FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

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I always love getting reports, big and small, and this is a good one.  My buddy Chris and his wife Jamie are celebrating their first anniversary in the keys and as a part of that they hired a guide for a back country trip.  For a one day shot in the dark it could not have gone any better.  So in his own words here it is.

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Jamie and I just got back from an amazing trip to Islamorada, here’s the report on the backcountry trip we took.

I called and booked a trip out of Bud n’ Mary’s Marina a few months ago and they put us with Captain Bill Bassett (the man, the myth, the legend according to the guy on the phone.)  I told them I wanted to target Snook and Tarpon, having never caught either, and on artificials if possible.  I didn’t know what to expect, but hoped for the best and waited anxiously for the next couple months.

The day finally arrives and as trips planned months in advance often go, conditions were less than ideal.  The normally calm, light breezes of the Florida Keys had given way to South Texas like winds of 15mph with a good sized area of showers from about Marathon all the way down to Cuba.  They told us to be there early since there’s usually a long run north to the snook grounds and we showed up about 6:15 to clear skies with hopes that the weather would stay south.  We grabbed a quick bite at the cafe and some sandwiches for the boat and jumped on Bill’s Maverick skiff and headed north towards Everglades National Park.  The weather wasn’t ideal, and Bill said later most of the guides probably cancelled when the sprinkles started back at the marina, but by then we were an hour north making bait with a few quick throws of the cast net.

The thrill of victory……

With a livewell full of pilchard and a few pinfish, we headed to the first spot, but it was windblown and muddy.  We continued through a large lake and anchored up in a bend with some brush overhanging and deep hole.  He rigged us up and pointed right where he wanted me to put it under an overhanging branch.  I see my first ever tarpon rolling, then another and another, they’re seemingly everywhere!  After about three seconds with my line in the water, I feel the big thump he told me to expect and the line goes tight.  He heads straight for the brush and I get a quick glance at a big snook jumping through the trees just before my line goes slack.

The agony of defeat!

 Apparently these guys have some nasty gill plates and know how to use them.  I’d get used to that feeling through the rest of the day!  Jamie hooks into something that makes for the horizon with no signs of slowing and he breaks off what is surely a shark with no intention of stopping.  The bite slows there without landing anything we were looking for, so we move over to the wide drain of the lake inside a big sandbar.  We anchor up and immediately, there’s tarpon rolling all around us, there’s tarpon clearing the water putting on a show for us, there’s snook busting bait along the shoreline and I’m absolutely giddy with excitement.  Jamie puts a pilchard with some weight up on the shoreline and in short order lands our first snook of the day!

You go girl!

It’s her first real fishing trip and with some expert guidance from Bill, she is quickly becoming a pro.  So with  a snook checked off, that just leaves one.  He starts me out freelining live pilchard with the current behind the boat as he chums a few alongside my casts, almost like chunking for tuna.  It only takes a couple casts and boom!  Tarpon on!  After a brief battle, we’ve  got my first Tarpon in the boat.

That is what I am talking about!  Congratulations!

I try a bunch more times, but they don’t seem willing to bite again and I don’t have another run.  In the meantime, Jamie is catching fish left and right.  I finally land a snook so small I have to hold it real close to the camera, but I had caught both species I came for.  Florida’s coast certainly doesn’t lack variety.  At the end of the day we had caught snook, tarpon, mangrove snapper, schoolmaster snapper, speckled trout, shark, ladyfish, catfish, and jacks, and I probably left someone out.

Hey it is a freakin’ snook.  

After the bite slowed there and jumping lockjawed tarpon seemed like a normal part of the scenery, we moved a little way up the coast to a creek mouth and concentrated on some brush and stumps as the last of the outgoing tide flowed out the creek mouth.  Jamie continued catching left and right and I continued to break anything off that felt like a good fish.  Jamie hooked into a real one and even though she didn’t think she’d win the battle managed to bring in a good 10-12lb snook.

Once she landed it she was all smiles and said “That’s so much fun!”  I may be holding it in the picture, but that fish was all her.  Later in the trip she said we should have planned more days fishing.  She begged and twisted my arm some more, but I finally gave in and told her we’d definitely do it again.  She’s hooked!

They are getting bigger!

I’ve got to say, I didn’t know what to expect calling up and getting a “random” guide from the marina, but Bill was incredible.  Conditions were sketchy, but he made the long run and put in the work to make it an incredible trip and we succeeded in catching everything we were after.  He was patient with us, helped Jamie with everything, entertained all day, and made it a great day.  There’s a bunch of guides out of Bud n’ Mary’s, but I’ll go with Bill again next time.

Feeding the tarpon at Robbie’s, a must do in the Keys.

Of course one thing never changes, in Florida, anyone can buy a boat just like here.  We watched a nice new Everglades try potlicking us, then heading out after being unsuccessful and running right into the sandbar.  A good amount of mud a roostertailing later and they finally got out and pushed it off, then did it again, then managed to get it out into deeper water.  Bill did tell me it was actually illegal for him to go help them, because they have to assess damages to the sea bed and pay reparations by the square foot after a grounding.  Talk about a bad day, get your boat stuck, have to pay through the nose for a tow, then have to pay again for the grass you dug up.  It was even worse when the park ranger pulled up, watched them muck it all up, then continued on without citing them because apparently its turtle nesting season and they only care about finding turtle nests right now.  Seems the priorities may be a little upside down for the next few months?

Had an amazing rest of the trip eating ourselves silly and exploring the keys.  Will definitely go back someday, but there’s so many places to see first we have to decide what’s next, but it sounds like there will be fish involved!

Get inhaled!  

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