There were summer trips in August where it was so hot that sweat would form on your face even as you sat still. There was no wind, and the mosquitos were so thick we had to sometimes cover our mouth to breathe – even with the bug spray.
There were cold windy winter trips that drove us into the creeks to seek relief from the cold wind. Thankfully the cold weather knocked the mosquitoes down to an occasional buzz.
On all of these trips, we managed to catch fish. On many of these trips we ended up helping or towing a stranded boater. Not many boats carried a VHF radio back then. Even if they did, you could not get a viable signal from Ponce de Leon Bay to any shore facility. Boat to boat was it.
On one trip, we found one boater, alone in a boat rented from Marathon on the Florida Keys. He was completely lost and out of gas. Seems he thought he was running south, but was instead running north. We left him some water and bug spray and told him we would contact the Coast Guard when we got into radio range.
On another occasion, a pair of anglers caught a shark in, of all places, Shark River. Several stupid moves later and they were stranded. First they brought the shark aboard the boat. Then, because the shark was flopping and tearing up things in the boat, they shot him several times with a pistol. Yes – the bullets went through the shark and the bottom of the boat. The boat sank to the gunnels as they were tied to the mangroves.
These two anglers spent two weekend nights sitting in the mangrove branches with no bug spray before they were found. I can only imagine what that was like. Their first requests when someone found them – a beer and a cigarette.
Florida’s southwest coast was then and still is now a lonely place to be stranded. The fish are still there, although today’s anglers running faster boats that carry lots of fuel have put a serious dent into them.
The named creeks – Little Sable and Tyler – are closed to public access now. The Everglades National Park is the last remaining refuge for the American Saltwater Crocodile, and these creeks have been closed because they are estuaries where the crocs breed and raise their young. Once again I can only imagine what it would be like to fish them again.
We began fishing the west coast from Cape Sable to Shark River to “get away from all the people”, as my father put it. “All the people” were the two or maybe three boats we would see in a day of fishing out of Flamingo back then. I wish I could find any place to fish today where I would see only two or three boats!
