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BACKCOUNTRY BOYS – LIGHT TACKLE FISHING IN THE FLORIDA KEYS EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK

Following an epic battle with the Goliath grouper, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat with the very last cast, David Mitchell is back fishing the backcountry waters of southern Florida’s Everglades National Park, in search of a mixed bag of the State’s best fishing action

David with his first snook which took a live shrimp fished right up against the mangroves in only a few feet of water

 The single most popular – and reliable – bait for catching many of Florida’s inshore fish is live shrimp. Frozen shrimp will do a job for you too, no shadow of a doubt,but nothing beats the flicking tail of a live shrimp to induce a strike from a snook or a snapper. The supply of Florida’s favourite bait is provided by a fleet of commercial boats and when the shrimp are scarce, or conditions mean the shrimpers can’t get out, those dealers lucky enough to get their hands on any could sell what they have 10 times over before it’s even been landed back at port. We were therefore lucky that Joey, our Captain for the day from Bamboo Charters, operating out of the marina behind Islamorada’s Worldwide Sportsman – a vast Bass Pro fishing store – had secured us a supply for live shrimp for the day. Fuelled with some super-strength Cuban coffee, I hopped aboard the 25ft Contender day boat alongside the owner of Bamboo Charters, Captain Matt Bellinger, and off we headed into Florida Bay for another day in sport fishing paradise.

Cruising north west at an easy 30 knots it wasn’t long before we were approaching Flamingo on the southwestern tip of the mainland Florida pan handle and the network of mangrove islands so many fish species call home. After yet another quick display from Florida’s marine mammal display team – this time a pod of dolphins feeding on a shoal of mullet by encircling them in a ‘net’ of mud kicked up from the seabed – it was time to get a bait in the water and see if the snook, which had evaded me the day before, were now on the feed again.

TROLLING TACTCIS

One essential piece of hardware for shallow backcountry fishing is an electric trolling motor. These are normally mounted on the bow and deployed when needed. The electric motor makes them incredibly quiet – minimising any scare zone of fish around the boat. The other huge asset of these trolling motors is being able to hold the position of the boat using your GPS plotter linked to the motor. This makes traditional anchoring completely redundant, and, with the ability to use the trolling motor to move the boat using a handheld remote control or, on some models, a foot operated control system, you can be agile, nimble, and incredibly precise about where you position yourself to fish. The term ‘game changer’ has become a hackneyed and overused saying when talking about fishing gear but the trolling motor really has changed both the inshore and offshore fishing games. The vast majority of UK sea anglers are yet to appreciate how trolling motors could aid their fishing, while here in Florida, you’re considered a dinosaur without one!

This snook took a scented soft plastic

Minn Kota trolling motor deployed we were fishing right up amongst the mangrove fringes again, using weighted foam floats to ‘pop’ out baits and lure out the fish. Fishing is nothing if not unpredictable and today the live shrimp weren’t producing the hits we were hoping for; Captain Joey could see the fish amongst the mangroves but they were still proving to be bite shy. Plan B was therefore put into action as we switched to using  Berkley Gulp Alive minnows instead: popping the floats and twitching the lures through the water. Bingo! Fish on. No monsters but a succession of bites followed resulting in 2lb-4lb snook, typical of the juvenile fish that inhabit the brackish waters of the backcountry (the IGFA World record is a 53lb fish caught in Costa Rica). Snook are pale silver with a black lateral line and best described as looking something in between a European ‘sea’ bass and a zander. Apparently, they make great eating and even at this size are great sport, putting on some aerial displays as they first attempt to throw the hook.  This kind of light tackle fishing is where I’m in my element but I couldn’t help thinking that next time I would love to bring my fly rod for the ultimate way to appreciate these superb sport fish.

DM with another snook while the all important trolling motor at the stern of the boat kept us in position

Not the target species but a crevasse jack and another species to add to David’s list

Throughout the next few hours a steady stream of bites followed including two new species for my Keys tally: a crevalle jack and a series of spotted seatrout, all caught on the Berkley Alive minnows. With the afternoon closing in we decided to see if we could catch us some ladyfish, the absolute must-have bait for tempting a tarpon in this part of Florida. However, the day took an unexpected turn as we approached our final mark.

INTERNATIONAL RESCUE

“How come you ain’t fishin’?”, inquired Captain Joey as we slowed down passing a stationary, but an expensive looking, skiff with two passengers staring into space. “No power”, came the reply, ‘can’t get the engine started”. Now, no matter where you are, there’s an international, if unwritten, code of conduct: you don’t leave a fellow boater stranded without doing what you can to help. Hopes of a final tarpon of the day were dashed but I was happy to forfeit this if it meant, what turned out to be, a father and son were not watching the sunset over the Everglades, waiting for rescue, as the mosquitoes took over the mangroves and the ‘gators and sharks took over the water!

With no radio, no spare battery, and no manual cord to pull start the outboard engine, this dad and lad were literally up the creek without a paddle while metaphorically staring down the barrel of a costly and lengthy rescue service from the mainland. I mentioned the skiff was expensive looking but you can see from the pictures, first impressions are a 18ft centre console boat with very few frills. Skiffs are light boats with very shallow drafts which are used to stalk bonefish across the flats while spotting them from a raised section and using a pole to silently punt the boat around the shallows. What made this skiff particularly valuable was its carbon fibre hull making it light, quiet and incredibly strong and resistant to damage from shallow reefs. We were looking at a custom-made boat worth around $100,000, yet it had no way of rescuing itself from a power failure.

Coming aside the skiff Captain Matt went aboard and within minutes had the cowling, the protective ‘hood’ of the outboard, off. With a length of rope cut to manually pull start the engine, and the outboard in gear, Captain Matt wound the cord onto the engine and after a solid yank from Captain Joey she sputtered to life. Astonished at how they had just been rescued, and the luck of Joey stopping to ask if all was OK, dad and lad praised Matt and Joey, offering their profuse thanks – as well they might! “Keep the engine running all the way home until you have the boat on the trailer”, they were told, “and call us from land so we know that you’re home safe!” was the final message before the two made a run for home. Rescue job complete our fishing day was over but there was one thing left for Captain Matt to do: use his phone to file his live fishing report that airs daily on three radio stations across the Keys. With the editor of the UK’s biggest and best saltwater fishing magazine aboard today, and the drama of a successful at-sea rescue mission, it was certainly an action-packed report!

Captain Matt helps to manually turn over the engine. Believe it or not, this Kevlar-hulled skiff could have been worth around $100,000

DAY TWO

I wasn’t due to fish with Bamboo charters again. The plan had been to take a tour of the Florida Keys Brewing Company in Islamorada that evening, before making my way the following day to Key West. Following my tour around the brewery that evening (a must-visit in Islamorada if you have any interest in beer!) owner Craig took me to the tasting room to sample some of their unique brews – it would have been culturally insensitive to refuse, I’m sure you agree. Low and behold, on arriving at the bar I was greeted by two Bamboo Charter-shirted beer and fishing enthusiasts: Captain Joey and Captain Matt. Halfway through the beer tasting flight (I recommend the Peanut Butter Jelly Time American brown ale!) I received a message to say that, due to engine failure, tomorrow’s charter from Key West had been cancelled. My immediate thought was to ask Matt and Joey what the shore fishing opportunities were like in the Bahia Honda state park which I was due to visit the following morning before driving to Key West.

“Well, I’m free tomorrow, said Joey, “I’ll take you out again from here if you want”. After a quick check with Captain Matt and the trip organiser, tomorrow’s cancelled trip had suddenly turned into another full day’s backcountry fishing from Islamorada. Result! Which just goes to prove an old saying of mine: the solutions to so many of life’s problems can be found by a trip to the pub!

Loaded with fresh bait and fresh enthusiasm for the day’s fishing ahead, albeit tempered a little from the previous night’s beer ‘tasting’, off we shot the following morning. The mission, should we choose to accept it, was to catch a tarpon. It had been tough going for tarpon over recent weeks. July was a less-than-ideal month to target them and the unseasonably high water temperatures had made this notoriously fickle fish even more frustratingly elusive.

LADIES

If we were to have any chance at all we needed a good supply of ladyfish. The ladyfish is a bony species of silver round fish resembling a miniature tarpon. As bait fish for tarpon they are deadly. Catching them can be incredibly easy, particularly when you don’t want to! Of course, when you do, they become inexplicably elusive. One of the best ways of finding them is following the plume of mud suspended in the water as a shoal of mullet moves over the seabed. These plumes can easily be seen from the boat. Ladyfish, and other species, move in, following the plume and picking off any shrimps, fish and other tasty morsels disturbed from the seabed. Be warned! Ladyfish have a nasty habit of evacuating their bowels when landed. While this black or brown mess is unpleasant it’s also incredibly difficult to remove, even from the deck of a boat, if left even for a few minutes in the sun. No captain wants a boat stained with ladyfish poo so any help to wash down the deck is greatly appreciated.

While the ladies were few and far between the spotted seatrout were out in numbers. I lost count of how many we caught popping floats with shrimps or Berkley Minnows again. The theory is that for every 10 smaller males there’s a large female trout within the shoal. Yet, despite the numbers of male fish we caught the big females evaded us. They are, however, great fun to catch on light tackle and can provide non-stop sport when they’re on the feed.

The ladies were playing hard to get!

With as many ladies as we could find it was time to head back inshore in an attempt to intercept the tarpon moving from the backcountry water to the open ocean as the tide changed. Joey was spotting plenty of tarpon rolling. This is a flash of silver as the fish come to the surface to gulp air which they store in their swim bladders and extract the oxygen to supplement the oxygen they get through their gills. It’s unique behaviour they show in hot periods when oxygen levels in the water are low. It can be tempting to chase these rolling fish around in the belief that they are feeding. In fact, it’s more likely to indicate they are struggling to get enough oxygen from the water and may not be feeding at all.

We chose a mark just uptide of a bridge linking the backcountry with the gulf where, in theory, any tarpon moving between the two wouldn’t be able to resist snarfing down a ladyfish. With three ladyfish left it was approaching the last chance saloon for the second day running. As it turned out, Florida’s wide variety of fish mean’t there was a sting in the tail to the final story of the day’s fishing.

The first of the final three remaining ladyfish was intercepted by one of Florida’s nuisance nurse sharks. I was very happy to catch another species, and a shark at that; however, it wasn’t our target species and it meant we were now down to just two baits (one dead, one alive).Ladyfish two was nailed by a beast of a barracuda as it lay a foot under the water’s surface at the side of the boat while we repositioned. Schoolboy Florida Keys fishing error! Two down, one to go.

The final live ladyfish was fished at depth in an attempt to see if the tarpon were feeding lower in the water column. My heart nearly burst of my chest when a tap-tap on the rod tip turned into a lunge as the rod buckled over. “This is it”, I though, waiting for the reel to start screaming as a big tarpon, or perhaps another giant goliath grouper, stripped line from the spool. But then nothing. There was certainly still a fish attached but whatever it was wasn’t shifting. Joey’s first thought was another shark, perhaps foul hooked, which was going to take forever, if ever, to get to the side of the boat. Inch by inch, however, I managed to force it towards the surface until, through the depths of the water, we could see an enormous southern stingray, estimated at somewhere between 80lb-100lb. A beautiful specimen, albeit one with a venomous, mucous-covered spine on its tail which meant it was handled with care at the side of the boat before being released unharmed. Not our target species in the end but how many anglers have spent weeks, month, if not years chasing the ‘silver king’ before achieving success? My attempt to connect with one in just a few days, out of prime season, and in sub-optimal conditions, was always a long shot. And while unsuccessful for tarpon I considered two new species: a nurse shark and giant stingray a successful day’s fishing by almost anyone’s standards, not to mention a whole heap more experience and knowledge gained of how to fish the Florida Keys backcountry.

A southern stingray estimated to be between 80lb-100lb

It was time to move on and say farewell to Islamorada, the superb fishing and the new friends I had made. I was heading as far south as I could on the Overseas Highway where Key West and the open ocean of the gulf awaited for my next Florida fishing adventure!

GETTING THERE YOURSELF

America As You Like It has a seven-night holiday to Florida from £1,980 per person, including return flights from London Heathrow to Miami and car hire. Also included are two nights at the Fisher Inn on Islamorada, three nights at the Oceans Edge Resort & Marina on Key West and two nights at Hawks Cay Resort on Marathon.

www.americaasyoulikeit.com

Tel: 020 8742 8299

To fish with Bamboo Charters contact Captain Matt at captmatt@bamboocharters.com or phone 305-394-0000.

bamboocharters.com

Facebook: @bamboochartersislamorada

Instagram: @bamboocharters

I was staying at the Fisher Inn Resort and Marina:

www.fisherinnresort.com

Facebook: @fisherinnresort

Instagram: @fisherinnresort

Fishing in the Everglades National Park requires a day pass to be purchased. Day pass information and purchasing option can be found at www.nps.gov

Don’t miss the Florida Keys Brewing Company while in Islamorada! www.floridakeysbrewingco.com

For more information about visiting the stunning Florida Keys yourself go to www.fla-keys.co.uk

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