Articles Index

Making a Difference
The Christmas holiday season is once again driving me to look back at my life. And the question I always end up asking myself is, did I make a difference?

Tano Checks In
Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Tano and I am a So.Fla. skinny water fisherman. I've been here in Miami for 20 years and I've fished every single one of them! I've got a lot of fishing annecdotes but the one that really sticks didn't happen here in Florida but in N.J. where I lived before transplanting myself to Fl. The story begins with my friend Tommy, his son and myself fishing for carp in the Passaic river.

Cold, Skinny Water Means Changing Tactics
Tom Davis, one of our readers from southwest Florida, shares one or two of his secrets for catching skinny water fish in cold weather.....

Marker 10X
It's really an insignificant marker in the scheme of Florida Bay. It's numbered 10X because they needed another single pole marker between big tripod marker 10 and marker 9 on the intracoastal waterway route up the west side of the bay. The channel curves a bit going into the flat there and 10X sits on the outside edge of that curve. It was really put there as an afterthought.

A Fishing Guide's Change of Pace
Every now and then people need a break. They need a change of pace from what they normally do, from what they normally see. People on the coast head for the mountains. People in the mountains head for the coast. And so it is with me and a number of my friends. After fishing and working all year in saltwater, we simply need a change of pace. We need a break. We need to experience some other aspect of life that we rarely get to see.

Winter Fishing Results
Winter fishing has set in around everywhere. King mackerel are being caught off south Florida, and sailfish are jumping in the boat down there. Farther north, vermillion snapper and black sea bass are cooperating in huge numbers on near shore wrecks and reefs.

Shrimp Boat By-Catch Mean Fish
They are the shrimp boats that spend the night dragging their nets for pink gold. By night they work the nets, and by day they rest and clean. The by-catch from their nets often litters the deck and holds, and it must be done away with to keep the catch pure. So the morning ritual includes sweeping and hosing down the decks, and washing all the by-catch overboard.

Staying Home Catches More Fish
We were fishing Blue Bank in Florida Bay, about fifteen miles south of Flamingo. Trout were working the bank, and we were catching them on live shrimp under a popping cork on an outgoing tide. There were two other boats on the bank with us, one from Islamorada and one more that followed us down from Flamingo.

Dock Fishing
This is the time of year to fish with live shrimp under and around the docks in the middle St Johns River in Florida. While mostly a freshwater area, the shrimp migrate inland to spawn. Saltwater species like sheepshead and redfish also migrate inland, and this is the time to catch them.

Gulf Trout on Apalachee Bay
Idling out with Captain Jody Campbell, a seasoned flats guide here on the Nature Coast, we were fishing for seatrout on the flats of Florida’s Apalachee Bay around the St. Marks and Ochlockonee Rivers.

Fishing Tidal Waters
Here is an offering from Captain Frank Bourgeois, who guides on Florida's West Coast. He has an interesting perspective on both fresh and saltwater fish in tidal waters

Finger Lickin' Yellowtail
It was in April some 20 years ago, somewhere around Easter, that we made a two day trip to Marquesas Key off of Key West, Florida, looking for yellowtail. We took two boats for safety, and after the 5 hour drive from Miami, we launched at Stock Island Marina. Six of us went this time, two in my 20 foot Seacraft and the others in a 26 foot Ana Capri.

Fishing is Hot!
Reports coming in from Key West to the Carolinas say that offshore fishing is, along with the weather, really heating up. Anglers both trolling and bottom fishing are bringing good fish to the boat on a regular basis.

"O" - What a Lake
Every angler needs a change of pace from time to time. This one is no different. Last year I went with one of my best friends, John, to Texas and fished on Toledo Bend Reservoir. We had planned to make a trip to Lake Okeechobee this year, but sadly he passed away before we could plan very much.

Fishing the Ditches – Slagle and House
About half way and along the shoreline between Flamingo in Everglades National Park and Cape Sable on the southwest tip of Florida are two canals. Actually they are more like ditches at this point, and are so named. Slagle’s Ditch and House Ditch (some of us know this one as “Third Ditch”) make their way north into the marl prairie of the southern everglades. Both ditches were dug back in the early ‘20s in an effort to “drain the swamp”.

Fishing with Alan
Alan Pope was literally begging me to take him to Flamingo, something that I actually didn’t want to do at the time. Who needs a ten year old hanging on you all day? But the chance to fish outweighed any burden I had to bear, and one morning we left with my Dad’s boat in tow, headed for Flamingo.

Not-so-Secret Fishing Spots
Secret fishing spots – some call them honey holes – often get passed from father to son through generations. Of course the reality is that our secret spots probably aren’t as “secret” as we think they are. We may only get to them every few weeks while other anglers visit them in between without our knowledge.

Flamingo Fever
Over all the past years of my fishing, the place I fished most and perhaps liked best was and still is Flamingo. Located in the Everglades National Park at the southernmost tip of the mainland of Florida, Flamingo provides more great fishing opportunities than most other places I have fished.

Feeding a Fish
We probably could have caught quite a few more snapper – the Intruder wreck was covered with them that day. But the limit is two per person and we had ours, so we finished the day trolling up a couple of fifteen-pound kingfish. Not bad for a hot summer day with a pesky barracuda trying to get your fish!

Just Like Old Times
I fished last week with a couple of old friends from my years in Miami, Dr. Richard Kernish, a fixture on the Flamingo fishing scene for many years, and his partner Jim O'Brien, a soon to be charter captain. They took me back thirty years last week.

Holiday Madness
We were minding our own business. The battle of the ramp on a holiday morning had been successfully negotiated without incident, and we were set up in a creek all by ourselves, looking for fish. Then I heard them. Across the marsh grass I could see several heads moving in the Intracoastal Waterway. There were four of them, and they were each on their own personal water craft (PWC). They were twisting and turning, jumping each other's wake, and generally having a good time.

Before We had Ice Chests
Search Saltwater Fishing Before We Had Ice Chests by Ron Brooks Dateline: June 12, 2000 I can still smell the wonderful odor of fish dried into the heavy canvas bag. It’s one of those smells that, when you run across it, takes you back a lot of years. It takes me back to the times we fished and had no ice chest to hold our catch. This was before we moved to Key West, and back then our catches could be substantial.

Summer Warming Means Fish
It looks like the beginnings of a great summer offshore – at least here in North Florida. My son took his family fishing this weekend, and along with two other boats, went fifty miles offshore from St Augustine, looking for dolphin and billfish.

Night Fishing Tips
Night fishing can be very easy and a lot of fun, or it can be a perfectly miserable experience. The difference comes in how you prepare for the trip. I have fished more times at night than I can count, and I learned quite a few tricks to make it easy and successful.

Fishing with Charlie
Charlie. Every angler should have a Charlie in their life at some point. Charlie was the quintessential sportsman. From fishing South Florida to hunting caribou in Canada, Charlie was about as good as they come.

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