Florida Sportsman is the complete fishing magazine for Florida and the Tropics. Devoted to fishing, boating, and outdoor activities in the Sunshine State, Florida Sportsman is the authoritative source for Florida's most active fishermen.
WEBSITE WWW.FLORIDASPORTSMAN.COM HIDDEN GEMS: UNCOVER MORE! Catch the great locations we covered in last year's August/September print edition. Discover shrimping on the St. Johns River, sight-fishing reds in the Northeast, tripletail in East Central, brawler crevalle in the Southeast and more great Florida fishing adventures DIGITAL WEB EXCLUSIVES 10 TIPS FOR FISHING WITH A GUIDE – BY GEORGE LABONTE Planning to hire a guide or jump aboard a charterboat soon? Here are a few simple guidelines to maximize your enjoyment THE EXOTICS INVASION – BY STEVE KANTNER As early as the late 1950s, South Florida anglers began catching colorful new species from their local waterways. A few exotics would become prized sportfish; others, a lingering nuisance PODCAST TARPON & MANGROVE SNAPPER – A.M. TARPON, P.M. MANGS This month, Capt. Rick…
You can call me at 4 a.m., seriously. I’m usually up. What, you too? Trying to get another hour of sleep? You know how much work that is. Meditate. Count backwards from 200. Me, I’m checking the wind, checking the radar, checking the data buoy, flipping through my mental fishing log. My wife and daughters—who’ll hear me rattling in the kitchen, later watch me nod off at dinner—call me crazy. Doctors would probably refer to me as an insomniac. Somewhere I read it’s a sign of depression, this early-wake/sleep maintenance deal. Well, gang, I’ve looked into all this. I’ve tried on the labels—and more than a few sleep aids—but it just doesn’t feel right. I’m not bummed, I’m ready for adventure! Every day, new possibilities, new places to go, new…
The reasons for eliminating the use of plastic bottled water are numerous. First, you pay something like 2,000 times what you’d pay for typical tap water. Then there’s the cost our planet pays via the pollution created manufacturing the plastic bottles and cost associated with discarded plastic water bottles. And finally, the most immediate impact and reason to stop buying plastic water bottles today: the harm it's doing to our springs and connected rivers and estuaries. The extraction of millions of gallons of water a day from our state’s springs and artesian wells, at virtually no cost to the bottler, has a very direct impact to the state. Stopping the use of plastic water bottles isn’t a novel revelation or an out of the blue concept. Defenders of our springs…
The more west you go, the better the fishing,” said Tom Janke, a month-long resident of Boyd’s Campground on Stock Island, just a canal east of Key West. “I like the Tortugas, so I want to live as close as possible,” he added with a smile. During our impromptu interview, Tom and I were standing on the deck of his 27 Sea Vee bay boat in a slip at the campground. “My wife prefers hotels,” he said with a laugh. “I have my RV so I can camp here from mid-June to mid-July,” he said. “It’s the perfect time for me. It’s not that hot yet, the mutton bite is still pretty good and the red grouper are off the chart.” Looking around Boyd’s boat basin, it was clear Tom…
HUK A1A SUN HAT A1A rings a familiar bell to Florida anglers. Indeed, for Huk’s A1A lineup, the designers focused on offering tropical weight performance attire for coastal anglers. Case in point: The A1A Sun Hat. It has a shapeable wire brim, elastic cord and perforations to let air move. Keep the UV out and let the cool in! One size fits all. Colors black, oyster and Huk blue. MSRP $40. HOBIE HANK CHERRY CHAMPIONS COLLECTION Winner of the 2020 and 2021 Bassmaster Classics, Hank Cherry recently teamed with Hobie Eyewear to design a collection of floating polarized fishing sunglasses. Together, they are proud to announce the new Hank Cherry Champions Collection. The Bluefin Float is Hobie’s largest frame to date and is a great choice for anglers with larger…
When it comes to mahi fishing, every captain on the ocean has a love/hate relationship with seaweed, and more specifically sargassum. I was told for many years that mahi love shade. They supposedly hung out under seaweed to get out of the sun for a while. I totally believed that theory until I started noticing there’s different kinds of seaweed, and while they all provide shade, they most definitely don’t all provide mahi. Weedlines are formed by two bodies of water colliding. This is most often caused by tides around river mouths, or two bodies of water coming together offshore, often as a result of the Gulf Stream current off the east coast, or the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico. When two active, rapidly moving currents collide, the…
