Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Florida Sportsman

DIGITAL WEB EXCLUSIVE 10 EXOTIC FISH YOU CAN CATCH IN FLORIDA BY SHELBY BUSENBARK Exotic fishing spices up the freshwater scene, making for fun catches for all ages. Here’s everything you need to know about Florida’s non- native fishes, new and old. YOUTUBE HOW A LASER-ETCHED DASH PANEL IS MADE We join Dale Kalloway in the TRB Custom Bay to see how he designs and creates a laser-etched custom dash with flush-mounted accessories. PODCAST SHARING THE WATERS This month Capt. Rick explores a controversial topic: How is the post-COVID boating boom affecting popular fishing haunts? BECOME A SOCIAL STAR Send post-worthy pics: @floridasportsmanmagazine or #floridasportsmanmagazine GET YOUR MUG IN THE MAG Email your best catches or scenic shots to photos@floridasportsman.com…

Emerald waters, good fishing and good food: Bimini, Bahamas offers great opportunities for a hardcore fishing trip with the guys or a laid-back getaway with the family. The flats throughout the Bimini cays (and there are actually several islands here, though commonly referred to collectively) lend to great sightfishing for bonefish and permit. On a skiff trip with local guide “Bonefish Ebbie,” I saw the biggest school of bonefish I’ve ever seen, roughly 1,000 fish milling around in the shallows. The fish were willingly taking flies, too. Drop off the edge to the west of Bimini and you’re soon into the Gulf Stream, where pelagics are aplenty. Spring and summer are known for good dolphin and tuna fishing, and blue marlin are a definite possibility early in that timeframe. Come…

As I watched the man unload his beach cart from his truck in the Grayton Beach State Park parking lot, I could tell he wasn’t a tourist on his first trip to the beach. An hour later, watching Bo Martin land a nice redfish confirmed my assumption. I asked Martin if he’d be okay answering a few questions about his cart, tackle and rigging. Thankfully, he agreed. While he was talking, he was also re-baiting his double hook surf rig. When he pulled out a Yeti tumbler from his cart, I thought he was going to drink from it, but instead of liquid refreshment he removed the lid and pulled out a bag of tasty looking shrimp. Nice tip to remember for keeping your shrimp iced down. He then used…

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May marks a time when anglers exploring the Ten Thousand Islands and Chokoloskee area have a variety of exciting angling options. For those who choose to stay inshore or nearshore, I recommend setting up or drifting the bars and hard bottom areas of the outer islands during the beginning stages of the incoming tide. I prefer the areas with bars and hard rock buffering the islands. Look for locations where the tide is moving across or pushing water toward the bars. Monitor the tides and time your trips accordingly, as this will allow you to see these contours and stage along the outer edges. These troughs and hard edges are where you will locate a variety of gamefish such as snook, seatrout, and redfish. Be sure you have moving water…

Old-timers will tell you about the good old days. I’m always looking at my fishing logs and back issues of Florida Sportsman to see what happened in years past. I compare meteorological conditions, water quality, the fish I caught, and which fish seemed to be in decline. In the West Central Region, we are blessed to have Florida’s largest estuary, Tampa Bay, where my reflections have included migratory species as well as those that spawn and remain here. For more than 40 years I have noted changes, both positive and negative, but there is one thing that stands out. The human population here has exploded! It’s not just here, it’s statewide. The days of fishing and rarely seeing another boat are just about gone, except for bad weather days. Now,…

‘‘Grouper are open now, and there’s reason to believe this will be the first season in a long while they’ll be worth fishing for. May is the best month of the year in Northeast Florida. This subject is not open for debate, and at the top of the list of things that are more important than any land-based activities is blue water trolling. Wahoo are wrapping up their migration through our area, at the same time mahi are in the peak of theirs. Blackfin tuna are still here, and it’s clearly the easiest month of the year to come home from offshore with a full fish box. I’ve often heard that mahi are dumb and will eat anything. Whereas that may have some validity, there’s no doubt that some boats…

Few months back I typed out a rough (and grammatically clunky) “things which Florida needs more of or less of” list. As some of you can tell, I’m getting around to explaining that list. Top of my original list was more kids on skateboards carrying fishing rods. I stand by that. Every time I see a kid on a skateboard carrying a rod, I feel the world tilting back in its correct balance. (When you see me on a skateboard these days, it tilts the other way.) Turns out, Florida, we need something else: Kayaks. We need more kayaks. As of this writing a sizable division of the plastic armada is berthed in my garage. It’s from a side project I’ve been working on, Kayak Fishing Fun. It’s an annual…

YAKIMA EASYRIDER TRAILER The EasyRider can carry from one to three kayaks with a number of additional Yakima accessories, or four kaya ks in total. Plus, the rig is more than capab p le of long-distance, cross-country expeditio ns—paved and gravel roads and ramps. It fe atures a 500-pound capacity and folds up nice ly for easy storage. MSRP: $3,399. www.yakima.com BERLEYPRO ACCESSORIES In bright sunlight and reflective waters, your fishfinder screen can be difficult to see. BerleyPro offers a super-functional ABS visor (above) for most of the popular electronics models made today. The company also offers a wide variety of kayak accessory solutions, plus protective add-ons like the ABS BumperBro available for the most popular kayak models. Sold online at www.mariner-sails.com, and also available at many kayak shops. DAKOTA…

Spring fishing is in full swing. With so many choices, how do you decide what to target? If you read my column regularly, you often hear me talk about the large biomasses of tarpon and permit that flood the area. Well, May is the best month to target these two species. Soon after the full moon in May, these large concentrations of fish will begin to spread over a wider area. Tarpon will continue heading up north, and permit will move back to the flats where they are most commonly encountered. Before tarpon spawn, they must increase their protein intake. A small critter but a major food source for tarpon this time of year is the palolo worm. The worm hatch happens usually around the full moon in May, but…

‘‘Like snook, muttons tend to congregate around the full moon in May to spawn. Natural bottom in 70 to 120 feet of water is a great place to look. Is it summer yet? It sure has felt like it for months! As spring soon fades into our rearview, get ready for some hot summer action these next few months. You will notice one thing in May—both inshore and off, many species are in the middle of or getting ready to spawn. Love is in the air, and this often works to the angler’s advantage. Inshore fisheries really come to life this month, with snook being a top-targeted species. Look for fish staging around docks and seawalls, and schools of snook starting to congregate around local inlets to spawn, even some…

‘‘An east wind generally ensures calm water coming off the heavily forested shoreline and even kayaks can stay in the game on breezy days. May is officially trout month on the Big Bend when we see the highest number of boats drifting off the coast. They’re working grass bottoms, tossing neon corks with live bait underneath. It’s also when I see the most out-of-state boats out there, mostly from Georgia. It’s fun for the whole family and with live bait even young anglers may hook up with trout up to 24 inches. The weather has stabilized without recurring fog or a north wind that can shut down the bite. And it’s mostly too early for summer thunderstorms. Our stretch of coast carries the heaviest population of seagrass in Florida, with…

Some surveys show speckled trout as the most popular fish to catch in Florida. Even if this is challenged by a few other gamefish, speckled trout are one of the most readily available species in May. They can be caught almost anywhere lush grassflats exist. Between St. Joe Bay and Keaton Beach, there are over 100 miles of almost uninterrupted grassflats. The two bookends of these flats, St. Joe Bay and Keaton Beach, are both well-known places to catch speckled trout. Add to this that most trout live inshore in shallow water and are easy to fish for with small boats and light tackle, and it’s easy to see why they are so popular. In May, the seasons for gag grouper, amberjack and red snapper are closed, which makes speckled…

Watching the Sea Tow Foundation’s Sober Skipper PSA featuring young friends partying and having a good time and then driving their boat straight into another boat made me stop and think for a moment. A moment, like when I was in high school, leaving my driver’s education class having just watched an hour of mangled vehicles and bodies only to race out of the school parking lot in a car crammed full of classmates. It’s possible that all it takes is a moment to scare people with actors and gruesome stock videos to get them to take the message to heart. To change behavior. But, in the age of scroll, I’m not sure. What got me to stop for more than a moment wasn’t a video but a newspaper article…

SCATTERED WHERE THE TANGLED COVER MERGED with tannin-tinted water, coots and egrets spooked as we eased along the shoreline. Orange and brown iguanas were perched high in the overhanging brush. A large swirl in the water ahead signaled one of the exotic fish we traveled here for. But we were far from an exotic map dot. Rather, just a lure’s throw from I-95 in a unique urban fishery popularized by thriving numbers of hard-fighting, non-native species. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, nearly three dozen species of reproducing non-native fish have been found in Florida’s freshwater ecosystems. Collectively, these foreign fish make up one of the most accessible and examined exotic fish populations in the world. Located in Palm Beach County, on the east side of I-95,…

As South Florida transitions into the month of May, anglers can expect to see some significant changes in our weather. After two months of northeast winds and rough seas, May brings much more tolerable conditions. Winds will be more out of the east and southeast and mostly under 20 knots, resulting in calmer and clearer waters that will allow comfortable offshore and inshore fishing. Offshore fishermen will have so many different opportunities at catching quality fish this month that it may be difficult to pick which one to choose first. Let’s see if I can help with that. For those in boats big enough to handle the waters in our ocean inlets and along the swim buoys just offshore of the beaches, snook, tarpon, permit, large jack crevalle, and barracudas…

‘‘The big push of fish has arrived from the south and they are fattening up on an assortment of groceries. Tarpon in the 100-pound class were starting to be caught regularly last month. This is a great time to be in Southwest Florida. Our daytime temperatures will peak somewhere in the mid-80s and our lows in the mornings may touch the upper 60s for the last time till October. Winds typically blow in the 7 to 12 mph range and there won’t be much rain. Humidity levels are still tolerable as the dog days of summer will not be showing up this month. It’s considered the perfect weather by the locals’ standards. It does not matter if you are fishing in the back bays, nearshore waters, or offshore, it is…

As spring winds down, the month of May is full of angling opportunities along the Space Coast. The opening of grouper season on the first of the month is an exciting time for bottom anglers targeting gags, reds, scamps, and others in Atlantic state and federal waters. These “shallow water” groupers will be migrating offshore toward the 160- to 240-foot ledges after wintering on the shallower 60- to 80-foot reefs. For consistent catches in such deep water, big baits and heavy weights are the name of the game. Success depends on being able to drop large, fresh baits directly over fish-holding structure. Anchoring or using GPS trolling motors is ideal, as it allows a slow, methodical presentation which gives large, wary gags time to move in and investigate before committing…

‘‘For the pilchards, I want a small enough mesh to capture 3-inch baits without gilling the fish. For menhaden, I need a heavy net with a good sink rate. We have made it to some of the best inshore fishing in our area, an influx of pilchards and menhaden will flood the bays providing plenty of bait for both fish and angler. It is time to stretch out those castnets if you are in search of a good bite. While a live shrimp may catch a fish or two, chances are it catches more pinfish than anything else in May. Trout and redfish action should be great this month, you will start to see some better mangroves and the Spanish mackerel will still be all around the bay for those…