Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Florida Sportsman

SELECT CONTENT AVAILABLE NOW ON OUR DIGITAL CHANNELS Whatcha gonna throw? Find the four rigs you need to know for success on Florida piers. Scan code for online articles. WEBSITE WWW.FLORIDASPORTSMAN.COM FOUR BASIC PIER RIGS – BY SID DOBRIN It’s fall and the fish—and fisherfolks—are migrating to the beaches. Here are the rigs that will get the job done on any coastal pier. If you missed this featured article from Sid Dobrin last year, catch it on the Florida Sportsman website this month. DIGITAL WEB EXCLUSIVES TOP 10 FOR SNOOK – BY BRENTON ROBERTS Snook are apt to eat artificials of many varieties, making fishing for them a blast for light tackle enthusiasts. In certain conditions, some lures work better than others. Fill a tackle box with these baits…

Why do so many Florida anglers diss gar? I think the number one explanation is quite simple—it is easy to get them to bite, but seemingly impossible to catch them! Anglers just can’t take that! Their bony, narrow mouths and rows of needle-like teeth make it extraordinarily difficult to sink a hook into. Add this to the fact that if you do get them to the net, you must remove the hook from a muscular, bony-plated fish that will definitely try to bite you. To make matters worse, though reputed to be respectable dinner fare, cleaning gar is an odious exercise that begins with cutting off tough armor with tin snips even before you can get down to the challenging task of filleting the meat from their bony body. (There…

Florida has wonderful deer hunting opportunities and the state is heavily committed to expanding them. Setting aside the relatively small stature of Florida’s white-tailed deer, there is much to commend Sunshine State deer hunting. There is a great diversity of habitat across some 6 million acres of public lands. Moreover, if one is willing to travel the peninsula and commit to proficiency with bowhunting and black powder equipment as well as the modern rifle, Florida offers an almost-unbelievably long season. The rutting season has highly variable dates around Florida, so you need to know when it is in the particular area that you are hunting if you intend to try to take advantage of it. The buck rubs and scrapes will show you where best to place your stand for…

Long-awaited fall time fishing is here, which means pilchard time! For us Florida Keys guides, the arrival of the large biomasses of pilchards is a welcomed one, especially after the last couple of months when the water temperatures reached their peak, producing algae blooms that brought the bite to a crawl. Now the trend is clearing water and great fishing. Pilchards, or scaled sardines, can be found throughout the Florida Keys and are most common in the fall and early winter months. Some areas can hold some baits throughout the year, and these locations are highly coveted by guides. Good bait spots are highly sought after and can easily get depleted by the information getting out, so when it comes to bait spots, you might not get as much advice…

As we ease into fall, the slow cooling trend begins to change our fisheries and tactics throughout the Southeast Region. The rain also lets up a bit, clearing up the water some. Just say a prayer we don’t get one of those late season hurricanes. Talk of the town this month always seems to be the mullet. This cooler weather sends droves of bait from the Carolinas down the coast and right through our region. The fish know this and gorge accordingly. Although a moving target, there are some places that you will always come across these schools at some point. Local inlets, such as St. Lucie and Palm Beach, are a personal favorite of mine. Think about it from a gamefish’s point of view. When hanging around the inlet,…

October is what they call a transition month. After a few cool fronts (if we’re lucky) all sorts of big fish, some of them unusual, show up in depths of only six feet along Florida’s Big Bend. Anglers making typical drifts over grass bottom, usually with corks and live pinfish or slinging artificials, have been startled by heavy strikes and long runs. A little pre-planning really helps here, because every second counts. It means quickly pulling in that drift sock, cranking the motor, pivoting the boat, and giving chase. Why? A spool of 12-pound line on typical trout spin gear is easily emptied when a big one bites, even if the reel is well-packed. You might have only 10-12 seconds before reaching the knot. If that is imminent, grab the…

Yes, we’re mostly a fishing magazine—but at the right time of year (as in now), we engage expert, passionate writers to share inside stories on uniquely Florida hunts: our early whitetail rut, our much-coveted Osceola turkey, our tee-shirt-weather waterfowling, among others. Think of it as special content for the “new-to-Florida” hunter. What about the “new-to-hunting?” Glad you asked. For foundational tips, plus gear reviews, firearms advice and bucketlist road trips, let me point you toward the larger communications network of which our magazine is a part. The Outdoor Sportsman Group includes authoritative hunting titles such as Game & Fish, Petersen’s Hunting, Bowhunter, Gun Dog, and many others. Their staff devote the same level of care to their subject matter as we do to our own. Same can be said for…

DAIWA FREE SWIMMER BR Fishing big live baits? A dropback is a good technique. That means letting line pull free at the strike so your fish gets its mouth around the bait before you come tight to set the hook. Spinning reels can be built with a clutch and spool tension system to enable an automatic, controllable line release, and that’s what Daiwa offers in its new Free Swimmer series. You flip a lever at the base of the reel, and that puts the spool in freespool mode. Adjust the tension control knob for the preferred resistance. When a fish bites, the line runs… and after a four or five count, you flip the lever back to engage the main drag, and hopefully you’re on! Daiwa also suggests using the…

Have you ever heard of a ghost shrimp? Yeah, me neither. How about their scientific name Callianassa subterranean? Oh heck no. I will, however, bet that you have seen the thousands of little holes in the sand being washed over by every wave that comes in at the beach. I’ll also be willing to bet you that you have dug out those holes, probably looking for a sand flea. Yeah, I’ve tried it too, and found nothing. Give it up. Those holes ain’t from sand fleas, and they may be the mouth of a tunnel system a whole lot longer than your shovel. Where else but YouTube could you find a video of somebody shoving a 2-foot long 2-inch PVC pipe into the sand and pulling a rubber ball up…

The face of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is normally FWC’s uniformed officer. Many people are not aware of a team of Investigators and K9 Officers that make up FWC’s Port Investigations Unit. This 12-member team focuses on the illegal trafficking of fish, wildlife, and seafood through Florida’s ports of entries. Shipments of fish, wildlife, and seafood are intercepted and inspected at international airports, seaports, commercial shipping companies, agriculture check stations, and cold storage facilities which leads to the development of longer-term investigations of suspected persons and businesses. FWC’s Division of Law Enforcement Director Colonel Roger Young expresses the importance of this unique team: “FWC’s Port Investigations Team is Florida’s first line of defense against illegally trafficked resources such as sensitive native species, endangered species, live rock,…

You know, Halloween just ain’t what it used to be. I can remember dozens of kids in their latest Superman costume walking the neighborhood. If the older kids had come up with a way to scare us, it was always successful. I guess I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for things that go bump in the night. Particularly offshore. Captain Fred Morrow ran a lot of trips for a lot of years out of Mayport in Northeast Florida. He was my mentor, and he was the coolest, most clear-headed captain I ever knew. From the day in 1979 that I got my captain’s license he pounded into my head, “Everybody’s okay offshore until somebody panics. You’re the captain and you, especially, you, can never panic.” Fred was…

In 1972, Richard Nixon was our President; gas was 55 cents a gallon; the greatest movie ever made, The Godfather, won the Academy Award for Best Picture; the Volkswagen Beetle was the most popular car in the world… and Quality Deer Management (QDM) was an unformed thought. In fact, white-tailed deer populations were, at best, uneven across the country. In some places they were dangerously low. In a manifest understatement, a lot has changed over the last 50 years. At that time and in that environment, an enduring hunt club was established in Northeast Florida in what is now, basically, suburban Jacksonville. The history of The Flatwoods Hunt Club is more than the subject of this essay. It is a tale that illustrates: the evolution of deer hunting during the…

South Florida’s hurricane season is winding down and fall temperatures will soon make being on the water a lot more comfortable. The changing weather patterns push schools of baitfish and the predators that feed on these baitfish south into our area. Ask any fishing captain or guide what time of the year they can’t wait for, and the answer is likely to be October. South Florida fishermen can look forward to somewhat cooler temperatures and plentiful baitfish inshore, in the ocean inlets, along our beaches, and in our offshore waters. This can all lead to some of the best fishing we may see all year. If you’re thinking of heading offshore this month, you can expect plenty of snake kingfish to be schooled up just outside the outer reef in…

October is finally here, and this begins the start of our fall transitions. Tidal movement begins its shift to low morning tides. This pattern will continue for months to come. In the back bays toward the end of the month, anglers will begin to see the return of negative low tides. Our temperatures are now beginning to cool off with less humidity, and we will likely have our first “cool front” toward month’s end. This is an exciting time to be fishing in Southwest Florida. The cooling waters to our north begins to push many species of fish into our area. This trend will push big schools of bait into the area that will be here for an extended period. Until we get our third or fourth cold fronts fish…

That slight change in the morning air signals the beginning of the fall baitfish run and some of the best catches of the year. With mullet, menhaden, pilchards, thread herring and glass minnows parading south in stages, the list of inshore possibilities can include cobia, king mackerel, tarpon, snook, bluefish, Spanish mackerel plus packs of bonito and jacks. Cobia will be a primary focus if they show up in numbers. It’s the hunt that has helped popularized the cobia. Anglers like cruising during the bright-light periods of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. searching for rays, turtles, floating debris, anything that will hold cobia, plus the free-swimmers. Other anglers have their favorite inshore reefs that hold baitfish and cobia. As for kingfish, anglers running south out of Ponce Inlet will find…

This time of the year definitely has a lot to offer inshore anglers. It’s not that offshore fishing is bad, it’s actually very good, especially for migratory fish that are moving through the area. But in October, a lot of factors come together to stimulate good fishing in shallow water. Cooling water temperature makes shallow water more appealing for trout, redfish, Spanish mackerel and grouper. Also, a lot of shrimp and baitfish are still lingering inshore before they move to deeper water. This high comfort level and an abundance of food combine to create ideal conditions near shore. October is often thought of as “redfish” month and rightfully so. Reds are prowling inshore flats and anywhere creeks and rivers join the Gulf. In Northwest Florida there is an abundance of…

Marlin capture the imagination of saltwater anglers like no other fish. The mixture of beauty, size, strength and speed offers an unparalleled balance of personal challenge and reward, and Florida anglers seeking this ultimate experience need go no further than our regional tropics. Blue marlin are the royalty of the billfish bloodline. They grow big and fast (a female can reach six feet by the second birthday) and are encountered throughout our tropics in both the Atlantic and Pacific. The best seasons vary based on location, and there is a peak somewhere in the tropics just about all year long. In October, the Atlantic stock is red hot in the southern reaches of the Caribbean. Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are at the center of the bullseye right now. A stone’s…

Jonathan Moss started fishing on Florida’s east coast at the tender age of three. For Moss, the thrill consisted of more than seeing a fish turn to charge his lure. He was hooked on the whole ritual of fishing. This began the night before a trip to Cocoa Beach or Sanibel Island as he and his father rigged rods and sharpened hooks in the family’s garage, country music on the radio, Jonathan’s anticipation of the next day’s fights building all the while. Still, the Orlando native never planned to become a guide. Instead, he earned an education degree and became a P.E. instructor, teaching schoolkids about health and fitness. Moss attributes his career change to divine intervention. “God told me to be a fishing guide,” he said. “I thought that…

The National Marine Fisheries Service now says we, the recreational angler, are catching too many red snapper out of season, resulting in too many fish dying after release. This announcement is on the tail of another ridiculously short two-day season in the Atlantic. So, which is it? A fishery overfished, and not doing well enough for a season longer than two days? Or an ocean thick of chunky red snapper resulting in too many fish being caught out of season? Jacksonville angler and Florida Sportsman editor Capt. Rick Ryals says it’s the latter. “We’ve never had a red snapper fishery this good. Not in the 1960s, not in the ’70’s,” Rick exclaimed. “Never.” However, John Carmichael, South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, says the NMFS March 2021 stock assessment paints a…

I love gag grouper. I’ve loved gags since the first one I ever hooked dove into a wreck and broke me off. It’s funny to me that much like snook inshore, grouper have already mapped out an escape plan before they ever bite. Snapper pull hard, but they lack foresight and planning. Grouper grab a bait, and immediately head for safety. Anytime I do a seminar on grouper fishing, I try to stress that when battling a billfish, you need to pace yourself. The battle may go on for a long time, and you can’t burn up all your energy. A grouper’s fate, however, is almost always determined in the first 10 seconds of the fight. Either you keep so much pressure on him that he can’t reach something to…

Congratulations! You scouted out the right spot to hunt, your aim held true; your deer is down! Now is the time to savor the moment and appreciate all that went into the experience. Maybe even for photos. Afterward, your efforts will be directed at getting the buck to the truck. This is not always easy; often times in hunting, success is related to reaching remote and hard to access areas. Even when this is not the case, most management areas restrict vehicular traffic to certain roads. How do you get your harvest out? Sometimes animals can be dragged, depending on the terrain and obstacles like fallen timber, cypress knees, and vines. Game drags easiest headfirst so the hair isn’t pulled contrary to the way it grows. Dragging against the lay…

Calm seas, shallow reef patches and large mangrove snappers by moonlight—it was an irresistible plan. My compadres and I made the three-hour trip from my home in Cutler Bay to the Lower Keys. I was accompanied by Willy Ortega and George Martinez—known in our circle of Miami-Dade County friends as Munk. Time flew by as we took in the sights, and we arrived at Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge shortly after 6:30 in the evening. It didn’t take long before we boarded my friend Capt. Miguel Chinea’s 26-foot Sea Hunt. It’s a hybrid-style boat that is effective and secure both inshore and into the deeper water. On our way out, we stopped to gather a few pinfish from Miguel’s traps on the grass flats, then made a short run east,…

John Fogarty and Creedence Clearwater Revival wrote a great song in the ’70s called “Someday Never Comes.” If you are like me, you spend lots of your working time daydreaming about what you plan to do “someday.” Well, you know what? There’s a lot of us with more flexibility in our work schedule than ever before, and at my age you begin to realize there’s only so many more “somedays.” Longtime friend Frank Wilhelm from Yamaha Outboards and I were discussing the challenges we were facing with having adult sons, and how much we would like to do a weeklong getaway with the “boys.” We knew we wanted to go bluewater fishing, and we knew we had exactly one shot this year to pull it off. Trying to arrange a…

Northeast Florida outdoors-men will experience super flood tides this fall when tides may flood over 8 feet when coupled with a strong northeast wind and full or new moon. Outdoorsmen can participate in both shooting clapper rail (marsh hens) and casting for tailing redfish when these unique flood tides take place. “I had little problem in bagging my limit of 15 marsh hens in past falls during the flood tides,” long time avid Northeast Florida outdoorsman Mutt Daniels said recently. “It has simply been the best marsh hen hunting that I have seen in years. In most cases I harvested my limit in less than 30 minutes of bird hunting!” Daniels navigates on the flooded marshes with a small aluminum john boat which he poles easily into position for both…

I’m not sure if it’s because my birthday is in October, or if the air is suddenly a joy on my face instead of a burden in the lungs. I can't quite say, but man do I love everything about fishing south of society, down in the Everglades in October. Once I was wisely told about the migration of our local fish. It goes something like this: Snook go in and out, tarpon go north and south, and redfish go wherever the food is. So let’s dive into details of what this means. Snook are weaving in and out of passes most of the breeding season in the summer months. When we start seeing cooler water temperatures, the snook will push in the rivers and eventually towards the backcountry areas…

So much is happening inshore, nearshore, offshore, and in freshwater that there is virtually something for every angler to do. Bring your fly rods, spinning tackle, baitcasters, or big conventional tackle to suit whatever your target species is and you’ll likely find some action. Bottom dropping for big gag grouper starting in 150 feet of water and moving toward shore working small ledges and structure nearshore you’re bound to find action as gags are on the move toward shallow depths. Gags will begin moving shallower as water temperatures fall. Perhaps the best plan for finding these migrating gags will be to start fishing in about 50 feet of water, hitting small ledges, rockpiles and wrecks until you find a congregation of fish. If you don’t hit fish at 50 feet,…

You may have to rise a little earlier than normal to feel it, but there’s no doubt it’s here. If you step outside early, you will feel a chill in the air. It may still be stifling hot at midday, but the first northeaster of fall has probably already set off the alarm that colder water temps are on the way. It’s time to wrap up the lazy summer that has seen the river change little from day to day. Once the migration of shrimp and baitfish starts to trickle out of the headwaters of the St. Johns, the entire Northeast Florida watershed is set in motion. I’ve often wondered how difficult life must be for a shrimp. Let’s consider the poor little male shrimp. He grows into the shrimpy…

The days are getting shorter, and temperatures are dropping. Fall is in the air and the fish are on the move. October is one of my favorite months to fish our region both inshore and offshore. Redfish, flounder, king mackerel and blackfin tuna make the top of my list to target this month. Hands down when I am going fishing for fun this month, I am going to cater my trip around the tides to target bull reds. Every fall, big breeder redfish make their way into the bay for their annual spawn. Pensacola arguably gets the greatest number of fish, but Choctawhatchee and St. Andrews still get a fair share. Either way, this month can make for some of the best fishing days of the year. All fall you…

As someone who grew up fishing in South Florida, I have always dreamed of catching a record fish. But little did I know that my opportunity was right in front of me. My job moved me out of Florida many years ago but I have close friends and family that constantly give me a reason to visit. These trips always revolve around fishing. My latest visit in July was a short trip with Dan Rimer, a fishing buddy from Charleston, SC. We were up at dawn every morning walking the beach in Stuart fishing for snook, me with my fly rod, Dan with his spinning rod. An old high school friend, Bill Wilson, invited Dan and me to fish with him on his 29-foot center console out of Jupiter Inlet.…