Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Florida Sportsman

Okay, so we all saw the photo of your PB snook. Hearts for you! And you, the one with the slob permit, two thumbs up! And let’s not forget you with the 40-pound mahi. Applause! Flames! We’ve made a culture out of these trophy moments. But sometimes, as I look at the pictures you send us, and the ones you post on social media, I wonder if maybe we’re missing something. Is a big fish the only measure of fishing success? Hardly. Older I get, the more I celebrate the successes that come behind the scenes. Take for example those rare times when I stop my truck—first try—to perfectly align the ball under the coupler. You know what I’m talking about. Even with these backups cameras, some days you get…

SOUTH DAYTONA TACKLE SHOPS: Donald's Bait and Tackle – Port Orange E & J Bait and Tackle – Port Orange The Fishing Shack – Daytona Beach Shores BEACH ACCESS: Wilbur By The Sea ramp and parking lot at Toronita Street. Between there and Ponce Inlet are walkovers and some parking. Ramp at the inlet. You can drive on the beach from the jetty to a quarter mile north. TIDES: All tides. Just move your sand spikes up and down the beach. Lately, incoming tide has dealt the hot hand. Most stretches feature a low tide sandbar that can be waded to and cast from, good for blues. EATS: Bars and restaurants at Inlet Harbor. Also Aunt Catfish's at the bridge is a local favorite. SURF RIG: Eight- to 10-foot rod…

Once that sun goes down, bridge fishing lights up. Down around Miami and the Keys, tarpon are the main suspects. Mid-state anglers on both coasts are tangling with snook. Panhandle and Northeast region anglers with their hands full with jumbo redfish and seatrout. There are a multitude of influences that keep these fish around. Learning how these factors correlate can tip you off on where these fish want to be at any given time. KEEP IT CURRENT Other than the small windows of slack tide found throughout the day, you’re going to find current flowing through these bridges. Whether it’s incoming or outgoing, flow is good. Gamefish stage headfirst into the current, letting the tide bring them the food. Whether on the surface or on the bottom, 99 percent of…

Few sounds are as welcome to a Florida angler’s ears as the low whuff of a bait being inhaled from the water’s surface, signaling the line is about to sing off the reel with a copper zeppelin on the other end. Brawny fights make redfish, Sciaenops ocellatus, one of the state’s most popular gamefish, targeted by 77% of about 3,000 anglers who responded to a recent Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission survey. But a number of threats are pummeling this hardy inshore favorite, including red tide, habitat degradation, water quality problems and increasing fishing pressure. More than 100 Florida anglers convened to discuss the species’ status at FWC’s first annual Redfish Summit on Aug. 24 in Ocala. The event marked the commission’s official kickoff to a discussion of redfish…

DATA WHICH TC COLLECTED from 100 Hall of Fame catches should help the FWC better understand and improve freshwater fisheries, and also provide anglers with useful knowledge and strategies for hunting that fish of a lifetime. What follows are highlights of the HOF research. Full report by TC Director KP Clements is available on the TrophyCatch website. LOCATION: Data from the HOF 100 show that the two Florida counties where most bass over 13 pounds were caught were Clay and Putnam, according to Clements. Lakes include Kingsley, Rodman Reservoir, and a handful of other cooler and deeper than average water bodies especially suitable for growing mammoth bass. Odds of finding bigger fish, therefore, are statistically better in north central Florida, where 30% of HOF bass were registered. TIME OF YEAR:…

Diving ducks, given their diet, can be fishy smelling and tasting. When cleaning your birds take note of the fat color; the whiter the better (suggests a clam diet). If the fat is more orange in color this is an indicator of a fish diet. You can also check the stomach and crop content. If you are the proud shooter of fishy ducks, you’ll have to give them a kick in the pants with some strong seasonings. You can also soak them in a brine after plucking and cleaning in ice water, lemon juice and apple cider vinegar for a day, then dry thoroughly before preparing. The following serves 2; multiply if cooking more than two duck breasts. JAMAICAN JERKED DUCK WITH PAPAYA/ RASPBERRY SALSA 2 duck breasts, skin on…

Red Hot on the Blue Water As the water temperatures cool down, hurricane season comes to an end, and the blue water bite turns red hot! The cooler waters usher in a variety of pelagic predators which have been eagerly awaited by anglers. It’s all about the abundance of pilchards. Late fall and early winter, large masses of pilchards (scaled sardines) are a favorite bait for us Florida Keys guides. What makes them so special? The fact that most species go nuts about them. When you have a livewell full of pilchards, you can chum the waters with live bait and start a feeding frenzy. When fish are feeding in this way, they drop their guard and compete for food. This makes for a killer bite, literally! Learn to throw…

Outdoor Living November can be a funny month. One year the fronts seem to continuously roll through, and it’s blue jeans weather all 30 days. Next year, it’s bathing suit weather for the month. Camping is one of my favorite things to do come these cooler months and our region offers some great opportunities for the family and sportsman alike. Looking to do something for the weekend? Grab your tent and fishing rod and go have fun! ST. LUCIE COUNTY SPOIL ISLANDS The spoil islands paralleling the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Pierce offer a unique primitive camping experience accessible only by boat. There are grills and picnic tables on certain islands, but you must bring the rest. These are first-come, first-served camp sites, requiring no registration. Park the boat and…

BEST BET Schools of whitebait will likely be on the move along the Big Bend this month, followed by Spanish and king mackerel, as well as bluefish. Look for these predators striking bait near deep offshore bars or reefs and troll spoons tipped with a strip of cut mullet belly or FishBites around the edges. Just don’t forget to rig with a short trace of wire leader, as mackerel and blues have teeth—lots of sharp ones! Rootin’ and Tailin’ Reds While genetically related to spotted seatrout, there are several differences between them and red drum (AKA redfish). Red to golden color, a spot on the tail, a bigger head-to-body ratio and larger adult sizes all distinguish reds from trout. But it’s the downward orientation of their mouths that gives us…

BEST BET The first half of November may be the best stretch of the year to hit the surf. Reds are harassing the last of the mullet run, and whiting and pompano will get better all month until the surf temperature drops below 62 degrees. Buying live shrimp and peeling them is hard to beat for whiting, while the pompano are usually in the surf hunting sand fleas. If you’re going to sight fish reds, look for a clear sky between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. with clear water. It’s always best if you can scan the beach at low tide, looking for sloughs and runouts. The fish will use them as highways once the tide starts in. Surf and Turf A calm November ranks very high on every offshore…

BEST BET Bahamas spiny lobster season runs August 1-March 31, and bag limit is 10 per person regardless of how long your trip is. You are not allowed to use artificial breathing mechanisms to harvest bugs, so leave the tanks at home. The trade-off is that you can use a pole spear (sling style only), allowing you to nab a few lionfish at the same time. Look for corals or rocks that provide overhead cover. Carapace minmum is same is Florida – 3 3/8 inches, and egg-bearing females are protected. If you are bringing them home to Florida by boat, they must be whole. Caribbean Wahoo, Costa Rica Billfish If you are staring at a map of the Caribbean wondering where to take a fishing holiday, stick to the edges…

It’s time for action. We, the recreational angler, need to be heard if we want to, expect to, catch a dolphin (mahi) on future offshore trips. Unfortunately for those of you who have fished off the east coast of Florida for dolphin in the last three years you already know there’s a problem with the fishery. Charterboats in the Florida Keys aren’t catching slammers (twenty-plus-pound fish) and anglers from Miami to Jacksonville bemoan the absence of both large and small mahi. Houston, we have a problem. The house is on fire, yet the guy standing in front of the blaze hasn’t called the fire department. The issues facing mahi are widely recognized among many staff, Advisory Panel members and Council members within the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, yet the…

TIGRESS ADJUSTABLE DEEP DROP LEAD HOLDER Here’s a good solution to a common problem when deep drop fishing with heavy stick weights: It’s a rodholder-mountable holder you can set your sinker inside while baiting up, moving from spot to spot, handling fish, etc. Keeps those big leads from smashing your gelcoat or your crew. (Yes, you’ve used your rodholders for bank sinkers and egg sinkers—but trust us, when you get serious about dropping in 600 to 1,800 feet, you’ll be using sinkers too girthy for the 1 5/8-inch bore of a standard rodholder). It’s anodized aluminum with a deep, stainless cup, and it’s adjustable for 0, 15 and 30-degree angle holders. MSRP $118.99. SALT LIFE STEALTH TROOPER BIB Getting to be bib season again in Florida waters. Salt Life has…

REDFISH rank very high in popularity among Florida anglers, and with statewide distribution and year-round availability, they’re always “on our radar.” Here’s a brief sample of winter tips from our team of Field Editors. For more, see the Action Spotter department in each issue of FS. Or, listen in to our weekly Podcast. Panhandle CAPT. BABRIELLE BARNES “If you like to throw artificial, now is the time to scale down your lures in size and slow down your presentation. It is hard to beat a 3-inch GULP! shrimp or fluke on a 1/8-ounce jig head but my second choice would be a 3-inch paddle tail.” Northwest BILL GREER  “Oyster bars, rock structure, points and grassy shorelines are places to fish with gold spoons, soft jerkbaits and rattle floats with small…

We moved to the Destin area in 2008 for three reasons: The main reason was access to the deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. Second was Choctawhatchee Bay, an excellent backup fishing spot. The third, surprisingly, was the duck hunting. While it does not lie on a major flyway, the Florida Panhandle is loaded with wetlands. Eglin Air Force Base owns massive tracts of land, and some of it is old growth, good old Florida swamp land—lots of beavers, making heaps of wood duck holes. We did a lot of research on the area before we moved. We looked at a lot of maps, determined where we could legally hunt ducks, and knew that passion would live on. Bingo, Destin our new home. Of course the new home needed…

Offshore Grab Bag Good month to fish the rocky ledges, bridges, artificial reefs and other structure in Biscayne Bay. Historically, November is when gag, red and sometimes black groupers begin to school up inshore. No guarantees on keeper-size catches, but it’s certainly worth gearing up a bit to handle groupers in the 1- to 15-pound range on light to medium class tackle while using live baits, artificial lures and even by fly casting. There should also be an uptick in groupers close to the beach on nearshore reefs and irregular bottom, sometimes shallower than 20 feet. Most of the year, if groupers are what you choose to target, you’re looking at the ocean over artificial reefs in 100 to 300 feet of water. Out there, 30- to 80-pound class tackle…

BEST BET Snook and redfish are scattered along the mangrove shorelines from the ICW all the way up to the mouths of the Peace and Myakka rivers as they migrate inland for the winter. Run-and-gun fishing which covers as much ground as possible will pay off whether it’s tossing live baits or throwing artificials such as walk-the-dog topwaters or suspending twitchbaits. Don't forget it's still catch-and-release only on snook and reds in this part of the state. Fall Trout on Keeper List Again The fall months have historically been among the most productive for trout fishing on the flats. This year should be better than most since it will be the first fall in nearly four years that trout season has been open in Southwest Florida. Trout fishing in Charlotte…

Reiley, 9, had been begging to go offshore fishing. So the family headed out to 62 feet of water off Cedar Key to some nice live bottom. “We weren’t sure if she was ready to go out that far yet,” aunt Erin Johnson said. “This was kind of a test to see how she’d do. I’d say she passed!” Reiley caught two keeper red groupers on a single drop (one of them shown here). Note: The catch was made before the Sept. 20 Gulf red grouper season closure.…

BEST BET Gag grouper season is open and the cooler water always seems to lure them closer to shore. One of the best ways to find them is by trolling deep-diving plugs. Some anglers have success with large spoons, heavy jigs and even plastic swimbaits. Diving planers are good for getting lighter baits closer to the bottom. Almost every jump-off spot between Keaton Beach and Port Saint Joe has shallows from 12 to 25 feet deep that can be trolled for grouper. The shallows off St. Marks, Ochlockonee Bay and Dog Island can be productive. Hunt or Cut Bait It’s hard to resist the lure of hunting season but November is also a great month for spending time on the water. There are plenty of fish to catch and it’s…

Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation (required by 39 U.S.C. 3685) 1. Publication Title: Florida Sportsman. 2. Publication Number: 0015-3885. 3. Filing Date: October 1, 2021. 4. Issue Frequency: Monthly Including two Double Issues of Aug/Sept and Dec/Jan. 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 10. 6. Annual Subscription Price: $26.95. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication (Not Printer): Outdoor Sportsman Group, 1040 6th Avenue, 17th Fl, New York, NY 10018-3703. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of the Publisher (Not Printer): Outdoor Sportsman Group, 1040 6th Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10018-3703. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Production Manager: Publisher: Blair Wickstrom, 3725 SE Ocean Blvd, Ste 202, Stuart, FL 34996. Editor: Jeff Weakley, 3725 SE…

Once feared by boaters, Ponce Inlet now is one of the most accessible inlets in Florida. Pay the fee and drive your car right up to the north jetty. Walk over and find eddies to cast into. Better yet, try your luck in the ocean. There's no coquina on the Daytona coast so you can surf-cast the beach with absolute impunity. The lighthouse alone is worth making the trip. The area is pretty rustic and this antique, dating to 1887, will put you in mind of a wilder and woolier time, along with affording a fantastic view. Between the inlet and South Daytona Beach, something unheard of has been happening this year. The pompano bite usually ends in mid-May, but feet on the sand were reporting June and July as…

I guess I’ve fished just about every power setup there is, from trolling under full sail to quad outboards, and I sometimes feel like I’ve never seen the same wake twice, when I looked back at my baits. The stories of some of the old wooden sportfish pioneers are full of tales of wakes and harmonics that could call a fish in from the next hemisphere. Likewise, there are just as many tales of captains that totally lost their mojo when they bumped the bottom, and it caused a ding in their prop too small to see, but a marlin swimming off the coast of Africa could hear it, and cancel his trip to Florida. Whereas I am certain the wider the spread of baits you can run, the more…

12 shucked oysters, preferably “selects” 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1/3 cup Panko breadcrumbs 1 small red onion, finely chopped 2 cups chopped fresh spinach ¼ cup Ouzo or dry white wine 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese Tabasco sauce Salt and pepper, to taste Prep and Cook Time: 30 Minutes Serves: 4 Arrange oysters on shells. Melt butter in a skillet. Sauté the garlic for 2 minutes to infuse the butter. Place the breadcrumbs in a mixing bowl and add half the garlic butter, set aside. To the remaining garlic butter in the skillet, add onion and spinach, cook for 3 minutes until the spinach wilts. Deglaze the pan with Ouzo or wine. Season with salt and pepper, add a dash of Tabasco sauce. Allow…

“If you spend the money on a proper gun,” Young says, “you won’t need to ever replace it.” GUNS, FLOAT LINES & RIGGING: “I dive the Super Amero bluewater gun by Hatch Custom Spearguns,” Young says. “The gun is Euro-style, 65 inches with four bands, and each gun is ballast tested for neutral buoyancy. This gun can be purchased through Neptonics and comes fully rigged for bluewater at $1,000. “For the tip, I am running a Neptonics slip tip with a Spectra line. From there I run two wraps of 250-pound monofilament and connect the working end to a float line adapter to create a fully break away system. The adapter is then connected to a 75-foot floatline. For the float, I like the Neptonics 75-pound or the Spearmasters 3ATM.…

TrophyCatch, Florida’s year-round tournament and research program, awards recognition and prizes to anglers. If you can beat George Perry’s 1932 world record bass of 22 pounds, 4 ounces, which he fooled by casting a Creek Chub plug between flooded trees on an oxbow lake off Ocmulgee River in south Georgia, you stand to earn between five and ten million dollars, depending on how you parlay your feat into tackle endorsements, public appearances and films or documentaries, according to outdoors writers and economists. The 20-year-old Perry, however, didn’t fare as well. His rewards were $75 in sports gear from Field & Stream magazine—equal to about $1,400 in today’s dollars—and two dinners from the 22-pounder cooked in a bed of onions and tomatoes for his family of six. His legendary status and…

DATES: Nov. 20-28, Dec. 11-Jan. 30 PERMITS: $5 waterfowl permit plus $28.50 federal duck stamp, in addition to hunting license and migratory bird permit. BAG LIMIT: 6, including no more than 2 mallards (of which only 1 can be female), 4 scoters, 4 eiders, 4 long-tailed ducks, 3 wood ducks, 2 redheads, 2 black ducks, 2 canvasbacks, 1 pintail, 1 mottled duck (Florida duck) and 1 fulvous whistling-duck. 1 scaup from Nov. 20-28 and Dec. 11 – Jan. 10, 2 scaup from Jan. 11-30 and during Youth and Veteran/Military hunt days. All other species of duck may be taken up to the 6 duck daily limit. (Coots, mergansers and certain geese also may be taken during waterfowl season—see MyFWC. com for respective bag limits) GETTING STARTED: Visit MyFWC.com and under…

Options, Options, Options… October tends to get a bunch of deserved attention in the 10,000 Islands region, but November might be one of the best months to fish. The weather could be described as “chamber of commerce-esque.” Air temperatures have settled in to fall, as have the water temperatures, and the annual fall bait migration is in full swing. Add all those up and you have a recipe for multi-species fun including redfish, snook, tarpon, triple-tail, mackerel, snapper, sheepshead and a host of others that will cooperate this month. Late spring is synonymous with tarpon in the 10,000 Islands, heck almost downright famous for them in our region, however a very often overlooked time to catch full grown migratory tarpon is the fall. While the “season” can be short in…

BEST BET Our typical tournament kingfish runs from the 30s to the upper 40-pound range but monsters tip the scale as much as 60 pounds. The really big ones are almost always caught on live bait slow-trolled. Look for hard bottom where you’ll find baitfish schools. Tournament anglers troll by bumping motors in and out of gear, allowing the boat to move just fast enough to make baits look natural. If you’re looking to jump into the big money arena of kingfishing, go to www.oldsaltfishingclub.com. The 28th Annual Fall Old Salt King of the Beach Tournament runs Nov. 4-6 out of Madeira Beach. It’s Cool to be Cool No matter where you fish in the West Central region this month, you’ll find the action heating up as the waters cool…

BEST BET With the advent of cooler water temperatures and shorter light periods, glass minnows will be a part of the fall baitfish migration and nothing fires up Spanish mackerel quicker along the surf than these translucent bay anchovies. A calm surf, the best resulting from a west wind, will allow baits to hug the beach and mackerel will move in and out, sometimes no more than a flip cast away. Artificials need to be two to three inches in length, and if you need to throw distance use leaded lures like the Diamond Jigs that have been catching mackerel for decades. The bag limit is 15, and size is 12 inches to the fork. It’s a great opportunity to put kids on some fun catches. Dial in the Crappie…

BEST BET Redfish are going to be the most reliable bite right now. Fish the falling tide on bridges and jetties for bull reds, and try the grass flats ranging from 2 to 4 feet for slot reds. When fishing the grassflats during these cooler months, live shrimp is a great bait but if you want to throw artificial, a 3’’ GULP! fluke rigged on a weedless hook is hard to beat. You may still find schools of bull redfish crushing menhaden on top in Pensacola Bay. Get the Drop on Trout, Snapper and More The fall pattern is in full swing now and inshore fishing is great. Each cold front that passes through will have the trout moving towards the creeks and back bay estuaries, but early November you…