A motel, restaurant and some well-equipped cabins are situated there along with a marina and tackle shop. If all the old fishing pictures are still on the wall in the tackle shop there, I can be found in a lot of them.
This area of Florida was not always a National Park. Prior to becoming a park, there was a long, rough, often flooded dirt and rock road that ran from Homestead to Flamingo. A number of hardy souls attempted some farming there and some even hardier commercial fishermen carved out a really tough living.
Bugs – that is mosquitoes – are as bad as you ever want to see them in the summertime. Salt marsh mosquitoes swarm and bite and often make you feel like they will literally carry you away. It makes me wonder how all these early settlers ever lived without the modern bug sprays. I know I certainly could not live there without it!
My father fished the area as a boy, making the 50 mile, three hour trek in his uncle’s old vehicle. Some of his stories about the numbers and size of fish they caught border on unbelievable. But he was my dad, and as far as I am concerned the fish tales were true.
I grew up learning all I could about the whole Everglades saltwater estuary system, about how the freshwater flow from the glades made such excellent spawning grounds for many varieties of fish.
Over the years, the fishing never seemed to deteriorate. We caught fish year after year, and when the National Park limits came in, we followed the rules and kept only what was legal.
It was in the early ‘90s that we started to see some changes. The fish were still there, but for some reason, all of the turtle grass began dying and the water in parts of Florida Bay turned a milky light green. Fishing dropped off and people began to fear the ultimate demise of the whole bay system, looking to blame any and all for the problem. Recreational anglers blamed commercial crab traps that covered the areas bordering the park, while commercial anglers blamed overfishing on the part of the recreational anglers.
I watched the bay grow almost stagnant. When we scattered my father’s ashes over the bay around Carl Lewis Key in 1996, the water was as milky as I had ever seen it. I wondered if I would ever return to fish the area again.
But things change, and for whatever reason, the bay has come back. Turtle grass has returned and the water looks as pristine as it did thirty years ago. And to go along with that revival, the fish are just as plentiful as they were in the past, perhaps even more plentiful.
Flamingo presents anglers with a big choice of fishing opportunities. A short run to the west puts fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico where permit, kingfish and mackerel can be caught in the water column.
Bottom fishing for grouper is improving, and many boats make the longer run to some “secret” numbers. In and on the flats, bonefish, mangrove snapper, snook, trout and redfish abound.
I truly believe that strict limits and a real concern for the fragile environment of Florida Bay have made a dramatic impact on its revival (although, sometimes I like to think my father had something to do with it!).
Fishing in Florida Bay out of Flamingo can be awesome. Lots of people come to South Florida and head straight for the keys. That’s fine, and they usually catch some fish. But, they are missing the boat if they bypass a chance to fish one of the true wonders of our country – the backwaters of Florida Bay from Flamingo in the Everglades National Park. I can promise you that with only one visit you too will develop a case of Flamingo Fever!
