I was standing on a rock and I fell off it. I banged my shin, right in that spot where there’s nothing but skin over bone, and it hurt. The rod did not break. The reel had a gash in the bar stock but still worked fine. I pulled myself up and on to the beach and the person fishing near me laughed. (He was a plug fisherman.) I did not catch a fish. This happened in New York. Fortunately there is a cure for every fishing drought and it’s called Florida. I fished from a lakeshore at dawn for bass and I did not fall in. There are alligators. I had pulled pork and sweet tea for lunch and a cuban with black…
Posts tagged “snook”
While down here for the Miami Boat Show, I met briefly with Aaron Adams of the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. We had planned on sitting down for a full interview but outside forces pulled us in different directions. We did get to casually discuss the recent cold-induced carnage in Florida, and he dispensed some staggering information. Possibly 300,000 adult snook killed, out of an estimated 1.5 million adults total. That’s a huge percentage. Plus, he speculated that possibly two entire year classes of juvenile tarpon that come of age in the mangroves have been wiped out. Plus damage to turtle grass beds and mangroves that could take years to recover. The thought I took away from it is, extend the catch-and-release only fishing for…
Tagged: Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, cold snap, fish kills, snook
The tarpon had all blown out of the area so we made do with what he had. No matter, any day that involves pulling snook from the mangroves is a good one.
Tagged: snook, snuke, west coast Florida
The headwaters to the Florida Everglades start all the way up in Orlando, where Shingle Creek starts the flow of freshwater south to Florida Bay. Before the developers and the sugar plantations got to it, the massive flow moved unimpeded through a complex 8.9 million acre web of lakes, rivers, and marshes down into the mangrove estuaries of the southern coast. The Everglades hasn’t been what it is supposed to be in over a century, since the election of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward as the state’s 19th governor, and along with that his mission to drain the Glades, starting with the New River Canal in 1906. The National Park today consists of 1.5 million acres of protected wetlands. It’s deathly hot, bug infested, wild, dangerous,…
Tagged: back country fly fishing, Everglades, National Parks, redfish, snook, tarpon
I loved the article in the Wall Street Journal about brownlining, and was glad to see props go out to Fat Guy, Gracie, JP, et al, and for the esteemed Mr. Chandler and Mr. Barton getting credit for coining a new name for a fly fishing genre. But the article stopped a little short. Before brownlining there was ditch fishing. The concept of casting flies in less than pristine settings goes back decades. In Florida, many well known fly fishing luminaries and pioneers cut their teeth fishing the Everglades and the vast network of man-made backwater canals that carve up the southern tier of the state. It is well documented that anglers such as Flip Pallot, Chico Fernandez, and Norman Duncan–who invented the Duncan…
The Hell’s Kitchen Fly Fishing and Scuba Tank Advisory has declared sight casting to snook crashing bait in docklights to be great. The Advisory has also declared discount flights to Florida and friends with boats who don’t make you split the gas to be better than good.
Tagged: dock lights, night fishing, snook
Coincidentally, where I grew up is pronounced “Boca Rah-Tone”, not “Ratan.” (As an aside on where I live now, if I say “New York,” the proper response is not “How can you stand it?” or “I could never live there” or or any number of replies that you would be insulted by if someone said it about where you live.)
Tagged: Everglades, Flamingo, snook
In many places the great river of grass that flows south from Okeechobee through the Everglades and out to Florida Bay is, depending on time and tide, ankle deep. But it is still navigable. The Seminoles and later the cracker Gladesmen criss-crossed the skinny-water labyrinth by poling in long narrow dugout skiffs. It is these historical canoes that Ron Hyde used for inspiration in designing his new Seminole Flats skiff. I spent time last week running the Glades with Hyde in a Seminole, and it is unlike any other modern flats skiff. The one-time owner of the Goodnews River Lodge in Alaska, Hyde has also fished the back country in the Everglades and Biscayne Bay longer than I’ve been alive. He likes to get…
Tagged: Everglades, flats skiff, Seminole, snook, tarpon
