Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2017 i Florida Sportsman

SaltMarsh Skiffs SM 1444 The next generation of landlocked anglers ready to graduate from bridge and pier fishing and move into a backwater boat will appreciate the simplicity, functionality, and cost effectiveness of the SM 1444. This 14-foot by 44-inch skiff (58-inch beam at deck level) takes a page from the classic aluminum duck boat design and merges it with a modified hull style ideal for poling into the skinniest of waters. Coming in at a meager 185 pounds hull weight and rigged with an outboard or surface drive up to 20 HP, this boat will take you just about anywhere inside, over shallow waters inaccessible by most. This is a true double duty boat which is at home on the flats one day and in the duck marsh the…

“A tactic sometimes forgotten with today’s high-tech and go-fast mentality.” While fishing Florida’s Big Bend on the Gulf Coast recently, I was reminded of the advantages offered by drift fishing, a tactic sometimes forgotten with today’s high-tech and go-fast mentality. In this part of the state, described by marine biologists as “one of the most extensive sea grass bottoms in North America,” the fish are scattered far and wide over good cover and habitat and drifting is the only way to reach them. And the crowd knows it. Anglers who drift fish can fire away all day without getting wet or walking even a few steps. Soft bottom, deep water, and saltwater hazards like stingrays or oyster reefs are passed right over while covering lots of ground. The power of…

How Big? On December 23, 1983 Larenza Mungin landed a 20-pound, 9-ounce southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) while bumping a live mullet slowly along the shallow edge of a deep channel located at the southern portion of the Nassau Sound George Crady public fishing pier. Mun-gin’s flounder is still the Florida and International Game Fish Association record for the species. A related species, the summer flounder (P. dentatus), reaches at least 22 pounds, 7 ounces—the IGFA all-tackle record since 1975. Summer flounder are thought to make occasional forays into Northeast Florida waters. Making Minnows Flounder fishermen can trap their own bullhead minnows by baiting up a minnow trap not more than 24-inches in diameter with a funnel entrance not more than 1-inch in spread. Minnow seines having a stretched mesh size…

We were somewhere between Key West and Cuba, just a speck in the ocean. Fishing the 2017 Havana Club Key West Marlin Tournament, Capt. Jamie Connell and crew had tunnel vision, keeping a close eye on the spread, hoping to see a bill breach the water and swat a skirt. After taking second place in the tournament last year, hopes were high. We’d found the small “chicken” dolphin working bait amongst scattered weeds. Dolphin are tasty morsels for blue marlin. As we worked around the outside edge of the school, checking the depth finder, Connell broke the silence: “Look at that mark at 150, that’s him, boys.” No more than 30 seconds later, we had a blue marlin on our right teaser. It all happened so fast, but the crew…

Behind the scenes of Florida’s diverse and abundant marine life are ranks of scientists committed to documenting the life histories and inter-relationships of fishes. Much of the vital field work is performed by graduate students who, in many cases, literally plunge into their research. Meaghan Faletti, a 2013 graduate of Florida State University, came to the attention of Florida Sportsman recently. A recreational diver and spearfisher, Faletti ran the FWC Lionfish Outreach program from 2014-2016. For her Master’s thesis at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science in St. Petersburg, she is currently studying hogfish (“The best-tasting fish in the world,” she opines). Also, Faletti is working on an intriguing new population study of pinfish, funded by the Florida Forage Fish Coalition, a recent partnership of private conservation…

Shrimp: small in size, but a giant player in estuaries throughout Florida. Everything eats shrimp, and they’ve proven time and time again to be one of the best baits inshore. Lure manufacturers have been making soft-plastic shrimp imitations for decades, in different shapes, sizes and colors. Some of them come rigged on a jighead, some on a weedless hook, some un-rigged. There are many different ways these can be fished. Here are some tactics for common scenarios that will help you catch more fish. In the Rough Redfish love to get up in seagrass flats, burying their heads into the thick of it, hunting for shrimp and other crustaceans. This sets the stage for some excellent sight-fishing, but a bait with an exposed hook is practically unfishable in this situation.…

In much of Florida, hunting season is in and hunters are taking to the woods to scout out good locations for deer. One of the best ways to find deer is to watch their favorite food sources. As the weather cools, deer start turning from protein sources toward carbohydrates. In the summer, deer need higher protein because does are raising fawns and bucks are growing antlers. In the fall they need carbohydrates so they can put on some fat for the winter. During the late summer and early fall, many fruit and nut trees start dropping their bounty. This includes persimmons, beautyberries, red mulberry, black gum or American tupelo and acorns, as well as pecans, hickory nuts and honey locusts. If you can find a good producing smaller-seeded red oak,…

Like most public interactions, there are unspoken rules when drift fishing: If everyone else is doing the same, try not to anchor and block the rhythm and traffic; anchoring will limit you to a small circle within casting range. Often the fish can be stretched out for a half-mile or more, and drift fishing is all about covering ground without getting in another boat’s way. Worse still is motoring up or down another boat’s drift, disturbing the water with propwash. We’re talking about water depths of only four to 10 feet on average, and gamefish won’t tolerate the disturbance—they shut down or move. Determine drift direction and ease around upwind or off to the side of other drifting boats. Don’t zigzag through the fleet at high speed, looking indecisive. It’s…

ITWAS an odd question, but Miami inshore guru Capt. Jorge Valverde had a particular meaning when he queried Reid McKinstry: “Did you have sunscreen on your hands? I can taste it.” McKinstry had just fetched a live shrimp for Valverde; a move that saved our guide from leaving the poling platform where he stood nimbly perched and hyper focused on the shallow brine of lower Biscayne Bay. Our target—the gray ghosts we call bonefish—are skittish and keen to detect the slightest disturbance, anomaly or SPF intrusion into their gin-clear environment. But taste sunscreen, really? Yep, Valverde picked up the slightest hint of oily residue when he bit the tail off that shrimp. “I bite the tails off for two reasons; first, it puts more scent in the water and that…

What keeps this highly migratory species coming back year after year? Talking with Ellen Peel of The Billfish Foundation, she explained there are three things that marlin are looking for: warm water (averaging 82 degrees), prey and oxygen. A group of scientists installed 123 satellite tags on marlin between the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic in the first decade of 2000; this gave them the opportunity to track what these fish were doing year-round. These fish seem to move on a quarterly basis that aligns with the seasonal climate shift. The first quarter, many of the sampled fish spent most of their time in the southern Gulf of Mexico, off of the Yucatan Peninsula and below Jamaica. The made their way north for the second quarter, hanging around the northern…

Seatrout Forever Over the summer the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission held workshops statewide to gather information about people’s opinions of their seatrout fishing and to answer questions about methods and results of the 2017 FWC stock assessment of local seat-rout populations. The responses they garnered from the numerous workshops were documented and presented to the FWC, with an eye toward possibly making changes to regulations for seatrout. In all four Florida zones, seatrout populations are in good shape, according to the FWC’s 2017 assessment. “Good shape” means that populations are exceeding the spawning potential ratio (SPR) target of 35 percent, a measure of the reproductive capacity of the population compared to what it would be if there were no fishing. Despite the good report, angler concern about seatrout…

Sometimes you have to take your life in your hands and feel how much it weighs to measure its worth. That’s one of the joys of adventure angling for me, and usually after a risky trip I come back with a greater appreciation for my existence. Then, on an extended solo backpacking and fishing trip in Yosemite, I had a different reaction. Deep in a gorge along the Tuolumne River, nowhere near where a rescue copter could land, I stepped on a rattlesnake just before nightfall. The snake backed off and so did I, but that moment I didn’t think of myself, but of my kids back home. There had to be some way that I could mitigate the medical and financial risk and still continue the adventuring, which for…

ANGLR Tracker Used to be we called a scale a de-liar. Now there’s a growing array of digital devices that’ll put the truth in your tales. One company, ANGLR Tracker, sells a sensor you strap to a fishing rod, pair with a smartphone app and press whenever you hit a honeyhole or catch a fish. The app records your number of casts, locations and catch results, then aggregates weather data for a kind of digital log-book. The sensor (with charger) sells for about $130 and there’s a $50 per year fee to access your online logbook and various trip-summary consoles. See www.anglr.com Minn-Kota “New” Talon Minn-Kota’s powered stake anchor, the Talon, is now built to be controlled in several ways—including directly from the touch screen of a Humminbird sonar/plotter combo.…

Use a dehooking tool to remove the hook, or cut the line as close to the fish as possible. Bragging rights shouldn’t come at the expense of the sailfish. Despite the best intentions of well-meaning anglers, sailfish held out of the water for photos stand a greater chance of dying after being released than those left in the water following a fight. And just for the record, hoisting a sailfish out of the water for a photo is against federal law (unless you hold a Highly Migratory Species angling permit and plan to keep it). Atlantic highly migratory fish (including sailfish and marlin) “must be released in a manner that will ensure maximum probability of survival, but without removing the fish from the water,” says the code of federal regulations…

There are few things as heart wrenching as surfacing from a dive with no dive boat in sight. The key to making sure this doesn’t happen is to set your plan for drifting or anchoring properly and making the right call on each spot so you don’t have to swim home. Drifting Live boating, or drifting with the divers, is one of the best ways to keep everyone safe and in many cases the least strenuous way to dive effectively. This technique is best for: Strong current: Anchoring in strong current makes it challenging for divers to stay over the spot and relax before a dive. By dropping them off and picking them up for a drift, this lets them drift with the current and prepare better to make a…

Boarding Chip Davis’ 18-foot skiff at Beach Marine’s public boat ramp, we were soon talking about how good the fishing is all year in the Intracoastal Waterway between Jacksonville and St. Augustine. After a short run south, Chip shut off his outboard and engaged his electric trolling motor in an area of the Intracoastal where a combination of docks on the east side of the waterway and fallen trees on the west side offers ideal fish habitat. We began casting minnow type plugs over large flats that dropped off into the deep waters of the channel. Our expectations were high, as we knew the docks and oyster bars offered habitat and ambush points for predatory gamefish. Today, however, we had somewhat of a challenge in that it was the day…

Bonefish are famous sprinters. Hook an 8-pounder on a broad flat of ankle-deep water and you’ll be amazed at how quickly that fish can put 100 yards of line between his head and your reel. There is, however, a downside to this sprinting ability. After release, a fatigued and potentially disoriented bonefish may be easy prey for sharks and barracuda. Bonefish & Tarpon Trust offers these release tips to give your next bonefish a fighting chance: Use tackle sufficient to the task. Ultralight gear may be fun, but the unnecessarily long battle can doom your fish. Conversely, subduing a bonefish too soon can lead to injury if a “green” fish thrashes at boat-side. You know you’ve hit the right balance when you can lift the fish’s head slightly above the…

Summer’s over. And what a summer it’s been—at least in terms of tomatoes. Produce counters overflowed with rich-tasting Burpee’s Big Boys as well as plump romas. As a result, prices were so reasonable that sliced tomatoes were an everyday option on many Floridians’ supper tables. Just a simple splash of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and a dash of salt and pepper were all that was needed for this Southern favorite. But there is an option to fresh tomatoes, and that’s especially true in Italian cooking, even at the height of the summertime “bumper crop.” That option, canned tomatoes, spans a range from watery and bland to rich and luscious. The best ones come from Italy’s Samo Valley, and they are distinctly (and legally) labeled San Marzano. Open a can,…

Snook, Near You Snook season is open on both coasts in October, and next month, too. The legal bag is one per person, per day, not less than 28” total length (TL) or more than 32” TL on the Atlantic side, and not less than 28” total length (TL) or more than 33” TL on the Gulf side. The species has been increasing its range to the north in recent years, so keep an eye out where you fish in Florida. Got Pilchards? Fall fishing can be tough, but if you take some time and learn how to catch some of the season’s live baits, you will be ahead of the competition. October brings large schools of pilchards to the shallows surrounding the Florida Keys. Pilchards are in my opinion…

Inshore fishing tournaments have evolved quite a bit during our generation. The days of lugging around precious gamefish, dead for the purpose of competition only, are nearly completely gone. Catch-Photo-Release, or CPR tournaments, have become the norm. Marrying them with the powerful technology most anglers carry on every fishing trip anyhow only made sense, and the combo has led to a revolution in the competitive fishing industry. While there are plenty of day-long and weekend tournaments out there, the long derby-style events are becoming more popular, and they can serve many purposes, including drawing plenty of first-time tournament anglers. The second annual Lake Worth Lagoon Challenge has already grown from the original 4-week format to a 6-week event, which ran from late May into June. It was started to collect…