Mashta Point was, and still is, at the south end of Key Biscayne. Undeveloped back then, it was a favorite spot for bank fishermen, and provided an ideal launching place for our small boat. As we unloaded the boat, a number of anglers watched with envy. As small as it was, it was still a boat, something they did not have.
The boat was originally twelve feet long. My dad found it on the side of the road somewhere and brought it home sitting inside his boat. The transom was rotted out, which was obviously the reason it had been discarded. We spent a week or so cutting the aft two feet off the boat and replacing the transom. While I did that, my dad somehow acquired an old Wizard six-horse air-cooled engine. The only thing good about the engine was that it ran – at least in the barrel behind the house.
With everything in the boat, we sputtered out of the small inlet and headed for the finger channels to the south. The boat moved at snail’s pace, a little more than five knots.
Five minutes into the journey, we had to stop and anchor the boat. We had not reached our fishing spot; we simply had to stop every five minutes to let the motor cool off. It wasn’t by choice; the motor literally shut down because it overheated. It was a fact we took in stride. Several overheat stops later, we eased onto the shoal and grass flat that marks the north end of the finger channels.
Stiltsville. The name is very descriptive. Houses on stilts or pilings dotted the flats. Some of them were quite elaborate, owned by families with money. Some of them were basic fishing cabins, built many years before as a weekend fishing haunt. We actually were glad they were there. On more than one occasion, we had to ask for a tow back to Mashta Point.
On the flats in the gin clear water, you could see fish moving. You had to be good to distinguish the movement, but the fish were there. At low tide, as the current slowed on the change, we searched for tails. Bonefish were abundant on all of these flats. We never really fished much for them, because we were brought up as meat fishermen. That is, we need to bring fish home to eat, and no one eats a bonefish.
Tails. This time, we were looking for tails. We had read Vic Dunnaway’s Thursday Fishing column in the Miami Herald. Memory says the Herald, but it could have been the Daily News. Either way, he talked about bonefish on the flats. Back then, whatever Vic said in the paper became the gospel as far as we are concerned. If he told us that fish were moving up the drainage pipes from Biscayne Bay, we would probably be found fishing in the drain on the corner of Miami Avenue and Flagler Street! To us he was the supreme source of fishing knowledge. As we scanned the water, we saw some tails. Some tails? I would guess there were no less than fifty in every direction we looked.
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