found in the back country of the Florida Keys are home to much more than the elusive bonefish and permit. They are also home to some of the biggest meanest sharks around. To see a shark whose diameter is slightly more than that of the depth of water that they are cruising is truly a sight to behold. Lemon, blacktip, bull and hammerhead are not the only, but definitely the most common sharks on the flats. Six and seven foot sharks are quite the norm, and as far as sight fishing is concerned, seeing these guys come to the boat compared to seeing a bonefish in any conditions is not much of a challenge.

The first step in getting sharks to come your way is to start with the right chum. A favorite for getting the attention of the big guys is to start with a big bonito. Tie them right to the side of the boat with a piece of heavy chord. The bonito can be tied by the tail. The look should be much like that of peeling a banana.

This exposes the blood oil and other stinky juices into the water.

Position the boat so that you are chumming over and across the widest portion of the flat. If you are fishing an incoming tide you are good to go as far as positioning the boat to chum over the flat. Make sure that when you are positioning the boat on a falling tide that you will not be stranded as the water recedes. It should not take more than fifteen or twenty minutes before the big guys start to show up.

Flats straddled by deeper channels on all sides are most likely to have big sharks visiting.

I like to use fifty pound braided line like Spider Wire to allow for a lot of line capacity on a medium-sized spinning reel. For terminal tackle I splice on about twelve feet of sixty pound fluorocarbon leader with a uni to uni connection. For the fluorocarbon I like to use Albright and at least three feet of #8 stainless single strand leader. Finishing the rig is a hardened 6/0 short shank live bait hook. I prefer bronzed hooks because they will quickly rust out leaving the shark no worse the wear after your battle. As for bait you may simply use a palm-sized chunk of whatever you happen to be chumming with.

Next, choose between the cruising sharks behind your boat, give your bait a toss five or six feet in front of your target and let it settle. You can err on the side of too far rather than too close. It is easier to bring your bait in to get it in front of the shark than push it out to intercept your target. Once the shark picks up your bait wait a few seconds then set the hook. It may take him a few seconds to realize that he is hooked but once he does the fireworks really start. Mind you that we are talking about being in less than three feet of water so as the shark takes off there will be a spray of water, grass and mud as the fish runs off up to one hundred yards at a time.

It is up to the captain to decide whether or not to pull up anchor and follow the shark or if you can fight it from a dead boat. If the fish can be handled from a dead boat you will have an uninterrupted chum line and you may opt for fighting doubles or even more at a time.

The end game with fighting sharks on the flats is to get the fish to the boat side then take a few quick pictures and then snip the leader as close to the hook as you can safely get your hand. There is no need to gaff or to bring a shark aboard. If you wish to have a trophy made of your shark, reproduction mounts are easily acquired through taxidermists.  Most, if not all guides in the Keys, are happy to help you have a reproduction made to commemorate your fish. All that you need is the species sex and length of the entire shark. For that matter, the same can be said of any fish that you want to commemorate. If you do not know of any other captains here you are more than welcome to contact me and I would be happy to arrange to have a mount made.

Any structure such as channel edges, ledges, reef or wreck will be likely spots to get in on the snapper bite. The back country is a particularly great area to target mangrove snapper this time of the year. You can stop on the ledges on the very edge of the Gulf anywhere between the Content Keys and Sawyer Key and most likely also anywhere west of those spots and you will find fish staging to move through the Keys. These rocky ledges are where the Gulf of Mexico juts up from about fifteen feet of water to five feet. Whether the tide is running in or out, positioning yourself up current of the flow over the edge and deploying chum will bring schools of these tasty treats to your boat.

Big snapper did not get that way by being careless. You will rarely see the larger specimens come right to the boat. I always cast my bait far back into the chum line to make sure that I have presented to the big boys. As with most inshore fish, if it is worth catching it is worth putting out larger bait than the conventional wisdom will call for.  Avoiding bait like shrimp and squid will help reduce the large number of small fish. The bottom line is that shrimp are too effective and you will waste too much time with small fish of all species. I always start my trip with a well full of pinfish. These can be fished whole if they are smaller, say half the length of your outstretched hand. Larger pinfish can be fished as cut bait.

I usually cut them diagonally from right in front of the throat up to just in front of the tail. This exposes a lot of scent and allows the tail to flap in the current which implies movement.

The only bait that is possibly better than pinfish is fresh dead ballyhoo. Cut into plugs and fished on the bottom, ballyhoo are an all time favorite. Catching ballyhoo while chumming these spots is relatively easy if you are prepared. You can often see the ballyhoo dimpling the water far back in the chum line well before they are within range of a net or hook. Hair hooks with a tiny piece of bait drifted back to the school will usually get a quick bite. The trick is to reach the ballyhoo without it being picked up by the myriad of small snapper crowding the chum line. Better yet is to throw a cast net once the fish have balled up behind the boat. Be patient. Wait until plenty of fish are right at the boat.  Ballyhoo will often scatter and stay just out of net range after the first throw so be sure to make it count. 

Since the State of Florida has, in its wisdom, seen fit to reduce the bag limit of the most populous inshore snapper to just five fish, I recommend that you do what you can to exclude the smaller fish from biting by using larger bait. You can also practice culling of the fish in a live well by releasing the smallest and replacing it with a larger fish. You need to remember that when fishing on the Gulf side of the Keys bridges and targeting either Grouper or Snapper you must use non offset circle hooks. Try to select a hook large enough to have an exposed barb when the bait is properly impaled on the hook. A buried hook point will seldom properly engage in a fish’s mouth.

As the next few months roll by, you can follow the migrating fish out to the reefs. Next stop will be the bridges and after that the patch reefs in Hawk Channel. Finally out to the outer edge of the reef where they will remain in great numbers until the business of making baby fish is complete. Once the fish have emerged into the Federal waters of the Lower Keys you may take the more reasonable limit of ten fish per person, however the size limit does go from the ten inch state limit to the twelve inch Federal limit.

It seems like just the other day that I decided that I could work for myself if I wanted to stay broke and sad to say that, that part hasn’t changed all that much.  The standard joke being if you want to make a small fortune chartering you should start with a large one. I found a 22’ center console and started FUNYET Charters.  I found used engines and tackle and made my own rods and trolling lures and sinkers from pouring melted wheel weights. And more than once I found myself peddling my bike to Winn Dixie with a roll of change to buy peanut butter and bread because it was that or put fuel in the boat and you had to keep your priorities straight.

While I am definitely not above buying a piece of used gear for the right price, the boat is now decked out in the latest and best gear that my checkbook can handle.  My new 33 foot boat is anything but new. It is a product of years of design and experimentation. I thought that it would be nice if I could have a bait well here or a tackle center there and instead of hunting for a boat that was set up the way I wanted it would be custom built locally or found off of the rack, and modified to fit.  Finding a boat outfitted as well as mine new, would be the same price as a waterfront home here in the Keys.

All of that being said, I have gone from getting advice to giving it on a regular basis. I am doing several seminars a year in the Keys and spend a lot of free time at the local tackle shops talking and helping out with people’s questions. Not to mention any tidbits that might be gleaned from my humble writings on these pages.

I suppose that the point that I am trying to make is to keep learning. Never allow yourself to stagnate into one type of fishing. My particular malady namely, Fishing ADD actually helps keep me going. It keeps me young - inside my own head at least. And more importantly it helps keep me successful after over 33 years of chartering.

When the FUNYET leaves the dock in the morning I have an outline in my head of how the day is going to unfold. Rarely does it play out as planned. One of the most important things that I have learned is that you cannot change game plans if you are not equipped for the game. Even if I am planning to troll all day, I bring live bait and chum in case it becomes prudent or necessary to change from trolling to reef bottom fishing. The same goes for deep dropping, deep wrecks and channel fishing for tarpon. When the boat leaves in the morning I can change from one type of fishing to another at a moment’s notice. Sometimes it is the weather that prompts a change of location, other times it is the customer’s intolerance of the seas that prompts a change. Mostly, it is that we have been unsuccessful at one type of fishing and it is time to try something new. By being ready, willing and able to change the game plan I have been able to keep the count of days that we have come home with nothing to show for our efforts to a count that is easy to display on my fingers. Not bad for 33 years of chartering.

While I am not often willing to give you the coordinates of my favorite patch reef, I will gladly tell you how I set up and fish the reef. Keep learning and teach when you have information that might help someone be successful, and use your own Fishing ADD to your advantage.

When you get to be the old man; bald, fat and grey wondering how you got to that point, hopefully like me, you will also have no regrets of the journey that got you there.

The bite in the backcountry channels, basins and deeper flats can be notoriously finicky.  Snapper who were voracious one day can have zip lip the next day.  Basins that teemed with trout one day can be devoid the next.  Doing homework and having a backup plan for your back up plan can save an otherwise slow day.  For me, targeting trout and snapper in the mullet muds is the perfect back up plan.

When looking for trout, the classic mullet mud is a giveaway that there is feeding going on in an area.  The mullet are largely herbivores that root out algae and plants from the silt bottom.  This feeding activity displaces small fish and crustaceans from their hiding places and into the waiting mouths of several species of predator.  Muds can be from a couple of hundred feet long to acres upon acres and acres of light colored water.  Trout, snapper, ladyfish, jack crevalle and blue runners are just a few of the species found feeding in the muds.

While all of the mentioned fish will gladly eat a shrimp, so will every pinfish, lizard fish, squirrel fish and other bait stealer that swims.  To combat the need to replace bait every cast, we use artificial lures to keep bait in the water longer and to withstand the constant onslaught of the bait stealers.

One favorite in the Lower Keys is the jig head and plastic tail combination.  While the rubber jig tails are not impervious to the nibbling of the stealers, it cuts down on the need to rebait.  There are an infinite number of jig combinations; jig head shapes, colors, weights and hook styles.  When you get to the tail selection it really gets overwhelming.  Tails come in three basic configurations; shrimp, fish and worm.  There are other specialty tails such as crab and crawfish. Add to the decision making color combinations and size and things get confusing. I have narrowed my selection down to the shrimp shapes.

Technology has come a long way in the science of fish attractants.  Many popular lures come with scent built right into the rubber. Others have developed spray attractant to be applied to the outside of the bait. Gulp Lures have developed the science of infusing the scent right into the rubber. By keeping a tub or tray of these jig tails in the boat you are never out of bait.

Selecting the combination of jig head weight to go with a particular tail will change with the conditions. A fast drift due to high wind, across a deep flat, will require a heavier jig head to get the lure into the strike zone, than will a slow drift on a shallow flat.

Speaking of drifting, that is how most trout and snapper are caught in the Keys. Of course some are caught on bait while anchored to the bottom but that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. When you find a mud to drift through simply go the up wind end of the area and drift through with your jig trailing behind about seventy feet or more. Sometimes when the current and wind are running perpendicular to each other you have to calculate the best drift to keep you into the strike zone. While trout are found throughout the mud, they tend to bite best near the outer edges while I tend to find more ladyfish in the heart of the mud.

While jigging techniques vary with each angler, I have found that a more robust sharp short twitch to be most effective. I like a cadence of twitch, twitch, give it a rest. Just keep repeating the cadence until you connect with a fish on the twitch.  Here also is where you fine tune your jig head weight. If your jig is visible near the surface go up in weight until it stays down on the drift. If you are getting into the bottom frequently you need a lighter jig head.

Unless you can afford a flyover of the backcountry to direct you to the muds, you will just have to explore the back country looking for muds between flats, in the basins and even in the channels. While the muds will move frequently, you will with time develop a list of likely places to search.

While I find the federal seasonal and bag limit restrictions ridiculous, the rules are the rules.  So until rational thinking prevails we have to do our best to maximize what we are forced to work within.

If you are going to get only one shot a day at a keeper, make it a BIG one.  In the old days before the draconian restrictions, I would use the same baits and rig for grouper as I would for tilefish, barrelfish and rose fish.  The size of the grouper would run the gamut from itty bitty to huge.  To insure that you keep to the huge side of the spectrum, it is imperative to weed out all but the most over-sized specimens.

When it comes to choosing your bait, go big or go home.  When you inspect the mouth of a snowy grouper the first thing that you will notice is that its mouth is huge, even more so than its cousin the red grouper.  I use this as kind of a template for how big of a bait to choose.

Bonita, mackerel, dolphin, octopus and squid all make fine bait for snowys.   I have tried several live baits, however I have not had luck with them.  Filet of bonita  is my favorite and I will use a whole filet of a medium bonita or maybe just half it’s a larger bonita.  If using squid, you should be looking for individual bats to be about a foot or longer.  It is acceptable to stack several squid on one hook.

Speaking of hooks, yes a big circle hook is in order.  I wish I could just blurt out a number for the size hook that you should be using, but unlike J hooks, the tackle industry missed the boat on using a universal size for sizing circle hooks.  Every manufacture has a different scale for their hooks, and some even have a different scale for different models of circle hook within their own line.   Mustad heavy duty circle hook in 12/0 to 14/0 is the size that I prefer, so if you can identify the size of this hook you will know what you are looking for in other brands.

When I target other species deep dropping I usually will deploy a 4 hook rig.  When I target snowy grouper I will drop back to two hooks.  I make a simple dropper.  I start with 12 feet of sixty pound fluorocarbon leader.  I tie a surgeons end loop on each end then two more evenly spaced between the ends.  The top loop is fastened to a snap swivel on the main line.  The bottom is connected to a dropper with the weights.  To fasten the hooks to the center loops just pass the loop through the eye of the hook then pass the body of the hook through the loop and snug down.  Just make sure to make the loop long enough to pass the hook through.   I do like to add a flashing light to the top of the leader.  I usually just put it into the snap of the snap swivel.

How much weight you’ll need to hold bottom depends on several factors.  The most important of which is how much wind that you have to fight.  You need to stay above your bait to the greatest extent possible.  I usually find that I have to back the boat down to keep over my bait.  If the wind is crossing the direction of the current it also takes more weight to hold bottom.  I usually start with a pound and a half and go up until I am able to stay near the bottom without constantly dropping the bait by letting more line out.

The use of braded line has allowed the use of much smaller reels for deep dropping until now I am successfully using spinning reels as my primary deep drop rig.  Fifty pound line is plenty strong to lift anything that I have hooked while dropping.  Thanks to its thin diameter it has little drag through the water and because it has virtually no stretch you can feel the smallest bump or nibble even over 700 feet down.

Inevitably you will be in the situation where you will have to release a grouper.  When brought up from these great depths there is a significant amount of barotrauma suffered by the fish.  Simply venting it with a venting tool and dropping it back into the water will rarely allow the fish to return to the depths.  To have the best chance of success I use my down rigger to return fish to a depth at which the gas bubbles in their tissues have all but disappeared.   A fish that is stiff as a board upon reaching the surface will begin to tug at the line again when dropped back to depth.

I have replaced my stainless steel cable with heavy braid and have over 300 feet on the reel.  A ten pound down rigger weight will return all but the largest grouper.  I use a small bronzed hook that will corrode quickly and bridle the fish with a light piece of monofilament line.  When the fish is at depth just power the boat forward quickly and snap the line from the weight.  Only once have I had a fish with so much buoyancy that I had to add a second cannon ball to get it down.

Deep dropping for snowy grouper is the perfect activity for an angler with Fishing ADD.  Often times you have your limit on the first drop leaving plenty of time for other pursuits.