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More Fishing and Boating

• A not-so-lovely weekend for a regatta
• Seaworthy: Starting the season off right
• Seaworthy: Start the season right

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It just felt like a weird fishing day right from the get go. The tides were late; the water clarity was backwards — the muddy water was way back inside and the clean water was at the pass; and to top it all off the skies were black, but there were no storms.

The charter customers today didn’t make it any better. Paul had called me a week or so ago to set up the trip and I remember the conversation vividly because it was so different.

“Hi there captain. Me and my two buddies fish all around here all the time and do pretty good overall but we’re having some trouble doing any good on the inside reefs. I convinced the other two we ought to take a trip with an expert to figure out what we’re doing wrong — got any days open next week?”

They showed up early that morning with Paul introducing his two companions as Bubba and Junior. All three were silver fox retirees with too much time on their hands and, thus, fishing had become their excess energy sponge.

The greetings and initial chit chat were cordial enough and so was the conversation as we headed out the river discussing the tactics for the day.

Since there had been numerous reports of mackerel creating wild action in bait boils we would target them first. After they had their fill of mackerel action we would move off onto some different structure and see what we could do on the late summer snapper.

“Sounds like a plan,” blurted Paul. Junior and Bubba just looked at one another with that “we’ll see, look.”

It was still quite gloomy, dark and threatening when we arrived in the middle of the first reef spots but thankfully there was just a breath of wind so the water was flat and we could see it all. And it was really something!

The terns and gulls were there by the hundreds screeching and diving on bait; the mackerel were a-leaping everywhere and the white bait was cascading out of the water trying to escape the ravages of their two pre-named predators. This is what is commonly called a “fish boil!”

Could hardly restrain my three as I hurried to get the boat on the up current side of the action and passed out the jig rigged outfits. They had at it immediately, casting right into the melee with smiles on their faces and great expectations in their heart.

One cast. Two casts. Three casts. Nothing. It’s maddening as the mackerel literally are hitting the side of the boat chasing the bait. We change jig colors to plain white and go back at it. One cast. Two casts. Three casts. Still nothing!

These guys are frustrated. Bubba pipes up with a gem, “Captain, you’re the professional; do something.” Tongue bitten, I change lures again, this time to small silver spoons.

The frenzy is still underway and I dump a block of chum into the water. One cast. Two casts. Three casts. Zero. Null. And then the frenzy subsides; the birds move away and there we are. Fishless with three frustrated hot shots.

We sit there for a few minutes calculating the next move when Junior blurts, “Hey, look at all those fish in the chum slick.”

Sure enough the chum meant for the mackerel has attracted a huge school of mega snapper just 10 feet behind the boat and totally visible in the clear water wolfing down the spill out of the chum bag.

The usual approach to schooled snapper like this is to tie really small hooks directly to the line and bait them with pieces of the chum and feed the bait out with no weight along with the chum. We rig up three lines and try it.

It’s absolutely amazing! You can see the fish gobbling the chum; they move up to our baited pieces and disregard it. We try smaller hooks; bigger pieces of bait time and time again and nothing works.

Bubba and Junior are exchanging snide glances and intimating to Paul that el capitane, with all his expertise, is not delivering. Bubba gives it another shot with, “We could do this well all by ourselves!”

We’re a little over two hours into the trip and I make a proposal. “I need to try some things here that I don’t have with me. Let’s quit today and I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll finish the charter tomorrow. Cost will be for one trip.”

They agreed and back we went.

I remembered fishing for yellowtail snapper in the Keys some years back and there were a couple of tricks the good fishermen use to better hide the hook and line.

A bag of construction sand; a few handfuls of oatmeal and corn kernels mixed with seawater became an elixir supreme that we would deploy as we banged the chum bag the next day to cloud the water and confuse the fish.

We added a special fluorocarbon leader in a nearly invisible color to the lines and tied on a #6 hook.

They were there at the appointed time the next morning and we wasted no time zooming back to the same GPS spot.

Chum wasn’t in the water five minutes when the snapper showed in the same formation as the prior day. Our hot shots fed their fluorocarbon rigs into the current with the same chunks of chum aboard — only difference was the ladles of clouding material that I fed into the slick.

Oh, one other thing — I had everyone sit down and out of the stern of the boat. A great charter captain once told me that snapper have such great eyesight that they can see the anglers and that adds to the wariness.

So here’s four guys all hunched down feeding all kinds of stuff into the water to fool these valiant snapper.

And fool them we did!

Within a half hour we had a cooler with a limit of 15” class snapper cooling on ice. When we had the last of the limit aboard, we fired up the engine and headed for home.

The hot shots weren’t going to give me much. But Junior’s “we learned a lot today, captain” was more than enough.

Got to out think them, right?

•••

Name: Mangrove snapper aka gray snapper

In season: Year round resident but more abundant in warmer weather.

Florida Regulations: Size limit 10” overall. Bag limit five per person per day as part of 10 per person per day snapper bag limit.

Habitat: Very plentiful fish in the backwaters as well as on the reefs. Juveniles are in estuaries and larger fish can be found on reefs and wrecks offshore. Great table fare. Very popular fish.

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Capt. Bill Walsh owns an established Marco Island charter fishing business and holds a current U.S. Coast Guard license. Send comments or questions to dawnpatrolcharters@compuserve.com.