NAUTICAL MILE

P  U  B  L  I  C  A  T  I  O  N  S

Capt. Gregg McKee is a full time fishing guide and owner of Wildfly Charters, providing full service flats trips in both Southwest Florida and Puerto Rico. Born in central PA, (Go Steelers!) Capt. Gregg started his fishing career after moving to Key West in 1993. He guided the Keys until 2005 when he and his wife Amanda moved to the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Gregg started fishing the waters surrounding Pine Island in 2001 when his parents retired to beautiful Matlacha, FL. He immediately fell in love with the area and now spends half the year chasing snook, redfish, and tarpon from Boca Grande to South Ft. Myers. Capt. Gregg runs a 17 foot Beavertail skiff and welcomes both experienced anglers and total beginners.

Call him (787)435-4833    

 

www.wildflycharters.com

wildfly@nauticalmileenterprises.com

Capt. Gregg McKee

January 2008  

 

For over thirteen seasons, ESPN used to air a fantastic fishing show on Saturday mornings called “The Walker’s Cay Chronicles.“ Each episode was like a thirty minute movie, beautifully shot on film and narrated by the host Flip Pallot, a former banker turned fly fishing guide. Flip made it look so easy. No matter where he was that episode, in the Bahamas, Mexico or the Keys, Flip could be counted on to hook a bonefish or two before the first commercial break. Of course I knew that a lot of editing went into those TV shows. Who’d want to watch a guy get skunked when I could see myself do that anytime? But there were no special effects involved and eventually Flip had to catch a real fish for the cameras.

The first time I ever saw a tailing bonefish was well over fifteen years ago in the Florida Keys at Bahia Honda state park, and I had a $50 fly rod in my hand. When I cast the small crab pattern and the fish actually ate it, I felt as if I had just stepped through the looking glass and into an episode of “Walker’s Cay.” When I cleared the loose fly line from around my feet and watched the five pound bone streak across the sandy flat, the click-drag on my Pflueger Medalist reel actually started playing the show’s theme music. I could even hear Flip’s poetic narration encouraging me on the entire time I was fighting the fish.

After fifteen minutes the over-exhausted bone was at my feet. I could have landed it in a third of the time but I was desperate not to break the leader on this midsize fish. My first bonefish and I caught it on a fly rod, exactly like they did it on my favorite TV show! Since that day I’ve landed a couple hundred more and every one of them has been with a fly rod. It‘s not that I‘m a purist about this sport. I’ll throw live crabs or lures to tarpon and permit all day just to get them to eat, but bonefish are made for fly rods. I got the first one I ever saw on a fly and I want the last one to happen the same way.

Just yesterday I got to relive that moment through and angler I was guiding here on Vieques. Peter, a Manhattan lawyer and trout angler, hit the weather jackpot for January in the tropics. Our normal twenty knot wind disappeared and was replaced by a minimal breeze. The water in Ensenada Honda never looked better. The only thing we needed were bonefish and for the longest time, we had none. In all honesty, they’ve been especially scarce this winter and I was starting to worry that this would be another empty morning. I’d been skunked on bones five days in a row and I just wanted to show this guy a fish so he’d believe they existed down here. After two hours of looking at empty water we started talking about heading out to the reef for some snapper fishing with the spinning rods. A few minutes after we agreed on that plan, our bonefish appeared.

It was a single fish, rooting around a few feet from the mangroves and perfectly camouflaged against the turtle grass. I spun the boat to the right so Peter wouldn’t hit me in the forehead with the fly and had him start casting, knowing that he still couldn‘t see his target. Unaccustomed the heavier rod, his first shot was ten feet short but it got our fish’s attention. We were now less than twenty feet apart and Peter’s second cast was right on the money. The bone nailed the fly and did a supersonic 180 through a field of mangrove shoots.

The first thirty seconds of a bonefish hookup are usually pure chaos. Piles of loose fly line have to come off the deck without tangling around toes, fingers, or the rod and reel itself. Then the drag kicks in and the reel handle turns into a backward spinning blur. Touching the reel at this point results in a busted knuckle at best and a broken off fish at worst.

Peter survived all of this and experienced the usual bonefish magic. Two or three runs well into the backing followed by the brief tug-of-war next to the boat. He posed for the normal Hero shot with his five pound fish and the fly rod that he caught it with. He had batted .1000 on bonefish at that point, just like I did all those years ago in the Keys. That average only lasted another half hour after we quickly hooked and lost two more bones, just as my average has dropped a bit over the years. It really didn’t matter too much, though. He managed to catch one of a difficult sport’s most difficult species on his first trip to the flats, and he did it with a fly rod. Vieques delivers again.

 

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February 2008  

 

Ensenada Honda is the largest bay on the south side of Vieques. Lying about eight miles east of the town of Esperanza, it has only been accessible to the public for the past four years, thanks to being inside the old Navy-controlled lands. The name Ensenada Honda means “Deep Sound” in English, and the bay itself has a sizable area where the bottom drops to fifty feet. The jagged shoreline is ringed with mangroves and a narrow strip of grass flats that would stretch for several miles if laid out in a straight line. The surrounding hills, rough and dotted with cacti, rise several hundred feet and block the near-constant Caribbean breezes. This provides a sheltered body of water that is not just stunningly beautiful but filled with bonefish, tarpon, and permit. This is without a doubt my favorite place to fish on Vieques.

My notes from last year tell me that after forty-five trips to Ensenada Honda in my flats boat, my anglers caught bonefish on all but three. That’s a success rate of 93%. The reason for this fantastic figure is that the bonefish of Ensenada Honda have absolutely zero angling pressure. The only people regularly fishing for them on the island are myself and Capt. Franco Gonzalez. Since bonefish make a lousy meal, the majority of the commercial fishermen on Vieques could care less. Throw in the fact that the Navy kept almost everyone out of this bay for the last fifty years and you have some bonefish that have never learned to be shy around a boat.

If this all sounds too good to be true, it isn’t. If I’m fishing this bay on a sunny morning with a competent angler on the bow, I’m almost certain we’ll hook a bonefish or two. But there is a big catch to this almost-sure thing. Getting to Ensenada Honda in a seventeen foot flats boat can be a wild ride on a calm day, and an absolutely dangerous one on a windy day.

The problem has to do with the geography of Vieques. The only concrete boat ramp on the island’s south side is in Esperanza, which, as I mentioned earlier, is an eight mile run to this particular bay. The waters here drop to over one thousand feet less than two miles offshore. Throw in our steady southeast winds and this gives us a long stretch of open water that will build up some frightening waves.

At least three times in the past two months, when I thought I had a shot at getting customers to Ensenada Honda, I’ve turned back after less than a mile. Simply because I was really in danger of sinking. My Maverick Mirage is one of the most seaworthy flats boats ever built, and has taken me through some frightening storms in the Florida Keys. But nothing compares to the wild water on the south shore of Vieques.

Fortunately, this bay isn’t totally impossible this time of year. For five days during the last two weeks, I’ve managed to fight my way into Ensenada Honda with good anglers, and score on quality fish each time. We’ve landed four bonefish, two tarpon, and lost one permit on fly, in the last seven days. All in all, a pretty good record. If we could throw in a few snook and mutton snapper that we can routinely catch this time of year, than things could fall into the category of “Outstanding.”

Unfortunately, we’re still in the middle of winter here in Puerto Rico, and that means sporadic winds and unpredictable rain storms. It’s not much different than the Florida Keys right now and all my anglers so far have realized that. For the lucky few that roll the dice and hit the weather jackpot, I’m thrilled to watch them head home with trophy photos to prove that Vieques really is a great flats fishing destination. For those that don’t, at least they get a day out on the warm Caribbean waters.

No matter what you catch when you come to Vieques, keep in mind that as of today, February, 4th, it’s currently minus-2 in Chicago.

 

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March 2008  

 

While running home from a somewhat slow charter on the island’s north side two days ago, I noticed a large dark shape in the water directly ahead of me. Manatees are rare down here but I’ve seen them on several occasions in this same area. The lumbering mammals and power boats have an unfortunate history together, so I instantly chopped my throttle back to neutral and cut the wheel hard to avoid inflicting a set of prop scars along its back. At the same moment, the manatee made a remarkably quick turn to the right to avoid getting bumped by my hull. During its brief acceleration, a very non-mammalian fin broke the surface. Since it was in less than four feet of water and only two feet off my bow I finally got a good look at this animal, which now clearly wasn’t a manatee. It was a shark.

Actually, it was a really big shark. With stripes. We were barely moving when the “Holy Sh…s!” started coming out at full volume. There was a ten foot tiger shark under my boat, the first one I’d ever seen anywhere.

Coming from the Florida Keys, I’m no stranger to sharks. They’re prolific throughout those islands and I often remark to my anglers about how few we see here in Vieques compared to the States. It was a rare day fishing off Key West if you didn’t see at least one shark as big as a human. It may have been a harmless nurse or an aggressive bull, but they were always out there. On one morning in the Marquesas, I watched a huge hammerhead chase down and kill a free swimming tarpon in three feet of water. The shark pushed the tarpon across the shallows for a full two minutes before grabbing its back half and biting it in two. During this entire spectacle, we were just a boat length away and my angler was filming with his digital video camera. This was real National Geographic stuff happening right off my bow.

I’ve always loved sharks. They were the first big fish that I learned to catch as a flats guide. All you needed to do was snag a small jack or barracuda and hang it off the back of your skiff. Within a few minutes a three or four foot lemon shark was sure to show up looking for some meat. Shark fishing was easy in the Keys. And since it was so easy, it didn’t get much respect.

I eventually drifted away from the species when I decided that I was officially a fly fishing guide. None of my clients wanted to bother with them during our pursuit of the elites: tarpon, bones, and permit. Sharks were knuckle dragging cavemen that were beneath the dignity of most fly rod anglers. If you couldn’t catch it with a perfectly tied crab pattern, it wasn’t worth catching.

What I realize now is that I miss sharks. I miss the simplicity of catching them with a hunk of bloody barracuda and a 4/0 hook, especially when someone brings their ten year-old kid on my boat. I also miss crying about a big six-foot bull charging in and eating my world record permit in one bite. I miss seeing huge nurse sharks mating in the shallows off Woman Key every June, and getting into the water with them while the tourists roll their videos of the “fearless” flats guide grabbing their tails. These are all things I’ve done in the Keys and haven’t been able to do down here. I just loved seeing them all the time.

So fast forward back to the ten-foot tiger shark under my boat two days ago. This monstrosity was cruising up and down the island’s shallow north shore, probably looking for turtles to eat. There are hundreds of turtles around right now as we’re getting close to nesting season. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first tiger shark I had ever seen anywhere, and it was easily the biggest shark I’d ever seen in Vieques. This thing could’ve bitten through a turtle’s shell as easy as I can bite down on a taco.

I had two anglers on my boat that morning, and neither of them had ever seen anything like that in the water. The gentleman sitting right next to me got instantly quiet and stayed that way while we followed the big tiger until it disappeared into the depths. When we hit the shore, I asked if seeing something that big from a boat really unnerved him. His answer was yes. He’d been swimming laps up and down the beach in front of his friend’s house every morning for the entire week he’d been in Vieques.

I told him not to worry about it, shark attacks are unheard of down here and he should go swimming the next day. I’m not sure I really meant it at that moment.

 

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April 2008  

 

When I was guiding on the flats up in Key West, there was one species that was more difficult to hook on fly than both bonefish and permit combined, and that was the mutton snapper. Like a lot of other fish, they were easy to catch in the deeper water with live bait, but in the shallows they were the rarest of the rare.

For the majority of non-saltwater anglers, the mutton snapper is best known as a $24.95 entrée on the specials menu, and for good reason. They are easily one of the most delicious fish that swims in the ocean, with perfect white fillets that have an unbelievably firm sweetness to them when lightly grilled.

As fantastic as they are on the plate, they’re even more stunning in the water. Growing up to twenty pounds, muttons are easily the most beautiful of all the snapper species, none of which are the least bit homely. Their colors are something that can only be duplicated by the most talented of artists. Photos rarely do them justice. Their bodies are a metallic combination of yellow, gold, and bronze, with bright pink fins and neon blue facial highlights thrown in for good measure. As a living aquatic sculpture, mutton snapper have no equals.

All of that physical perfection comes with an angling price, and that price is the extreme difficulty to fool them with a fly in the shallows. Just like the permit, they’re at home in the deeper water but come up to the flats on a quest for live crabs. This is one more reason that the classic Merkin is the best all around shallow water pattern. Unlike the permit, mutton snapper will also eat almost anything they can fit down their throats, so shrimp and bait fish flies work well, too. But this doesn’t mean that they’re mindless eaters. Since they’re designed for the deeper waters, hunting food on the flats probably leaves them feeling very exposed. One thing I’ve learned about chasing mutton snapper is that when you can see them, they can definitely see you.
 

As I mentioned earlier, on the flats off Key West, muttons were as scarce as sunken treasure, and the reason for that was over-fishing. Very few legal size snapper caught anywhere in the Keys are ever released. Several years ago the offshore and light tackle guides discovered the springtime spawning pattern of this species and started hammering them without mercy. I remember spending one seasick April night on my friend’s thirty foot Chris Craft pulling up nearly 200 pounds of muttons off the reef at the Sand Key lighthouse. It was perfectly legal and we were strictly following the size and bag limits for this species at the time, but we weren’t the only boat out there. We all ate well that week but I never associated what we were doing with the severe lack of these fish on the flats.

For Vieques, with its total absence of GPS guided boats with sonar powered fish-finders, mutton snapper are common in both the deep and shallow waters. They’re nowhere near as abundant on the flats as bonefish but they’re almost an everyday sight. Seeing their bright pink and orange tail break the surface is one of the most heart racing moments on the water down here. Since muttons are also a territorial species, I have a few spots in here on the island that I can count on for finding a resident fish basking under the surface a few feet from his hole in the mangrove roots. Catching that fish is a different story altogether.

Spotting a mutton snapper on the flats means the fish has also spotted the boat, so casting a fly to one has to be done quickly and without a lot of gymnastics. Waving an arm is usually enough to send the fish running for cover. We’ve been lucky on several mornings this year and hooked some big muttons feeding on the deeper flats in Ensenada Honda. A couple of these snapper were pushing ten pounds and pulled harder than any bonefish could, running the fly line well into the backing.

One of my anglers, a saltwater veteran with several permit on fly under his belt, commented that the seven pound mutton we had just landed was the most beautiful fish he’d ever seen. I couldn’t really disagree. And unlike my Florida days, I sent this one back into the water.

 

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May 2008  

 

Now that May is here I can finally catch my breath a bit while enjoying some of the year‘s best fishing on the island. This is the time when the winter tourists start thinning out and life gets back to a more sedate pace down here. Looking back on the season so far, despite the outrageous winds and tricky fishing, business was far better than expected.

I was booked solid from the beginning of last December. My new Beavertail skiff has been a fantastic investment and has put my anglers on more fish than I ever realized were out there. We’ve also had more than our share of kicks on the days when I wasn‘t out running a charter. Amanda and I have done everything from sailing the Drake Passage around Tortola on her parent‘s Beneteau 38, to chasing huge bonefish off Culebra with Capt Chris Goldmark, to riding shotgun with Jimmy Buffett in his seaplane while scouting out surfing spots here on Vieques. So far, it’s been an unforgettable season.

When I look back at all the notable personalities who graced the bow of my boat this year, I never would have imagined that my favorite day on the water would be spent with two beer-chugging truck drivers from Long Island.

John booked me online over a month ago and when I met him and his friend Eddie at the gas station near my house, and neither of them was what I was expecting. Almost half of my customers seem to be New Yorkers nowadays, but these guys were the real deal. They were big blue collar types and I could instantly tell that they were all about working hard and playing even harder. Within ten seconds of meeting them they were busting my chops, as only true New Yorkers can, about my beat up, twenty year old Jeep they’d be riding in with me that morning. I felt like I was in a scene from “Goodfellas,” with De Niro in the right seat and Pesci in the back. I liked them immediately.
 

After several months of dealing with twenty knot winds and anglers struggling to cast fly rods, John and Eddie were a welcome relief. The hell with being a hero, they just wanted to catch fish, and chucking spinning rods was more than fine for both of them. Before I set up the gear I was amazed to learn that not only was this their first flats fishing trip, but that Eddie had never even been fishing before in his life. That threw a lot of pressure my way to get these guys hooked up and addicted to a new sport.

Of course it would be Eddie, the rank amateur, who hooked up first. After needing only a few minutes to master the spin fishing technique, I had him jigging a small bucktail lure along the edge of the Ensenada Honda mangroves. Twenty minutes later his rod doubled over and the eight pound line started peeling off the spool. The fish dove into the deeper water and kept pulling straight toward the bottom. This seemed like the classic fighting style of nice snapper and that’s exactly what it was. Eddie’s first fish was a five pound mutton snapper, one of the most beautiful and best tasting fish that swims. I wrote about this species last month, and how rare they were to catch on the flats up in the Florida Keys. Down here in Vieques they’re almost an everyday sight. Eddie was now officially a veteran angler.

John was now in the batter’s box and he was about to knock one out of the park. I really wanted the guys to hook a bonefish since that’s the one species that really makes an impact on first time flats anglers. What we saw swimming right towards us was an even better target. The three black finned fish were a small school of permit, the most elusive species down here. John fired a perfect shot and one of the permit raced forward as soon as his lure, a brown DOA Shrimp, hit the water. Permit are notoriously indifferent to artificial baits, but this fish was possessed. It attacked the rubber shrimp three different times before finally snagging the hook less than a rod’s length from the bow. Then it was off to the races.

Over the past three years I’ve had dark cloud hanging over my head with these fish. I have never landed a permit down here in Vieques. I’ve had dozens hooked up and they all manage to break off or the hook simply pulls loose. I’ve boated several hundred of them up in the Keys, where they’re far more common, but none down here. I call it my Permit Curse and try not to talk about it too much. This day felt like the day the curse would be lifted, and it was.

Even though it was a small fish, eight pound line is no match for a six pound permit if it’s not handled just right, and fortunately, John handled everything just right. After quite a few tense minutes, the fish was up on the surface next to the boat and its tail was in my hand. It was John’s first permit and the first one that Vieques finally decided to let me have. Curse lifted.

Over the past three years I’ve hosted rock stars, best selling authors, corporate CEO’s, and some really talented anglers. I’ve had my share of great fishing and pure frustration, but I can’t remember being any more satisfied than on this recent morning with two truck driving, rookie flats fishermen. John and Eddie from Long Island, with their big snapper and small permit, are easily my Anglers of the Year. I can’t wait to see them again next year.

 

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June 2008  

 

There’s some great news for anglers coming down to Vieques this summer. My good friend Capt. J Fergeson finally has his new boat delivered and is running deep-sea fishing charters. With Capt. Franco and myself concentrating on the flats and inshore fishing, this is the one service that has been sorely missing on the island over the past few years.

Capt. J, like myself, is a former Key West fishing guide. He and his wife Lisa got fed up with the crowds and high cost of living in the Keys and saw Vieques an island full of opportunity. J has been a licensed captain for nearly fifteen years and has run everything from flats skiffs to large sailing yachts. His offshore knowledge is extensive and he’s worked on some of the best charter boats in the Keys, perhaps the most competitive place in the world to make a living as a fisherman.

The boat he’s currently running was custom built for Vieques by J himself. It’s a 26 foot Panga hull powered by twin 60 HP Yamaha Four Stroke outboards. These engines are so quiet that you can barely hear them when running. Their incredible fuel efficiency helps keep the cost of his charters low even though our gas prices are going through the roof, like everywhere else. The hull itself is one of the most seaworthy designs on the water. With a high bow and narrow beam, Pangas are one of the most popular boats throughout the Caribbean for their pure utility. They have a remarkably shallow draft but handle trolling through four foot waves with ease.

I rode along on the first shakedown trip with J and Capt. Franco two weeks ago. It turned out to be a great day on the water. The seas were running about three feet that morning and it was a bouncy but never unpleasant ride.

A quick two mile run from the dock in Esperanza put us in more than 1500 feet of water, which is where the big stuff lives. Finding that kind of drop anywhere in the States usually means an hour long ride. The great thing about offshore fishing in Vieques is the fact that these depths are only a few minutes away from our entire southern shoreline.

We started trolling a spread of artificial lures with bait strips up and down the trench with the electronics marking fish under us the entire time. After a couple of small barracuda, we finally hooked our first keeper, a nice blackfin tuna. These hard fighters also make excellent sushi and this fish put at least five pounds of it on the table.

Blackfin can be prolific down here in the summertime. Two years ago, in same area on another friend’s boat, we found the ocean swarming with these fish. By the time our baits were totally worn out we put fourteen football size blackfin in the cooler, which would barely close over the protruding tails.
 

A real thrill came a short time later when the downrigger line started screaming off its reel. This was something big that hit well below the surface. Franco grabbed the rod as J pulled the boat out of gear and I started clearing the other lines. A few minutes later a long silver shape was darting back and forth in the wake. It turned out to be a huge kingfish, at least thirty pounds. Had we caught this fish up in Key West during one of the big kingfish tournaments, we would have been well into the money with it.

The final payoff came just before lunch when we spotted a handful of birds diving at the surface, a sure sign of feeding fish. When J ran up to them we watched a couple streaks of neon blues and greens slash towards our surface baits, the unmistakable sign of big mahi mahi’s. Two of them hit at the same time and it was pure chaos, with jumping fish and tangled lines everywhere. We got both fish to the boat and gaffed one of the two twenty pounders to take home. A perfect ending to the inaugural trip of Amity Charters, Vieques.

In addition to offshore fishing, J can offer custom snorkeling, sightseeing, and even trips to Culebra when the weather is cooperating. For more information contact Capt. J Fergeson at (787)502-3839.

 

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July 2008  

 

July is here and the tourist season on Vieques has come to an end. Amanda and I have once again packed up and headed north for the summer and fall. We’re currently on the southwest Florida island of Matlacha, where my parents live and fish. While tiny Matlacha is an island in the technical sense, it’s actually connected to the very developed west Florida city of Cape Coral by a short drawbridge. And unlike Vieques, this makes all the conveniences of 21st century life just a car ride away.

So right now life on Vieques really slows down to a snail’s pace until late December. I’ve found that leaving the island for a few months to chase Florida redfish instead of Caribbean bonefish is the perfect antidote for not focusing on what Vieques lacks, like movie theaters and big grocery stores, but to be reminded of all that it has to offer. And of all those things, there’s really one that stands out the most. While the fishing is equally fantastic up here in South Florida, Matlacha really lacks for beaches.

On Vieques, when I’m not poling a charter across the shallows of Ensenada Honda, my favorite thing to do is hike down to Encampment Beach just before sunset. Our lunatic dog Maggie will chase every single bird back and forth at full speed, stopping only to dig ghost crabs out of their holes in the sand. I’ll usually get several shots at the resident school of bonefish that live inside the barrier reef at the beach‘s end, often hooking one, sometimes two. When it’s finally time to go home we’ll have an exhausted dog, a freshly eaten bonefish fly, and a pocket full of new sea glass for Amanda’s ever growing collection.

That’s been our routine on the island for the past three years, several times a week, and I’ll miss it immensely at first up here. Matlacha’s shoreline is composed of dense mangroves and oyster bars (we’re talking about both kinds; the natural ones that grow under the water’s surface and the man-made ones built above it that serve draft beer.) There’s nowhere for Maggie to run wild within walking distance. There are beautiful beaches a few miles away on the islands of Sanibel and Captiva but, like almost anywhere in the States, no dogs allowed. Strict leash laws apply everywhere up here and on Vieques Maggie rarely wore a leash. The generous splash of terrier in her mixed up gene-pool makes calmly walking her down the road a true ordeal most days, especially when a squirrel darts across her path.

Maggie goes crazy each afternoon around 5:00 PM when we’re not heading to a beach. With her schedule so messed up we’ve had to compensate and longer walks on the leash didn’t seem to work at first. Fortunately, we’ve discovered that Maggie is an excellent kayaker. Our rental house up here is right on the very shallow waters of Pine Island Sound and comes equipped with several fishing kayaks. A five minute paddle from the back porch can put me in the middle of some of the most productive flats on the entire Gulf coast of Florida. Maggie will sit on the bow of my single seat kayak and not budge while we paddle for miles around the mangrove hammocks. This is an amazing feat of obedience for this thirty-five pound inbred mutt. At the same time it’s great exercise and gets me very close to some big tailing redfish. The drawback is that it’s a less than ideal situation for casting a fly at anything. But Maggie is back on the water and happy. I’ll figure out a way around the dog with a fly sooner or later.

Owning a dog that loves the water is kind of a chore up here in the States when compared to Vieques. The island is incredibly hands off when it comes to rules for dogs. As an animal lover, this is both good and bad, as anyone who works with the Vieques Humane Society will tell you. Watching my dog tear up and down an empty beach and screaming at her for scaring off my bonefish are favorite memories of Vieques. I’ll look forward to doing that again in a few months. Until then, I’ll be like every other Floridian dog owner being dragged down the sidewalk with a leash in one hand and a plastic baggie in the other.

 

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August 2008  

 

Now that we’re making our summer home up here in West Florida, I’m lucky to be living just a half hour boat ride to the famous tarpon Mecca of Boca Grande Pass. Separating the two islands of Cayo Costa and Gasparilla, dedicated anglers know this mile wide spot and its history well. Along with Islamorada and the Lower Keys, Boca Grande helped kick the sport into the national spotlight several decades ago and is currently the home to the most high dollar tarpon tournaments on the water.

Tarpon fishing in Boca Grande Pass couldn’t be more different than how we do it on Vieques. For starters, the Pass, as locals call it, is very deep. It drops down to almost seventy feet and has a swiftly running current caused by the tides being squeezed between Gasparilla and Cayo Costa. The tarpon occasionally feed off the surface but they mostly hang near the bottom of the water column. Hooking them is done by dropping heavily weighted lead jigs down to their level. On the right day it’s possible to hook half a dozen fish in a few hours. It helps to have a big skiff with a powerful engine to hold position while racing with the current.

During the season when the fish are running thick, the Pass is simply a madhouse. On a tournament weekend the Pass can be choked with nearly a hundred boats literally bouncing off of each other while fighting their fish. Every command, cheer, or threat is shouted at full volume on and between the boats in order to compete with engines revving constantly in and out of gear. It’s basically NASCAR on the water, with teams decked out in identical outfits covered with sponsor patches, and their $50,000 to $100,000 boats painted to match. Loosing the wrong fish on Tournament Day can be the equivalent of loosing a year’s pay, let alone the steep entry fee. From a distance it looks like a lot of expensive, stressful fun, and I want nothing to do with it.

Tarpon are one of the greatest species that swims and if I was given one last day to fish, they’re what I’d choose to target. But for my money, big tarpon on heavy tackle aren’t very much fun. The hook-up and first couple jumps are really outrageous, but then it quickly becomes an endurance test. After two hours of pulling a heavy weight in the hot sun, a broken line is as entertaining as getting a swift kick in the groin.

As far as I’m concerned the best way to experience all that tarpon have to offer is by hooking them on a fly rod in shallow water. This is how we catch the majority of them on Vieques and how I prefer to catch any tarpon. Just before we headed for the States, the island’s north shore from Mosquito Pier to Green Beach was really producing some nice fish. Many were what I’d consider babies of under ten pounds, but quite a few were either mid-size females or full grown males up to fifty pounds. The really clear water just east of Punta Arenas held several schools of this size during early June.

The best thing about these small to medium tarpon on Vieques is how quick they are to eat almost any fly placed in front of them. This is the main difference between our island and a fishery like the Keys or Boca Grande Pass. Seeing a single boat on the Vieques flats is unusual, and when you do it’s often a local cast netting bait, not fishing for tarpon. The complete absence of fishing pressure makes Vieques tarpon the most angler friendly in the world. When I find a school of rolling fish on a calm morning, I know I’m going to get a hook into one of them. This is something I couldn’t always say during my years up in Key West.

Despite our cooperative tarpon, Vieques is never going to be compared to the Keys or the Pass. We simply don’t have the numbers of fish or the predictability. Vieques tarpon show up when the feel like it and leave just as quickly. Throw in the fact that there are only three captains on the island to charter for them you have nothing to build a $100,000 tournament around, which is fine with me. I was never much of a competitive angler anyway. My only first place victory in over a dozen Florida tournaments I fished & netted me a t-shirt. That’s a pretty far cry from the giant checks and new boats handed out at the Boca Grande championship. But it was a nice t-shirt and I still wear it every now and then.

Someone is going to make $100,000 catching tarpon up here in West Florida on the right day, but it won’t be me. I’ll make a lot less than that doing the same thing on Vieques next year without all the noise, stress, and swearing. Fair trade.

 

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September 2008  

 

September is here and it’s obvious that we’re in for a very active Hurricane Season. So far up here in West Florida we’ve felt the effects of two storms, Fay and Gustav, and are currently keeping an eye on two more systems out in the Atlantic while waiting to see where Hurricane Ike will turn. After what was essentially a two year hiatus, the tropics are going to be much more temperamental this fall.

Compared to the States, Vieques has had it very easy for the past several years. Since I moved to the island back in 2005, we’ve never once had to secure our house for an oncoming storm. In fact, the last hurricane to seriously affect Puerto Rico was Georges back in 1998. This same storm would later bull’s-eye Key West while I was living there, smashing a boat I was building at the time and leaving me flat broke for months. After that, I never went to another hurricane party. There’s really nothing fun about these storms.

In the Keys we had an escape route with US-1, the famous Overseas Highway. It gets plenty of use during Hurricane Season as Monroe County evacuates at the drop of a hat. Most of the time these evacuations are controversial false alarms. I tended to stay put during the storms. I feared getting caught in a traffic jam on the Seven Mile Bridge when the winds hit more than anything that could happen by staying.

But Vieques doesn’t have the luxury of a bridge to anywhere. We have to depend on a sometimes reliable government run ferry to get us off the island, which is one of the reasons that we now move Stateside during the season. If I have to be caught in another tropical storm or hurricane, and I’ve been through several, I want it to happen up here.

Our physical safety isn’t what I worry about. Our house on Vieques, like almost everyone else’s, is solid block construction. It has a flat, poured cement roof and sits 90 feet above sea level. It’s not going anywhere no matter how strong the storm and my Jeep and flats boat fit inside the carport, well out of harm‘s way. What I do worry about is the aftermath.

When Hurricane Georges hit us in the Keys, I went without power for five days, which wasn‘t such a big deal. I had friends who didn’t have electricity for two weeks. When the power finally came back on there were mosquitoes hatching from my carpet and I was trading my beer to the National Guardsmen for the MREs they didn‘t want. I learned to love freeze-dried chicken loaf for a few days that month. October is no time to be without electricity in this climate. Things were much worse for the folks down on Vieques. Many went without power for over a month.

The electricity often comes back quickly in Florida and the Guard is on scene before the winds even hit. That probably won’t be the case for Vieques. When the Navy left back in 2003 a lot of post-storm infrastructure left with it. Getting aid to the island may be a little slower the next time but as part of a U.S. territory, Vieques will still fare much better than places like Cuba and Haiti. Fortunately, the island hasn’t been tested during its past half decade without the military and I hope it won’t be anytime soon.

With all of these considerations, a lot of people simply don’t travel to the Caribbean this time of year. September is officially the dead season on Vieques and a lot of tourist based businesses, including my own, close up shop until winter. The good news is that the bars and restaurants that do stay open are never crowded and many guesthouses lower their rates. For the few anglers that do visit, Captains Franco and J’s schedules are wide open and they’ll be eager to go fishing.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about Hurricane Season on Vieques is the weather, which is usually wonderful. The winds, which seem to constantly be howling when I’m down there guiding fly fishermen in the winter and spring, are often just a gentle breeze this time of year. The flats become glassy calm and you can spot huge schools bonefish tailing from a quarter mile away. It’s fly fishing at its best, but hardly anyone comes down to enjoy it. So now I leave the perfect flats of Vieques in the fall for South Florida, where I’m probably going to get hit by a hurricane. Go figure.

 

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November 2008  

 

If you jump off the pier in Esperanza and swim out two miles, the water will be over your head. In fact, you‘ll need to swim about 1500 feet straight down in order to touch the bottom. This is where some truly big stuff lives.

Since all my fishing on Vieques is done in the ankle-deep bonefish flats, I’ll jump at any chance to head offshore to do the Hemmingway thing. I got the chance last week when my buddy Dr. Pedro Watlington, our San Juan based vet and avid angler, ran his twenty two foot Robalo over to the island from Fajardo.

Pedro brought along his father-in-law Luis, who has spend a lot of time fishing the famous striper grounds off Montauk on his own boat. Rounding out the crew was Capt. J Fergeson , our offshore expert who runs Amity Charters right here on Vieques. Since we had a lot of blue water experience on the boat that morning, I was pretty confident that we’d be able to hook something interesting.

Pedro picked J and I up in Esperanza at 8AM and we had baits in the water thirty minutes later. We were running about three miles from shore to avoid some rain showers when we spotted a flock of diving birds. This is a sure sign of feeding fish under the surface and we could see some impressive splashes from a few hundred yards away.

Just before we reached the feeding zone, J spotted an incredibly fast rooster tail of water slicing across the surface. I couldn’t see what was causing this but the speed was amazing. Luis swung the helm to the right to get in front of the wake but the fin shot ahead of us before it could see the bait spread. In that quick moment I hung myself over the bow to get a better look. The unmistakable shape and glowing stripes of a seven foot blue marlin shot past us like a torpedo. I’ve never seen anything move so fast under the water.
 

 

We were trolling at seven knots but the birds and bait kept moving to the west a few knots quicker than that. J and Pedro decided to pull in the baits and run down sea at speed to cut them off. We started cranking in the four rods for the short, full throttle run when the water exploded about fifty feet behind our stern, right beneath the skipping ballyhoo that J was cranking in at full speed. He instantly threw the big Penn reel into free-spool and let the bait fall back. A split second later, J was pumping the short rod furiously, setting the hook into something solid. The same blue marlin launched itself through the surface right in our wake, now firmly attached to the thirty pound line.

J quickly handed the rod off to Pedro, who would fight the fish. As the most experienced marlin angler onboard, J would need his hands free to manage the line and leader once the big fish was close to the boat. Unhooking something with a yard long dagger for a nose can incredibly dangerous, and screw ups have killed people. Luis stayed at the helm and I stayed out of the way, snapping photos every few seconds.

In this part of the Caribbean, blue marlin can grow to over 1000 pounds and several of these “Granders,” as they’re called, have been landed off Puerto Rico in the last few decades. Fighting something like that can take hours on the heaviest of lines. The fish that Pedro was attached to was much smaller but still a handful on thirty pound stand-up gear.

Luis kept the boat right behind the fish as Pedro fought it from the bow. Unlike most marlin, this one wasn’t a jumper, which meant that it was saving a lot of energy and might not tire quickly. Fortunately, we were on a smaller boat that could chase the marlin and not let it rest. Within half an hour, Pedro was able to reel the mono leader up to the surface. J grabbed this heavy length of line which made the catch official. Just as he started sliding his gloved hand down the leader to get control of the fish and remove the lure, the hook pulled loose on its own. This was a perfect release and we watched the seven foot, 175 pound marlin swim away unharmed.

Blue marlin are the most beautiful and exciting offshore species in the world and catching them usually means hiring big yachts and spending big money. There really aren’t many places in the world where a small boat can run a few miles offshore and tangle with one like we did here on Vieques.

 

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December 2008  

 

I drove down to Key West last month for a quick visit before I fly back to Vieques for the season. I try to get down there once a year to fish my old stomping grounds, check out what’s new, and remind myself why I don’t live there anymore.

Key West is one of the most unique places in the United States. They call it the American Caribbean even though it’s really located in the North Atlantic. No matter what, it’s still as close as you can get to the real thing without jumping on a boat or plane. The Chamber of Commerce has done an excellent job over the years of selling this island to the party crowd and the once sleepy little fishing village is now a 24/7version of Mardi Gras.

Key West can also be one of the most expensive places you’ll ever visit. It’s nearly impossible to find a decent place to stay for under $100, any time of year. This is one of the reasons that Key West’s tourism is on a serious decline recently.

Five years ago, when real estate prices went through the roof, a lot of hotel owners converted their properties into condos in the hopes of selling these units for huge profits. Unfortunately, the real estate bubble popped loudly and the town found itself with fewer rooms for the tourists that wanted them. Since demand exceeded supply, the places that still had rooms available jacked up their prices beyond what the average Joe could pay. High dollar resorts became the norm for the island even though Key West is far from a destination like Anguilla or St. Barts.

It is still a gorgeous island that needs to be reminded of its deeply seated place in American history; something it should be aggressively promoting. The 18th and 19th century guest houses in Old Town are among the most beautiful in the country. The owners of these places have done a great job preserving them but you’ll pay for the privilege of staying there. Spending at least $200 per night is not uncommon.

The restaurants on Key West are also pricey as hell but some of the best anywhere. If you’re into great food and don’t mind paying for it, a week dining in the Keys won’t be enough. New places are always popping up and most are real prize winners. At the very least, you won’t have any problem finding a perfectly served fillet of grouper or mahi anywhere on Upper Duval Street.

Lower Duval is another story altogether. If you have kids or strong religious convictions, stay as far away from this area, and especially the 200 Block, as possible. When I first moved to Key West I was in my early 20’s, and Duval Street was Heaven on Earth. Back then I had an indestructible liver and no sense of embarrassment. Times have really changed. Now I look at Lower Duval as a perverted zoo where you can’t even get a cheap drink anymore. Even the strippers look ugly to me these days. If you want to pay $4 for a lukewarm beer and hear someone mangle “Brown Eyed Girl,“ you’ll feel right at home.

Despite all of that I still have a big soft spot for Key West. Spending the last few years away from it has made me appreciate and miss the island a little more than I realized. The fishing opportunities in the Keys are still some of the best in the world and booking a great guide like my buddy Capt. Mike Bartlett is the best money you’ll ever spend. A day of bonefishing with him will probably add five years to your life. And hitting the bars on Lower Duval Street for a night isn‘t really all that bad. I look at it like eating a couple of greasy cheeseburgers grilled up on the beach. Not fatal in moderation and better for you than the doctors will ever admit.

I said goodbye to Key West several years ago and don’t regret it for a minute. Vieques had the two things I was most looking for in a new place to live; affordable real estate and miles of uncrowded bonefish flats. Things are much slower these days but the phone is still ringing and the tourists still need to go fishing.

Comparing Vieques and Key West is actually a tough thing to do. They’re at the top of the list of my favorite places on Earth, but they got there in very different ways and for very different reasons. If I had the means (and I definitely don’t,) I’d own homes on both islands. Until that day, I’ll be happy enough as a resident of Vieques and a tourist on Key West.

 

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January 2009  

 

So here I am at the beginning of 2009 and I’m in a bit of a slump. I have yet to land a bonefish this year, and it hasn’t been for lack of opportunities. Our Christmas trade winds died off just before New Year’s Day and the conditions have been outstanding. I should be racking up bones left and right but I’m becoming convinced that the fishing gods are conspiring against me.

Take last Saturday for example. I had a great angler on my boat, a young college student named Kurt who was a real artist with his fly rod. He had great eye sight and spotted every fish I pointed out to him. On top of that, he followed every single direction I gave, starting his casts and presenting his flies exactly when I asked. In other words, he was a guide’s dream, and he didn’t catch a damn thing with me.

Kurt had great shots at over a dozen bonefish and actually had two eat his flies, but both came unhooked through sheer bad luck. Sometimes my most deserving anglers are the ones that come home empty handed. So after six hours and nothing but pure frustration, we gave up and headed back to the beach.

I launched my boat that morning at a spot called La Platita, a little clearing in the mangroves out in Ensenada Honda. Platita is at the end of a five mile dirt road a few miles short of the old Navy bombing range. After I launch the boat I’ll park my Jeep and trailer back under the trees and go fishing.

When we came back to shore and pulled the boat out I noticed something unusual tucked into a corner of the Jeep’s canvas top. It had a lot of hairy legs and clearly did not belong in my vehicle. I poked at it with a tire gauge, hoping to convince it to leave, but the giant freaking spider had other ideas. It dropped right into the passenger’s foot well and disappeared. I wasn’t exactly sure what species of spider this was, but it was definitely a member of the I-Really-Don’t-Want-This-Damn-Thing-In-The-Car-With-Me! order of arachnids.

Kurt and I spent a long time poking under the Jeep’s seats hoping to chase the spider out into the open, but it didn’t happen. We finally climbed in and headed down the bumpy dirt road, hoping the little monster would decide to stay hidden and not crawl up one of our legs during the next half hour. Talk about a long ride home. When I got back to the house I emptied half a can of Raid under both seats. Goodbye, spider.

So the next morning I decided to head down to my favorite beach for some wade fishing since I had the day off and really needed to catch a bonefish. I had forgotten all about my lack of fish and other troubles from the previous day and was just enjoying a drive through Vieques on a warm January morning. Then I looked down and THERE‘S MY BUDDY!

It was a definitely a tarantula, and he was climbing up the steering column, clearly getting ready to do something radical, like drop right down on top of my crotch. If I were James Bond driving his Aston Martin I would have hit the ejection seat immediately. Unfortunately, the ‘89 Jeep Wrangler didn’t come with that option so I aimed for the sidewalk and jumped out just as the front tire thumped the curb.
 

 

Tarantulas are actually common here on Vieques but rarely come out in the daytime. I’m not arachnophobic and I’ve gotten quite used to finding them in the dark corners of my garage and laundry room, but this was too much. Why can’t they at least chirp like a friendly cricket to let you know they’re coming? Somehow this guy avoided the Raid fogging and was clearly trying to make a statement. He crawled to the top of the steering wheel and was staring me down when I stepped back towards the Jeep. This was one tenacious spider with a twisted sense of humor ,so I decided not to kill him. I snapped his picture to send to my spider-hating mother up in Florida and flung him on to the road with my hat.

I could write a whole book on all of the creepy-crawly things I’ve encountered down here in the tropics and tarantulas are far from the worst. They’re totally harmless and their bite is no worse than a bee’s sting. No one has ever died from being bitten by one, but if I had been careening through traffic in San Juan instead of cruising an empty road on Vieques, I may have become the world’s first tarantula-related fatality. What a humiliating way to go that would be. On top of that fun little incident, I didn’t even catch a fish when I finally got to the beach. That was a really fun morning here in Paradise.

 

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February 2009  

 

I stopped by the Vieques Humane Society this afternoon to see my buddy Dr. Pedro Watlington, our San Juan based veterinarian who comes over to the island once a week. Our local Humane Society is one of the best examples of a bunch of people doing so much with so little. And currently, they’re overrun with puppies like Aleida, the little four-month old, blue-eyed girl pictured here.

Every dog at the Vieques Humane Society is a sato, which is the Puerto Rican word for mutt. As far as I’m concerned, there is no sweeter animal on the face of the Earth. Three years ago Amanda an I found our dog Maggie down there, and I‘ve written about her quite a lot. She is more beautiful, clever, and loyal

 

than any expensive purebred could ever hope to be, and I can’t even imagine life without her. Right now there are a couple dozen dogs just like our Maggie at the Vieques Humane Society and you folks coming down for a visit need to stop by and take a look.

The Vieques Humane Society exists on a shoestring budget. They care for all the lost, abused, and injured animals of this island that are lucky enough to be found in time. They also spay, neuter, and vaccinate every animal that comes to their door. A lot of cats and even some horses find shelter here, too.

A couple times a year some folks on the island will hold benefits like art auctions or the chili cook-off and I always donate a fishing trip as a prize. Since the shelter is in a tough spot right now I‘m going to make that an open ended offer. If you come down to the island and take a dog home with you I’ll throw in a free half day bonefishing trip for two.

I normally charge $300 for this. If you ask me, this is the ultimate win/win/win situation. You get a great dog and free fishing trip, the dog gets a loving new home, and I get to spend time on my boat with someone nice enough to come down and adopt one of our shelter’s homeless dogs.

Not much of an angler? No problem. I’ll still take two of you out for a great half-day sightseeing, snorkeling, and beachcombing tour. Some of the most stunning parts of Vieques, like the bay and reefs of Ensenada Honda, are only accessible by boat, and I can easily get you to all of them with my bonefish skiff.

I’m fully aware that adopting a dog is, and should be, a major undertaking. You‘re basically adding a member to your family. Some of you reading this may want to help but simply have no room for a new dog. I understand and appreciate this, and you folks can get a fishing trip, too. Write them a check for $500 to the Vieques Humane Society and you’ll get the same free half-day offer. That $500 will go farther than you’ll ever know and it’s also tax-deductible.

Yes, I know that with the recession $500 is a lot of money these days, but maybe Bill Gates is reading this. Open your checkbooks and help these animals out a little bit. Let’s face some facts here; no matter how bad things might seem, no one is going to go hungry, in both the States and here on Vieques. There are piles of money available for people from the government, but these animals will suffer without our help.

We humans created the domestic dog for our own purposes; security, labor, companionship, and pure enjoyment. They do so much for us and all that we owe them in return is a loving home. So right now, Vieques is full of great dogs in need of a loving home. I already have one and will probably take a second pup back to the States later this spring. Do yourselves a favor and stop by the Vieques Humane Society while you’re down here. Say Hi to Dr. Pedro, Emily, or Aleida and try to come up with a reason not to take one of those dogs home with you.

You can also go to their website at www.viequeshs.org and donate right there.

 

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March 2009  

 

At least once a week, especially during the depths of winter, one of my customers will look around at the stunningly beautiful Caribbean waters off Vieques and say something along the lines of, “Man, you’ve got the best job in the world.” That’s quite a thing to hear someone say to you.

Obviously I agree with that statement or I wouldn’t still be guiding fishermen after all these years. As far as I‘m concerned, the only other jobs I’d rather have would be F-22 pilot or astronaut. Unfortunately for me, both of those occupations require more brain cells than I’ve ever possessed, even before the rum assault began back in college. The only bandits I’ll ever be calling out are bonefish at twelve o’clock low.

Being told that I have the world’s best job is actually a little embarrassing, mainly because guiding is something that almost any physically fit person can do. Fishing is not rocket science and humans were poling small boats across the shallows and catching fish well before Christ (not a bad fisherman Himself) was born. Being a fishing guide is easy but being a successful fishing guide takes a lot of work.

Believe it or not, there are quite a few of downsides to being a self-employed fisherman. The main one is pure unpredictability. Guiding is as far from a nine-to-five office job as you can get. There is zero job security in this line of work. The weather or economy can make a season highly profitable or truly rotten.

Here on Vieques our season starts just before Christmas and ends around Memorial Day. Last year was great. The economy was strong and people wanted to spend their money, so I was booked almost every day for several months. This season is much slower since the economy is in the toilet. Fortunately (for me) there’s a very cold winter up north. That means I‘m getting a lot of last minute phone calls from folks sick of watching the snow accumulate and their retirement funds shrink. People can only take so much of that before they either go completely nuts or go someplace warm, and Vieques is definitely someplace warm.

My income is also totally dependent on my boat and its engine, a mechanical device that can and will break down on occasion. Two years ago I had brand new Evinrude fall apart on me. The company refused to honor their warranty and I lost a month’s income fighting to get it fixed. The stress alone was worse than my financial loss. Something as simple as a dead battery or flat tire can cost me half a mortgage payment.

There’s also the physical toll of being in the intense sun and pushing nearly a thousand pounds of boat and anglers around all day long. Skin cancer is a serious occupational hazard, despite all the precautions I take. I finally have good health coverage thanks to my wife’s job but for a dozen years I was completely uninsured. If I fell off my boat and broke my leg, I was screwed. By the way, it was my choice to be one of the “Millions of Uninsured Americans” back then. I was young and healthy and didn’t feel like forking over for the coverage. If I got hurt and couldn’t work, the government wouldn’t have owed me squat.

Finally, and this might sound a little silly, there’s an emotional toll that comes with chartering. Good guides are just as ecstatic as their anglers when they catch fish and even more disappointed when they don’t. The guide’s job is to put the angler on the fish and the angler’s job is to get the fly in front of it. When it all comes together there’s nothing better. Watching someone land a prize bonefish is as good as it gets and we‘ll do anything to make that happen. There’s also nothing worse than seeing someone try really hard and walk away empty handed. Even when the trip doesn‘t work out, the vast majority of anglers are very gracious and well aware that a day on the flats is as tough as fishing gets.

The real reason I stick with guiding is that I like and respect my customers. I’m not at all temperamental when someone paying me good money screws up an easy shot, or even three days worth of easy shots. In fact, I’m the exact opposite, and I pride myself on my diplomacy and ability to teach folks something new if they’re willing to learn it. I’ll never claim to be the world’s best fly fishing guide but I know my business well and could write a book on bonefishing. In fact, I’m halfway through writing my book on bonefishing. Look for it in 2010. In the meantime, come on down to Vieques and I’ll show you what I know about this sport and won’t give you a hard time if you blow an easy shot or two. But do your part and you’ll probably go home successful.

 

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April 2009  

 

A few weeks ago I had a four day charter with a semi-retired professor from a major northern university. He was a very likable guy at first, but when he wasn’t throwing sadly inaccurate casts at big tailing bonefish, he would fill in the time by lecturing me about all the flaws of capitalism and the greedy American system in general. He got really fired up when he found out that my wife works for a huge investment bank. I had no idea how oppressive we’d been over these past few years.

The Professor was also using a $500 fly rod and had just got back from a couple of fishing trips to resorts in the Bahamas and Belize, where he had caught almost two dozen bonefish in one day. It was that last piece of information that really told me how much trouble I was in with this guy.

When I was guiding in the Keys, where the sport of bonefishing was invented, I would cringe every time a client informed me that their last trip was to either the Bahamas or Belize.

“How many did you catch?” I’d ask, with a sigh of resignation. Then I’d get to hear all about a typical day of bonefishing on the flats off a place like Ambergris Key in Belize.

It would usually be something like: “Well, on our first day my wife only caught twelve, but that’s because she lost her contact lenses, and I only caught eighteen because I broke my rod and had to cast with just the bottom half, but our second day was really great because…”

In other words, if you hit certain parts of Belize or the Bahamas at the right time of year, you’re almost guaranteed to find tennis court-sized schools of small bonefish that are impossible not to catch.

Bonefish on the flats of Vieques are different creatures. Catching bones down here is basically grad school compared to those other locations. Our huge tailing fish can be insanely demanding and if you’ve managed to land one of them with either Capt. Franco or myself lately, well, you’ve really got your act together.

But back to the Professor. As I was launching the boat at the beginning of our fourth day, he informed me that the reason he hadn’t caught any fish during the previous three was due to one thing: Me. Since the Professor was also a Bonefish Expert, as are most folks from Minnesota, he ticked of a list of things that I was doing wrong out on the flats. I stood there in silence while he criticized just about all of my guiding skills, from how I poled my boat to the flies I was using and how I wanted them moved.

The Professor, in addition to being a bonefish expert, was also an amazingly lucky man. I know three different guides from Key West who would have hauled off and punched him right there and then.

I pride myself on having a very even temper when it comes to paying customers. I save my tantrums for my family and friends. The Professor was clearly used to being the smartest person in the room and the opinions of a full time guide really weren’t going to matter to him. So on that morning, instead of hurting the guy or acting hurt myself, I politely heard the Professor out, took a very deep breath, and told him that we would go out to the flats and do everything his way. He could tell me where to go, what to do with the boat, what flies to use, and basically take charge of the entire charter. I also told him that if we caught a bonefish while doing everything his way, he wouldn’t have to pay me for that morning.

Four hours later, while The Professor was paying me, I realized that I actually did learn something from him. In fourteen years of guiding, I’ve never come across anyone so book-smart yet so totally clueless. Guys like The Professor, with a

 

lifetime in government and academia, are incapable of thinking that they’re wrong about anything, even when they‘re seriously offending someone who isn‘t. What I learned is that a little bit of knowledge, especially when it comes to fly fishing, can be a very dangerous thing. In other words, listen to your dumb-ass guide, especially here on Vieques, and you might actually catch a fish.

P.S: The angler in the picture above builds log cabins for a living in Idaho. He listened to me this morning and then caught this beautiful seven pound bonefish.

 

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May 2009

 

First off, I‘d like to thank Jim Griffiths, The Nautical Mile‘s publisher, for inviting me onboard his great monthly fishing paper. I’ve been a regular reader and have learned a lot from these pages over the years.

Unlike many of the other writers featured here, I’m not a Florida native. Originally from Altoona, Pennsylvania, I moved to Key West back in 1992 in search of an endless summer and a life on the water. Fortunately, I found both down there.

My first job in Key West was working for a slightly deranged dive boat owner, a sixty year old ex-Navy Chief who treated me exactly like one of his raw recruits. Capt. Don would fire me at least once a week, but I learned a lot in an amazingly short time and have a whole lot of stories to tell about those two years on the Coral Princess.

I also learned that I didn’t want to run a dive boat for a living. It was too much responsibility and I really loved my cheap little skiff that I bought shortly after moving to Key West. I couldn’t get enough of the flats and spent all my free time learning to catch tarpon, bonefish, and permit. Since this was well before a GPS was small or affordable, I also spent quite a bit of time running aground. After a while I was finally convinced that I could go out, find fish, and come home without hurting myself. I got my captain’s license, upgraded to one of the very first Maverick Mirage flats boats, and started Wildfly Charters in 1995.

This was a great time to be guiding in Key West and our flats fishing was getting a ton of exposure thanks to some great shows on ESPN. During the annual tarpon run there were more anglers than guides and it wasn’t uncommon to be booked for over fifty days without a break. It was exhausting but a lot of fun.

Things started changing about five years later with an influx of new guides and a skyrocketing cost of living in Key West. The waters were getting very crowded and I started thinking about finding a new island to call home. There were two of them on my radar, one just to the north and one way to the south.

The first was Matlacha. It was early 2001 and my parents, Bill and Karen McKee, were hunting for a retirement home here in Florida. My dad, an avid golfer, was looking at condos in the Cape where he could tee off right outside his door. I’m a disaster at golf and avoid it like the plague since drilling a friend with a drive and putting him on crutches over ten years ago. Fortunately, Mom and Dad settled on Matlacha and an Action Craft 18 now sits on the lift in their back yard canal. Dad still loves golf, but that skiff and the local redfish have totally claimed his attention. I’ve been a regular angler in these waters ever since.

The island that finally pulled me away from Key West was Vieques. Just off the west coast of Puerto Rico and the size of Manhattan, Vieques has only 9000 residents, fifty beaches, and miles of untouched flats. Vieques also had only one other fishing guide before I moved here in 2005. That was a great year. I got engaged, bought a house, and moved to a Caribbean island full of bonefish that I practically had all to myself. Wildfly Charters of Vieques was an instant success and I was blessed with some terrific seasons.

So lets fast forward to today. My wife Amanda took a job last year with UBS Financial in Ft. Myers, making her a full time Floridian once again. Since she agreed to follow me down to a little island in the Caribbean for a few years, it’s my turn to follow her back to civilization and move Wildfly Charters to Pine Island in time for tarpon season. I rented out the Vieques house and handed my old Maverick over to a good friend for the summer. My new Beavertail Skiff will be at the Matlacha ramp by the middle of May.

I’m excited to be joining the Florida guide’s community once again, and a lot of my regular customers are looking forward to fishing this coast after hearing me rave about it for so long. I’ll still bounce back and forth to Puerto Rico for charters from time to time but I’m really thrilled to be back around family and friends on the best coast in all of Florida.

And thanks again, Jim. It’s great to be on board the Nautical Mile.

 

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June 2009
 

Director Guy la Valdene’s “Tarpon” is by far the best movie ever made about saltwater fly fishing. It was shot in Key West in 1973 and perfectly captures the town and the fishing on film as it was back then.

“Tarpon” follows a handful of guides and anglers, including the well known author Tom McGuane, as they chase these giant fish off Key West well before the rest of the world discovered the sport. It’s fascinating to see how much things have evolved since those days of thick fiberglass rods and flats boats with lots of wood trim. And the sheer numbers of tarpon that these guys practically had to themselves is jaw-dropping. The slow-motion footage in this movie has never been topped.

While the fishing scenes are stunning, my favorite thing about the movie is that it serves as a time capsule for a Key West that no longer exists. The island was my home for over a decade but I arrived too late to see it like this. Duval Street of the early 70’s was a place were you could sit in an open air bar with your fishing buddies and hammer out the plan of attack for the next morning over cheap long necks while a guy named Jimmy sat in the corner singing songs about leaving Nashville. (And if the movie’s instrumental soundtrack sounds familiar, that’s Jimmy's work there, too.) That Key West is so far gone these days that I get seriously bummed seeing it in its natural state. Too bad they didn't let six year-olds drink or guide back in '73 or I'd have been there.

The real payoff when you watch “Tarpon” for the first time is its perfect portrayal of fly fishing as a sport for conservationists. In one single scene it drives that message home far better than anything that’s ever been written or filmed. I won’t give it away, but when that scene comes, without any narration, you’ll be stunned at the subtle brilliance of it all. It’s the movies entire focus delivered in one quick jump of scenery.

Shortly after it was filmed, “Tarpon” went into limbo. It was shown once or twice on TV and then went back into Valdene’s vault. Somehow, a primitive video tape was made and started getting passed around Key West by the guides and fishermen. Over the last three decades “Tarpon” gained a cult following and we used to play a grainy, pirated copy all day long in the fly shop where I occasionally worked. We were really sad the day the VCR finally ate our worn out tape. When I heard early last year from one of the folks involved in the film that a remastered version would be out on DVD, I was thrilled. Seeing it for the first time in its original state makes Guy’s achievement even more brilliant than I ever realized.

If you’re a tarpon fisherman, or want to be, owning this movie is a must. "Tarpon" is the “Citizen Kane” of fishing documentaries. If you’re a Buffett fan then you’ll also need a copy. Jimmy’s instrumental soundtrack gives this movie a perfect atmosphere of the Key West that he knew in the 70‘s. If you just appreciate good filmmaking, then pick up a copy, too. Unfortunately, it's not available on Netflix yet so you'll have to buy or borrow it. Ask around your fly fishing friends, someone will have it.

 

For those of you who live here on Pine Island or Matlacha and have visited Key West recently, do yourselves a favor and watch this movie. You'll feel incredibly fortunate for what you have right here and will want to hang on to it now more than ever. Watching "Tarpon" never gets old and it's really hard to wear out a DVD.

 

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July 2009

 

When I was guiding in Key West our local fly shop used to send me a lot of customers who never touched a fly rod before but wanted to learn the sport. This was not because I was the best instructor available. In fact, I’m a self-taught caster and have no fly fishing certifications whatsoever. I simply had a reputation with the shop’s owner for not yelling at my charters, even when they’d lobotomize me with a heavily weighted crab pattern or drive a 2/0 Owner hook deep into my calf muscle. Plus I always needed the money so I‘d take anyone they sent my way.

Getting so many unskilled anglers was sometimes tough on the ego, especially during tarpon season. We’d often come back to the dock at the end of the day and see most of the other guides and their customers high-fiving or clinking long-necks together in celebration. They’d be telling and retelling their tarpon stories while I’d look at my anglers and say something like, “Well, you learned a lot today and you‘ll be much better next time.” Then I’d try to not pick at the scabs on my right temple or the back of my calf.

Actually, I really like having beginners on my boat. Most of them are more than willing to listen and they also haven’t taught themselves any bad habits that can be really difficult to break. Just setting the hook on a tarpon with a fly rod is an act of real violence that doesn’t exist anywhere in freshwater fishing. Gently lifting the rod after the fish eats is a serious hurdle for a lot of folks who’ve started out on a trout stream. It can take several missed shots until they stop doing it. In fact, comparing trout fishing to tarpon fishing is like comparing the Tour-de-France to the Daytona 500. They’re both wheeled racing but there’s a bit of difference in horsepower.

I did actually have two different anglers manage to land tarpon without ever casting a fly before. The first beginner simply had a fish that really wanted to be caught. It was a dead calm July morning and the tarpon were rolling everywhere. I had just put the rod in my angler’s hands, explained the basics, and watched him flail away spastically like a typical first-timer. It didn’t matter.

 

The tarpon were swimming right up to us and his fly fell in the middle of the first big school, no more than ten feet from the bow. A seventy pounder inhaled it and made a hard turn, solidly driving the hook right into the corner of its own mouth. All the jumping in the world wasn’t going to dislodge it and I had the rod rigged with a heavy 30# leader. The ninety degree water wasn’t holding a lot of oxygen and the fish wore itself out quickly. It was a miracle tarpon that we wouldn’t duplicate again that day, and my angler’s casting never got any better. At the very least I was convinced he’d become a lifetime client but I didn’t hear from him again. Maybe he figured that fly fishing couldn’t get any better than that so why not quit on a high note.

The other beginner who landed a tarpon with me was a PGA golfer who’s name I didn’t recognize. I remember that he was ranked number sixty-two on the money list at the time. After an hour on the bow he was throwing a very decent fifty foot cast, which is all you need in most situations. I started poling him down the brightest flat in the area and he was getting good shots every fifteen minutes or so. He missed a few takes but two hours later he finally struck one hard enough, cleared his line, and landed the tarpon shortly after that. By the time our trip was over he jumped two more fish and was casting almost as well as I could. It was very impressive to watch but not all that surprising coming from a professional golfer. An ESPN producer once told me that he watched Tiger Woods learn to cast flawlessly in less than five minutes.

So why was I the world’s worst golfer the one time I tried it? Golf and fly fishing are actually very similar disciplines. A good swing or cast both require coordination, timing, and finesse. But the similarities don’t stop there. Golf and fly fishing both give you the opportunity to spend lots of money on some really overpriced gear and experience all the hassles of traveling with it to some very expensive locations. Both sports give you a decent chance of getting struck by lightning. Golfers and fly fishermen also get to spend hours watching their sports on TV while boring the hell out of their non-golfing/fishing spouses. But best of all, you can become completely obsessed with both and still be lousy at them. In this case they provide you with a great excuse to throw your expensive gear down in disgust and start drinking while outdoors.

That’s probably why I never gave golf another try. I’d be dead from liver failure by now.

 

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August 09

While I was unpacking after moving into our new house last month, I came across a handful of fly fishing gear that I hadn’t used in a long time. One piece of tackle was my 12-weight Sage RPLXi and Tibor Gulfstream reel. Even though this was the most expensive rod and reel that I own, it hasn’t seen the water in almost seven years.

 

I stopped using it for the tarpon in Key West when I realized that a 10-weight was much easier for my clients to cast and didn’t spook those heavily pressured fish as much. I took it with me when we moved to Puerto Rico but the tarpon on Vieques were all twenty-five pounders, also perfect 10 weight fish. So the big 12 weight stayed in its tube for the next five years. Now that we’re back in Southwest Florida, with a thirty minute boat ride to Boca Grande and the monsters that live there, my old 12-weight and big Tibor reel will see some action once again.

 

I feel silly for letting a $1200 piece of gear collect dust for several years, and that brings me the subject of this month’s article: Who really needs top of the line fly fishing tackle and how do you justify spending that kind of money?

 

Let’s start with the easy part. If you’re a beginner at this sport, there is no reason to spend any more than $200 on a fly rod and reel. Many manufacturers such as Cortland, Temple Fork, or Redington offer complete packages for around $150. This will give you a saltwater-ready rod, reel, and line with a lifetime warranty thrown in, too. The advances in graphite manufacturing and computerized machine-tooling have created a revolution in affordable fly fishing gear. Yes, it will be made in Asia, but these outfits are as good as anything the big name American companies were producing ten years ago at almost five times the price.

 

The high performance and fast action of a $700 rod will be lost on you if you’re a beginner, so don’t even look there. Orvis, Sage, and G.Loomis, the same folks who’ve invented and perfected the $700 fly rod, all offer beginner’s outfits for less than a third of that price. Don’t let a tackle shop or even a friend talk you into anything more expensive for your first fly rod.

 

So let’s move up the scale a bit. If you live here in Southwest Florida, have regular boat or kayak access to the shallows, and have learned to cast a fly past fifty feet, then it might be time to consider buying a higher performance rod and reel. This is where you want to look at an 8 or 9-weight from any of the big name companies. It might not be cheap but trust me on one thing; their lifetime warranties really are good for a lifetime. I break at least three or four of my Sage rods a year, (usually on ceiling fans,) and have never had to argue with the home office out in Washington State.

You still don’t need to look at the very top of the price list of fast action saltwater rods. A smooth casting 8-weight from a company like Temple Fork or St. Croix can be picked up at the Bass Pro shop for under $300 and even returned there if you happen to break it. A lot of serious anglers are using these four-piece models as back up rods when they travel since they can be carried on the plane. Considering the nightmare of modern baggage handling, this is a really smart idea.

 

Saltwater is a harsh environment so you will want to pay a little more attention to the reel you select. Once again there are dozens of great ones out there but you’ll want a reel manufactured from bar stock aluminum with a sealed drag. This will eliminate any corrosion worries and won’t need much maintenance other than a freshwater rinse at the end of the day. Look for that lifetime warranty here, too. Most manufacturers offer it.

 

So now let’s move back up to the high-dollar stuff and figure out who needs it. As a guide I have to have the best gear possible and clients should expect to see that on any charter boat. That doesn’t mean I buy all new rods and reels every season, far from it. Most of my fly tackle is several years old but as I mentioned earlier, it has a high attrition rate. The lifetime warranty eases the pain of snapping a rod that costs as much as a mortgage payment.

If you’re on the water a lot, have your casting perfected, and can afford it, by all means buy the best rod and reel possible. The latest generation of rods are astounding and definitely worth the money. There’s currently an arms race between the big three manufacturers to produce the lightest rods possible that can still throw a heavy saltwater fly line. The Orvis Helios at $785 is winning right now.

 

I use Sage rods exclusively and their Xi2’s are my favorites. (Yes, they do give me a guide’s discount.) The reels I prefer are made by Tibor and are totally bulletproof. I’ve have one of their Everglades models that I’ve never once taken apart or cleaned in thirteen years. I use it every time I fish and I know it can handle anything I do to it.

 

Ask five different guides what the best rod and reel is and you’ll get five different opinions. The good news is that there is a ton of choices out there for every angler and budget, and nearly all of it is quality tackle that didn’t exist a few decades ago. No matter what you spend these days, if you choose properly you’ll have a rod and reel that can last many years or even a lifetime.

 

 

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September 2009

 

Every saltwater guide in Florida has a bunch of good shark stories.  They usually revolve around watching a big tarpon get sliced in half by a much bigger shark.  This is an almost daily occurrence each spring in Boca Grande Pass and it’s even more impressive to see down in the gin clear waters of the Keys.  Losing a tarpon to sharks is a sad but inevitable part of flats fishing, but when it comes to losing a permit the heartbreak reaches a different level.  So here’s my best shark story:

Ten years ago I was fishing off Key West with two of my favorite anglers, twelve-year old Theo and his father Ted.  Three years earlier, on their first trip with me, Theo landed a twenty-pound permit with an eight-pound spinning rod.  These Jersey boys were my kind of anglers, lucky and skilled at the same time, and I always looked forward to fishing with them.  On this particular trip Theo was going to try catching a permit with a fly rod. This is the ultimate challenge for any angler, let alone a grade-schooler.

We were fishing in the Marquesas, a group of islands twenty-five miles west of Key West, a remote area known for its abundance of tarpon, permit, and big sharks.  Early that morning, a large stingray came cruising down our flat with a single dark fish trailing close behind.  The other fish was a hitch-hiking permit, hoping that an easy meal would dart out of the grass in front of the ray.  Theo was on the bow with my 9-weight Sage and a shrimp fly tied on the tippet.  When the ray was less than forty feet away he made a nice cast across its back and the fly sunk right in front of the permit.  For those who know the sport, this was a hole-in-one shot; as good as it gets in shallow water fishing, and the permit ate.

Theo set the hook, cleared the loose fly line, and got the fish on the reel like an old pro.  At that moment I’m sure every other guide in Key West heard me hollering all the way back to Mallory Square.

While Theo was doing a fantastic job fighting the fifteen-pound fish, I had one thought in mind: IGFA World Record.  The International Game Fish Association, which sets the rules as to how a fish is properly submitted for record consideration, has several divisions, including one for juniors under sixteen years old.  The junior record for permit on fly was wide open at the time and Theo now had that fish on his line.  We were going to be famous.

After about fifteen minutes, the permit was wearing down and getting closer to the boat.   I jumped down into the cockpit and got ready to land the fish, thinking about the upcoming moment back at the dock, with Theo perched on my shoulders, marching our new World Record permit over to the scale, and shoving all the lesser mortals out of our way.  “Move it, Chumps!  Junior World Record coming through!”  It was a really nice dream at the time.  But dreams die hard, and it wasn’t meant to be.

As I was digging out the net from the mess in my storage compartment, I said some fatal words to Theo and Ted:  “Keep your eyes open, guys. There are a lot of sharks around here.”  

The exhausted permit’s struggle was a clanging dinner bell out there in the Marquesas; ground zero for sharks, and one answered the call.  

It wasn’t even a huge fish that charged us, just a five-foot lemon shark, maybe an eighty pounder.  But it was big enough.  I barely spat out the “Oh, Sh--!!!,” and then it was done.  The permit was completely gone in one bite less than twenty feet from the boat.   We didn’t even get a mangled head to hold up as proof of what Theo almost had that day.  I really felt like crying, which was kind of stupid.  The guide’s name doesn’t even go into the IGFA book, so only a handful of people would even know that I had anything to do with it, but I still felt lousy.  My glory of guiding someone to a world record permit on fly was gone, thanks to a miserable little lemon shark.  All the way home I cursed every species of shark in the ocean.

Theo, of course, took it all in stride.  He’d get another permit someday; in fact he was sure of it.   He was only twelve-years old and maybe that second permit would still be the record.  Oh well, everybody needs a good “One That Got Away” story, and now we had ours.    

I quickly forgave all the world’s sharks shortly by the next day.  The five-foot lemon was simply doing his job by being an apex predator and ridding the ocean of weak and struggling fish.  I just wish that shark didn’t have to cripple the ego of a struggling fishing guide at the same time.  

 

 

October 2009

The perfect flats boat doesn’t really exist, but for every angler there’s always one that comes close.  Over the years I’ve owned five different skiffs, from a beat up Gheenoe to a top of the line Maverick Mirage.  They’ve all had their merits but my current boat is the one that comes closest to being perfect for my type of fishing.  Here’s a quick rundown of how I have it rigged.

For the last two years I’ve been guiding out of a Beavertail B-2, this is an eighteen foot skiff made in Avon, Minnesota, which is more than a thousand miles away from the nearest redfish.  Beavertail, originally a duck hunting company, has almost perfected the technical poling skiff over the past five years.  Since the majority of my anglers are looking to sight cast with fly rods, the five hundred pound B-2 is about as quiet and easy to pole as a flats boat can get.  With a full tank of gas and two anglers it floats in only six inches of water, which is shallower than most redfish will ever swim.

I ordered the Beavertail to replace the older Maverick Mirage I was using down on Vieques, Puerto Rico.  There were no boat ramps close to where I fished and the Maverick was too heavy to launch off the beach.  With the Beavertail I could back right down on to the sand and have a five minute run to the island’s best bonefish flats and it would prove just as useful up here in Florida.  

The B-2 that I bought was a very basic model with a side console, trim tabs, and not much else.  I powered it with a fifty-horsepower Yamaha two-stroke outboard.  I learned the hard way with my Maverick that owning anything other than a Yamaha outside of the Continental U.S. is asking for trouble.  Almost every single boat you see bobbing around the Caribbean is sporting a Yamaha.  They’re incredibly reliable and parts are available worldwide.  

With only fifty horsepower, my B-2 is no rocket sled.  It will hit thirty mph wide open, but I never needed to travel more than four or five miles to get to the fish on Vieques.  I plan to eventually bump the power up to a four-stroke sixty for the longer runs that I need to make here around Pine Island.

After I shipped the Beavertail back to Florida I made a couple more additions that I think are must haves for this area.  The first thing I added was a Garmin 440s.  This full color GPS/Sonar unit comes loaded with charts and tide tables for the entire coastal U.S. and the Bahamas.  Technology like this didn’t exist for small boats when I first started guiding and I really like marking the schools of baby tarpon I find way up in the local mangrove creeks.  

The second thing I added was a trolling motor.  It’s rare to see a small boat in this area without one but this is something I didn’t need it when I had the skiff sent to Vieques.  Chasing bonefish by boat in shallow water and high winds requires someone on the poling platform at all times, and that person was always me.  If I wanted to catch a one on my day off I did it on foot.  The flats up here around Pine Island are far more expansive and a trolling motor is a must for exploring new spots.  The Beavertail’s light hull allowed me to rig it with a lower thrust and less costly unit.  I chose a fifty-five pound thrust Minn Kota Riptide which only requires a single battery, saving me a lot of weight on the bow.

Another must have for this area is a shallow water anchor system.  Just about every flats or bay boat in Southwest Florida now sports a Power Pole.  This is one of the best inventions for boaters in the last twenty years, allowing you to stop and hold position in up to eight feet of water at the touch of a button.  I don’t know anyone who owns a Power Pole and is not totally satisfied with it.  Beavertail offers them as a factory installed option but I didn’t order it and wish I had.  The $1500 cost was a serious issue at the time but it would have been money well spent.

For now I use a Stick It Anchor Pin.  This is an ingenious piece of hardware that I call the “Poor Man’s Power Pole.”   The Stick It is a simple eight foot composite spike with a nylon lanyard and a T handle at the top.  You simply shove it into the bottom and tie it off to the bow or stern.  This holds a light skiff almost as well as a Power Pole but only costs $90.  It’s an easy and indestructible alternative and also a great backup system for larger boats in the shallows.  At some point, however, I will add an eight foot Power Pole to my Beavertail.  

Finally, the one piece of gear on my boat that gets more use than any other is my graphite push pole.  By my own rough estimate I’ve spent at least twelve thousand hours on a poling platform over the last fifteen years.  That’s almost five hundred solid days with a push pole in my hands.  I’ve owned only one model for the past ten years and that’s a twenty-one foot Stiffy Hybrid.  These Texas made push poles are the best on the market and at $700 they’re not cheap.  They are well worth the money.  This is the one thing I consider indispensable on my boat and I wouldn’t consider using another model.  

So that’s a quick rundown of how I’ve rigged my boat for fishing around Pine Island.  I’m not endorsed by any company I mentioned above so these were my honest opinions.  There are a lot of flats boats currently on the market similar to my Beavertail B-2.  Most cost more and some cost less.  The good news is that if you’re in the market for a very shallow running skiff and the all the gear to rig it for fishing Southwest Florida, you literally have a ton of choices.  It’s a great time to hit the flats.  

 

 

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November 2009

 

It was just before sunrise when I met up with Capt. Joe Harley at his dock on Matlacha. We were heading out to hunt down some big Pine Island redfish which were finally showing up in serious numbers in the pass. I was traveling light that morning. All I had with me was a single 9-weight Sage rod and exactly half a dozen new flies that arrived in the mail the day before.

Joe fired up his Mercury outboard and idled out the canal. He quickly put the skiff on plane and aimed us north towards Burnt Store. It was 75 degrees and the entire eastern sky was turning the amazing shade of crimson that only hunters and fishermen ever get used to seeing. If you’ve never experienced a ride on a flats boat from Matlacha at sunrise, do yourself a favor and book a trip right now.

One of the things I like most about fishing with Capt. Joe Harley is his boat. Joe runs a custom wooden skiff built right here on Pine Island by a former mullet boat builder. At seventeen feet long and painted a very distinct mangrove green, it really stands out on the water. It’s also the very definition of the word basic. It has no GPS, fish finder or trolling motors. All the technological crutches are totally absent. It does have a big casting deck, poling platform, is exceptionally quiet and floats in six inches of water. It’s a perfect fly fishing rig even though it looks like it was built several decades ago. Floating next to a new carbon-fiber skiff like a $40,000 Maverick HPX, Joe’s boat is positively retro; like a 1967 Stingray parked next to a 2010 ZR-1. That makes it a perfect fit in a lot of ways because Joe is kind of retro himself.

For those who don’t know him, by day he’s Capt. Joe Harley, a Matlacha fly fishing guide. But by night he’s Joe Bomba, guitar player and front man for the great rock and roll trio The Bombaleros. In a local music scene dominated by country, blues, and Buffett, the Bombaleros really stand out. Heavy on The Stones and Beatles, their main ingredient is the instrumental surf rock sound of folks like The Ventures and Dick Dale. Hearing these guys at a waterfront bar is one of the best things about life on Matlacha. Throw in Joe’s plaid pants and twangy Gretsch guitar and the retro image is complete. Fishing with Capt. Joe is a little like fishing with Buddy Holly at the same time.

We came off plane after a twenty minute run and quickly killed the outboard. Joe gave me the first shot on the bow so I pulled out my 9-weight and one of the new crab patterns. These flies came from one of my regular anglers out in Idaho. Eric is a great fly tyer who builds log homes in the summer and has a lot of free time on his hands for the rest of the year. He’s also obsessed with catching a permit on a fly. After coming so close for two years in a row with me down in Puerto Rico, Eric has been trying to perfect a crab pattern for these notoriously difficult fish. Sometimes he’ll call me twice a day with questions about which color of thread or feathers or thread to use, he’s that kind of angler. We have very few permit on the flats up here around Pine Island but we do have plenty of redfish, and they love crabs, too. Getting a big red on one of his flies would be a total thumbs-up for Eric’s efforts.

The water was especially flat this morning and the mullet were everywhere. After only a few minutes of poling, Joe noticed an unmistakable push of water to our north. The birds began diving over top of it and the smaller bait fish started jumping from the surface. It was a tennis court size school of big redfish. As Joe pushed me closer I could clearly make out the copper colored backs of these fish. More bait started busting from the water and we even watched several small flounder skipping across the surface trying to escape the feeding frenzy. This one would be a no-brainer.

I started casting the crab fly toward the leading edge of the school. It was heavy pattern but a big improvement on the first batch Eric sent me last month. It plopped down and was immediately inhaled by a big red but in all honesty I could have tossed a Barbie Doll into this school and triggered a strike. Two hundred redfish in three feet of water aren’t the most sophisticated diners. They’re more like hogs at the trough. But that didn’t matter to me and in a few minutes I had a 24 inch redfish in the boat.

It was 6:55 AM in Idaho but I decided to call Eric with the news. He’d called me a few days earlier at close to 11 PM with a question about rabbit fur so I was hoping to return the favor and wake him up for a change. Unfortunately he’s also an elk hunter so he’d been awake for several hours. He was thrilled with the news but that also meant he’d only become more obsessive at the tying vise and I’d be getting more phone calls at wacky hours.

The school was still cruising up and down the Burnt Store bar so Joe made a quick run and put us in front of them again. He took the bow this time with his new Powell fly rod and I pushed him into the shallow water where the reds started tailing with a vengeance. The crab fly worked again and Joe was hooked up with a serious redfish. This one was taking all his fly line and I had to push hard after it. It was the one we were looking for, easily thirty inches and a colored a stunning brilliant copper and white. This was one of the nicest redfish I’ve ever seen. After a dozen pictures we sent it back to rejoin the school.

I finished the morning a short time later by landing another redfish that was right under the slot limit at 26 and ¾ inches, a real tournament winner. I brought that one home for the grill. We’d finally harassed them enough and headed back to Matlacha. It was only 11 AM; we boated three big redfish and proved that a new fly from Idaho works here in Florida. Joe headed off to band practice and I headed to the post office to mail some crab flies to my buddies in Key West. Not a bad start to any day.

 

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December 2009

When it comes to salt water fly fishing, a lot of “experts” will tell you that you need to be able to make at least an eighty-foot cast in order to catch anything on the flats.  You’ll occasionally read this in magazines and often hear it from too many guides.  The eighty foot cast is a very demanding requirement for any angler and a discouraging one for most beginners.  But in my experience, it’s simply not necessary.

 

Ninety percent of the tarpon, bonefish, reds, and permit I’ve caught over the years were hooked within forty feet of my boat, and that’s a cast that anyone can make.  Even if you’ve never touched a fly rod before, a decent guide or instructor can get you casting out to forty feet within an hour.  The trick is to do it quickly and accurately, and this is the part that takes a fair amount of practice.

 

In most flats fishing situations, from the time your guide points out a tailing red to the moment you’ll start your cast, the average time frame is around ten seconds.  You’ll have the first five seconds to spot the target for yourself and the next five to get the fly in the water and in front of your fish.  This is a really narrow window but at forty feet it can easily be done.

 

Here’s an exercise I want you to try if you’re thinking of getting serious with a fly rod here around Pine Island or if you’re heading to any other saltwater destination.  To do this exercise properly you’ll need a measuring tape, two paper plates, a stopwatch and a partner.

 

First, take the paper plates and find an open space, preferably in a grass field or yard, and measure a straight line of fifty feet.  Place one plate at each end of this line.  String up your 7, 8, or 9 weight fly rod with a small baitfish pattern and stand on one plate.  Start with the upwind plate and aim downwind.

 

Next, strip out at least eighty feet of fly line from your reel.  Leave a rod’s length fly line, or about nine feet, hanging from the rod tip and hold just the fly in your opposite hand by the eye of its hook.

 

Have your partner hit the stopwatch and start counting out loud.  At the same moment you’ll start your false casts, aiming for the downwind plate.  When the count hits “Five,” stop your casting and present your fly.

 

So how close are you to your downwind target?

 

If you realistically want to catch a tailing redfish on a fly, in the conditions you’re going to find in Florida this time of year, you should be within two feet of the plate.  If you‘ve actually hit the plate then you‘re well ahead of the crowd but should still keep practicing.  

 

So what happens if you’ve been flailing away for hours and still can’t get to the plate in those five seconds?  Well then it’s time to stop what you’re doing and get some real instruction.  I’ve seen a lot of self taught anglers who’ve taught themselves some seriously bad habits.  If you’re one of these folks you may be totally effective with a fly rod on a trout stream but it just won’t happen on the flats.  One hour of being taught the proper saltwater techniques, whether it’s in a field, parking lot, or on the deck of a boat, will get you punching that forty feet in no time.

 

Nothing I’ve written above is saying that saltwater anglers are better fly fishermen than our freshwater brethren.  This is definitely not the case.  We’re just burdened with unique conditions.  I went out to the high mountain streams of Montana the previous summer and was barely successful.  Fifteen years on the salt turned me into a strip-striking brute and I broke off all but three fish I hooked that week.  Different locations call for different disciplines.  I spent a good deal of time that week trying to shake off my tarpon habits on those streams and came up short.  Some local knowledge would have been a great help at the time.  

 

Don’t make the same mistakes down here.  Our fish are much less forgiving.  But once you learn that forty foot/five second cast you’ll be more than ready for anything that swims, especially the demanding brutes here in the waters of Pine Island.

 

 

 

January 2010

In pursuit of perfection

As a full time flats guide I’ve managed to go through an impressive amount of gear that started out working great but quickly turned into pure garbage.  I’m talking about everything from $8 pliers to $8,000 outboards.  While it would be a lot of fun to list those items here and vent about why they failed me, I don’t want to cost the Nautical Mile any possible advertising by doing that.  

 

Instead of complaining about a handful of terrible products I’ve decided to go in the other direction with this column and detail the few things I own that are absolutely perfect.  Perfect is a serious word and my definition of it when it comes to fishing gear simply means that it works exactly as advertised and needs no improvements whatsoever.  This might be a short list but everything on it really belongs here.

 

I’ll start with something small, simple and very inexpensive:  a two inch fly called the Clouser Minnow.  This lightly weighted deer hair streamer is the best pattern ever created for both fresh and saltwater.  The Clouser is perfect for a lot of reasons.  It’s easy to tie, inexpensive to purchase and basically catches everything that swims.  Originally created for smallmouth bass on the Susquehanna River, this pattern has made itself right at home on the saltwater flats over the past twenty five years.  

 

I’ve personally caught every single inshore species in Florida on Clouser Minnows, from flounder to tarpon.  There are a lot of ways to modify this pattern but the basics of Bob Clouser’s original bass fly always remain the same.   This is what makes it perfect.  Every Florida fly angler needs at least a dozen well-tied Clousers in their fly box.  

 

A highly important but overlooked item on any fishing boat is the cooler.  For the first decade of my guiding career I bought a series of inexpensive Igloos from the local K-mart.  These were decent coolers that served double duty as a spare seat on my old Maverick Mirage, but I’d go through at least one or two each season.  Inevitably I’d have a linebacker-sized angler on my boat crash right through the Igloo’s lid and crush my turkey sandwiches.  Two years ago I discovered Yeti Coolers and have never considered anything else.

 

I bought a seventy quart model for my new skiff and I’m confident that this will be the last cooler I ever own.  Yetis are as solid as a bank vault and will keep several bags of ice frozen for over two days.  They might cost more than the same size Igloo but after two years and hundreds of anglers, including a few linebackers, my big Yeti is as sound as the day I bought it.  They couldn’t make this product better even if they charged twice as much for it.  Yetis really are the perfect cooler.

 

Now let’s go back to tackle.  I’ve never owned a perfect fly rod but I do own a few perfect reels, and they’re all made by Tibor.  This Florida based company, started by Hungarian immigrant Ted Juracsik, makes the best fly reels on Earth.  Period.   I’ve never had a single problem with any Tibor reel that I own.  They’re not cheap but owning a Tibor is very definition of getting more than your money’s worth out of a product.  You can beat the hell out of them and they just keep working perfectly, day after day.  The Tibor Everglades model I still use on my favorite 9-weight rod is thirteen years old and has never been taken apart for cleaning.  It functions as well as the day it came out of the box.  You can find a few more expensive reels and a lot more that are cheaper, but you won’t find any that are better built.  

 

Finally, the only item on this list that I literally never leave the house without are my Costa del Mar sunglasses.  I can go fishing without anything else I’ve mentioned here except my set of Costa Del Mar Fathoms.   These glasses, with their amber polycarbonate lenses, have been constantly hanging around my neck from sunrise to sunset for nearly a decade.  They’re both comfortable and tough and the company has great customer service.  I simply can’t drive or cut grass, let alone go tarpon fishing, without my Fathoms.  I actually own three pair of these glasses.  I keep the two extras on my boat in case I lose my main pair.

 

So that’s a short list of my perfect gear.  These items might not work for everyone but everything I detailed here is worth a serious look from any angler.  Check them out and you just might use them to go fishing for a lifetime.  

 

 

 

 

February 2010

Remembering a Key West Trip-

Several years ago I was running across the flats off Key West heading towards the Marquesas atoll.  It was a rare glass calm morning and my passengers were a nice mid-western couple, a trout angler and his wife on their first trip to the ocean.  We were half way to our destination when I spotted a familiar shape on the surface.  I throttled back to have a closer look and show my passengers a wild sea turtle.  

 

As soon as I idled within fifty feet of the animal I knew something wasn’t right.  It was a full grown hawksbill, a small but very common turtle that’s also a remarkably fast swimmer.  They usually take one look at a boat and then dive for the bottom.  This turtle was just staring straight ahead and slapping the water with its front flippers.  At a boat’s length from the hawksbill we could see that it was clearly hurt.  The tail end of its shell was mangled and it was streaming a fresh trail of blood which told me that this injury had just happened.

 

My passengers went from extremely excited to heartbroken and concerned for the turtle.  My first thought was that another boat had hit it.  It was spring and the channel leading to the Marquesas gets a lot of traffic that time of year, especially the very fast kingfish boats with their big twin engines.  At sixty mph it’s hard to spot a turtle on the surface, let alone avoid hitting it.  

 

I was about to pull out my net and try hauling the wounded hawksbill on board.  A quick call to FWC would summon another boat and get the turtle back to one of the wildlife hospitals in the Lower Keys.  At that moment I got a much better look at the turtle’s injury.  A semi-circular part of its shell and an entire back flipper were missing.  This was clearly no propeller strike.  I quickly shut the engine off and let the boat drift past the turtle.  My passengers didn’t understand but I told them to stay still for a minute and watch.  It didn’t take long until the dark shape appeared under the stricken hawksbill.  The six foot bull

 

shark, not a particularly big one, swam right up to its prey and promptly bit off the turtle’s remaining rear flipper.  

 

That sent both my passengers into a full throttle chorus of “Holy S---!!!”  

I joined in, too.  This was something that I had never seen before either.  The bull shark turned back again on the turtle, this time biting through its shell as easily as I’d bite through a potato chip.  We could actually hear the crunch.  It was a shockingly clear sound on the calm water.  That’s when my angler’s wife cried out to me, “Please, do something!”

 

I turned to look at her and she was obviously heartbroken, almost on the verge of tears.  I didn’t know what to say and I knew exactly how she felt.  I love turtles and spotting them in the wild is always the highlight of any day on the water.  I’ve visited the turtle hospital on Marathon Key and it makes me sad and angry when I see the damage that trash and discarded fishing line causes them.  I was totally prepared to help this animal when I thought it was injured by a boat, but this was different.  

 

“Help it,” she asked me again when the shark took its fourth and final bite before disappearing.  The hawksbill was still alive but far beyond help at that moment.  In fact, its fate was sealed before we even happened upon it.  

 

“That’s nature,” was all I could finally say to her.  I was still stunned at what we had just witnessed.  

“That was awesome,” her husband responded.  

 

He was right.  It was awesome.  Even though it lasted less than a minute, to this day it remains one of the most amazing, as well as most violent and heartless things I’ve ever witnessed on the water.  It was also totally necessary and I would never have done anything to stop it.  Terrible endings like that are played out constantly in nature.  I tried explaining that to my angler’s wife as motored away from the doomed hawksbill.  The only animals ever given the privilege of expiring peacefully are human beings and our pets.  She stayed quiet for most of the trip so I’m not sure any of that sunk in.

 

I was reminded of this story recently as I stood over a Matlacha canal and watched dozens of trophy snook lying upside down in the forty degree water after our record cold snap.  Some were still alive and struggling to move but they were all dying.  It was a terrible waste of great fish and I, as well as everyone else, hated seeing it.  But it was happening all over Florida and we did nothing to cause it and were powerless to prevent it.  Maybe every once in a while we have to be reminded how truly in charge Mother Nature really is, even though it often hurts to watch.  

 

 

 

March 2010

Last month I drove down to my old stomping grounds of Key West for a long weekend fishing trip.  I hadn’t been back there in almost a year and it was great to catch up with some of my guide buddies and see a few of the changes on the island that I called home for over a decade.

Change is one thing that seems constant in Keys these days.  This string of islands along A1-A are still some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in all of America, despite the fact that the bubble popped almost as loudly down there as it did up here in Lee County.  Small motels and quiet little marinas were scooped up and turned into high dollar condo developments overnight, then flipped again and again until the asking prices were approaching the stupid mark.  By 2005 the median home price on Key West hit $860,000, and all that would get you was a 1200 square foot cottage.  

Another thing that changed in the Keys was the tourists.  When I rolled into town in the early 90’s Key West still attracted a lot of serious anglers as well as an interesting mix of bikers, spring breakers, and all sorts of literary types hoping to commune with Hemmingway’s ghost down at Sloppy Joe’s.  I loved that part of Key West but it was already on life support even back then.  It wouldn’t last much longer.  

The problem started down at Mallory Square where the docks had been reinforced at tremendous taxpayer expense and first mega-cruise ships began to arrive.  Bigger than Nimitz Class aircraft carriers, those gaudy monsters disgorged an endless flow of bargain thrill seekers to Duval Street in search of $10 T-shirts, lukewarm Bud drafts, and tone-deaf covers of “Margaritaville.”  It was a really depressing sight.

Then one day the biggest cruise ship of all showed up with America’s favorite cartoon mouse painted on its bow.  That’s when I knew Key West had completed its transformation from a cool island home and into a theme park.  I called it quits a short time later and I still hate that cartoon mouse to this day.  

Despite all my irritations with Key West, I’ll always have a strong affection for the island simply because it’s the birthplace of saltwater fly fishing.  Legendary anglers such as Zane Grey, Joe Brooks, Lefty Kreh, Stu Apte, and Ted Williams spent countless hours poling the flats around the Lower Keys where they invented the knots, created the flies, and perfected the tackle that we all take for granted today.  Those were the men, a few of them still living, who can be credited with actually inventing a new sport.

And no, I don’t include Hemmingway in that group.  Ernest was a pure deep sea fisherman.  He trolled bonefish as marlin baits and used dead tarpon to chum up sharks so he could blast them with his Thompson submachine gun.  He usually did all that between gulps of Chivas Regal.  Papa Hemmingway was obviously a different kind of angler and the FWC would probably frown upon that stuff these days.

But it’s once you’re away from Duval Street and back out on the flats that the fishing history of Key West doesn’t seem so distant.  You can ignore the cruise ships, parasail boats, and jet skis tearing up the harbor and focus on the abundant sea life that’s right in front of you in the shallows.  Great fishing still happens down there just like it did for the bamboo rod pioneers from half a century ago.  That’s what keeps me returning year after year.  

I had my back to the island while my buddy Capt. Mike Bartlett poled me across a three foot deep flat in search of mudding stingrays.  It was a chilly February day for Key West, only about 70 degrees but much warmer than Pine Island that same morning.  We weren’t even trying to find the glamour species like bonefish or permit.  All we wanted that morning were some big jack crevalles to nail our topwater flies.  I didn’t even think of the Duval Street circus on shore a few miles away from me.

The crevalles were all over the place, hitchhiking on the back of every other ray on the flat.  It was effortless fishing and I marveled at the huge barracudas and massive sharks that would charge each jack we hooked.  There are still some things that rampant development hasn’t changed down there and no matter what you might hear or read, Key West can still produce some incredible days on the water.

But it’s when I step off the boat that I get homesick for Pine Island.  It’s just too much of a zoo in Key West and the folks in charge seem to want it that way.  Most of the artists and writers that used to call that island home have migrated up to these parts.  There’s currently more charm and culture right past our Matlacha drawbridge than on all of Duval Street.  And the only time you have to step over an unconscious drunk is maybe once a month at Bert’s.  We really have it good up here and we don’t ever want to duplicate lower Duval.  

Both these coasts of Florida share a lot of similarities, including the great fishing, but I’m glad to see that Matlacha and Pine Island are firmly aware of and embracing their past while Key West stumbles around trying to find its future.  Our home islands here in Lee County have it right and we really do hold the title of “The Last Piece of Old Florida.”  

And we should all be thankful that the waters around here are way too shallow for cruise ships.  

 

 

 

 

April 2010

 

Now that our nightmare of a winter has finally ended it’s a huge relief to have my phone ringing once again and my schedule filling up for the spring.  After our January fish kill made the news literally around the angling world, I was seriously worried that Southwest Florida’s reputation had been damaged beyond repair.

Every e-mail I received over the last two months started with someone asking me if we still had anything alive down here.  I felt like smashing my head against the keyboard but I couldn’t blame these folks for asking.  Yes, we lost a lot of prized snook and other gamefish here in Southwest Florida and no one, including the federal agencies like FWC, will ever be sure of the real numbers.  But the mainstream media loved the story and turned a very bad but totally natural event into the environmental disaster of the century.  To read the press accounts that spread across the country you’d think the Exxon Valdez ran aground off Pine Island.  

The reason the press loves a good disaster is obvious; they’re the easiest stories to cover.  The sensational stuff is built right in and it doesn’t take any skill as a journalist to translate the shock and horror to the audience.  That’s why Geraldo Rivera covers wars and hurricanes and not Supreme Court confirmations.  I’m surprised he wasn’t on TV standing in one of our canals and crying over a rotting snook.  Piles of dead animals make headlines no matter where they’re found.  Unfortunately for us, those piles of dead snook were worth a lot more money when they were alive.  

So now that the worst fish kill in recent memory is over and even the local press has moved on to other stories, where does that leave us?  As I mentioned before, no one is really sure how many fish we lost but here’s a few of my observations after being on the water nearly every day last month.  

For starters, our redfish population is just fine and in fact I’ve never seen so many.  They were totally unaffected by the cold snap and I didn’t spot a single dead redfish anywhere in Matlacha Pass or Pine Island Sound.  Right now they’re everywhere and it’s not uncommon for my charters to get shots at more than one hundred different fish during a day.  Getting them to eat has been a different story thanks to the extra clear water and my freshwater anglers struggling with their saltwater fly casts.  I’ve learned one thing for sure this past year; a tailing Matlacha redfish is every bit at tricky a Key West bonefish.  Reds are rapidly climbing my list of favorite species to target with a fly rod and right now they’re tied with the bones at number three behind tarpon and permit.  

Speaking of tarpon, we should be seeing them in good numbers very soon.  The cold did manage to kill a number of these fish.  Fortunately tarpon are a migratory species and the bulk of their population was off in warmer waters during January.  The only dead tarpon I personally saw were several resident juveniles around the Pineland area.  I’ve heard horror stories from other parts of the state but I think our upcoming tarpon season will go off without a hitch.  My buddies in the Keys are already hooking them in the channels and they’ll be making their way on to our flats very soon.  

The snook clearly took a beating but I’m convinced that most of the big breeders made it through the freeze.  I’m still seeing plenty of slot sized fish cruising along the mangroves and sunning themselves in the potholes.  Most of the dead snook in our canals were less than twenty four inches and I only spotted a few serious trophies floating belly up in the Pass.  Just like with the tarpon, I’ve heard worse horror stories from all over the state and saw the photos that proved the carnage, but I don’t believe the snook population was damaged beyond repair.  

So things are quickly getting back to normal and the anglers who weren’t frightened away by the bad press are seeing this first hand.  I’m finally wearing shorts again on my boat and looking forward to a great spring season.  After what we’ve endured this past winter, Mother Nature owes us one.  

 

 

 

May 2010

Catching a permit on a fly is the Holy Grail for most saltwater anglers.  Even though that’s an overused cliché it’s a highly appropriate one at the same time.  No other species has such a cult-like following as the permit, a fish that is basically a large jack and very easy to catch with spinning gear yet a stress-inducing nightmare for way too many fly anglers.

 

There is a reason such devotion from the purists.  Drop a live crab in front of a permit and you’re hooked up, it’s just that easy.  Ask anyone who fishes the Gulf wrecks and reefs about this.  But use a fly in shallow water and it’s a different story.  Make a flawless sixty foot cast with a 9-weight rod and land a perfectly tied crab pattern on a permit’s nose and 99% of the time you’ll only get a sideways glance or short follow before they lose interest.  Permit are a fish that make you swear a lot.  

 

Permit are also a fish that you count, meaning that every angler (myself included) knows exactly how many they’ve caught on a fly.  I don’t keep track of tarpon, bonefish, or reds, but I will always know my permit tally.  The grand champion is the late Del Brown, a California millionaire who spent over 100 guided days a year chasing permit and invented the famous Merkin fly, the first crab pattern they would regularly eat.  Del landed 513 before he died seven years ago at 84.  He was a nice man and I’m proud to say that I met him on a few occasions.  I’m also rapidly closing in on his record with only 508 to go.  

 

We actually have a lot of permit here around Pine Island but they really belong to the offshore guys.  You probably won’t be catching one on the flats in Matlacha Pass anytime soon.  Yes, it has been and can be done, but for a realistic shot at one a fly you’ll need to drive further south.

 

Key West is Ground Zero for permit fishing.  It’s where Del Brown caught most of his 513 and home to many world records.  You’ll get more shots at big permit in the Lower Keys than anywhere else in the world and they’re available year round.  That’s where I found myself last month when a good friend and director from the Sportsman Channel called and asked me to help film a permit fishing show.  The wind would be gusting to twenty knots all week and neither of the guest anglers had ever caught a permit on fly before.  “Won’t be a problem,” I told him with fingers crossed behind my back.  

 

We actually had a lot going for us that week.  My anglers were Mark Fisher and Matt Kersting, two very experienced fly fishermen accustomed to dealing with Key West’s springtime winds.  Mark is also the owner of Beavertail Skiffs and we were fishing out of his newest boat, the Vengeance.  This is a remarkably light and quiet eighteen footer that was effortless to pole.  We also had two year round Keys guides on the camera boats who both knew what flats to hit and when to hit them.  

 

On the afternoon of our first day the tide was falling and the permit were all over the banks of Woman Key.  The guys were getting shot after shot and everything was going exactly as expected.  A fish would appear, I’d turn the skiff to give Mark a perfect downwind cast, a twenty knot gust would magically appear from the wrong direction, and a weighted 1/0 fly would be driven into the back of his skull.  Then Mark would swear.  A lot.  There’s so much swearing in permit fishing because there’s actual pain mixed in there, too.  

 

We could see the Holy Grail but we just couldn’t reach it with a 9-weight.  Finally our director on the camera boat put his foot down and told us to just pick up a spinning rod and catch one already.  And that’s exactly what happened five minutes later on the first cast with a live crab.  By the end of that day Mark and Matt each had a permit caught and released, on simple spinning gear, with the images burned into the Hi-Def camera’s hard drive.  Mission accomplished, but so much for being purists.  

 

The guys never did land their first permit on fly that week but it wasn’t for lack of effort.  The fish were very sporadic after that first day and the wind was relentless.  On our last day of filming it was finally my turn on the bow and my buddy Capt. Mike Bartlett put me on a huge pair of tailing permit right away.  A new Sage Xi-3 fly rod was in my hands, the fish were perfectly down wind, and the camera was rolling.  

 

Then I put the Sage down, picked up a spinning rod with a live crab, and caught the permit.  Yes, I chickened out.  The Sportsman Channel’s editors already had more than enough swearing to bleep out that week.  They didn’t need me adding to it.  

 

 

June 2010

Marshall Hespe is the type of angler that every guide should have on the bow of their boat.  He can cast a fly rod quickly and accurately and spot fish well before they’re within his range.  He rarely misses a shot and is quick to get the fly back on target when he does.  He never gets frustrated with himself or the conditions when things go wrong, as they often do in fly fishing, and he doesn’t act different when things go right.

 

Marshall is also twelve years old and can cast better than most adults that I’ve fished with since I started guiding.  It’s an amazing thing to watch a Little League centerfielder throw a perfect cast into a wind stiff enough to crumble the loops of a lot of veteran anglers.  And he keeps getting better.  

 

I first met Marshall and his dad Bill last year on a bonefishing trip down in Puerto Rico.  We missed the bones that morning but Marshall did manage to jump a nice twenty pound tarpon on a flat where they rarely appear.  He obviously had a knack for the sport and I was thrilled when they booked a three day weekend to fish with me here on Matlacha last month.  He obviously liked jumping tarpon and we have a lot of those around right now so I thought we’d target some more juveniles.  Turns out I was aiming a little low on that one.  

 

Our first day was a bit slow except for a single tarpon that attacked his fly three times but never managed to find the hook.  It wasn’t a big fish, about the same size as the one he jumped in Puerto Rico last year, but he was pumped and I promised him we’d snag one before his trip was done.  

 

Charlotte Harbor was a windy and crowded mess, as it always seems to be on the weekends, when I took Marshall and Bill up there the next day looking for bigger fish.  The wind was gusting a solid fifteen knots and there was a small skiff anchored right on my favorite flat.  I handed Marshall my favorite 10-weight Sage rod with a black fly and hoped to just get him a shot or two despite the lousy conditions.

 

We were five minutes into our first drift when I spotted the dark shape hovering over the light bottom.  From a hundred yards away I knew I was looking at a huge laid-up tarpon.  Unlike a lot of kids his age, Marshall isn’t much of a talker.  When I asked if he saw the fish all I got was a quick, “Yeah.”

 

I pushed the bow to the right to give Marshall a downwind shot.  His dad was sitting behind him on my cooler making sure the line stayed put in the stiff breeze.  When you’re fly fishing on a windy day it’s invaluable to have a second angler on the boat to do this job.  We were eighty feet from the tarpon when I had Marshall begin casting.  By the time he dropped the fly we’d covered half that distance.  

 

There are days when guiding is the most frustrating job on Earth and you ask yourself why you put up with so much exhaustion and aggravation over a handful of fish that never want to eat.  This was not one of those days.

 

Marshall dropped the fly perfectly on target, stripped twice, and the tarpon lunged forward and ate.  When it launched itself out of the water my jaw dropped.  She was a massive fish, easily over 125 pounds.  The term, “All Hell Broke Loose,” is the only thing that can describe the next twenty minutes.  

 

Most tarpon are lost after the first jump but Marshall cleared his fly line and got the fish on the reel like a veteran.  After that it was a perfect storm of chaos with the tarpon running towards deep water, waves breaking over my bow, and Bill and I taking turns driving the boat and keeping Marshall standing in the three foot chop of Charlotte Harbor.  

 

About fifteen minutes into the fight the immortal words of Chief Brody from the movie “Jaws” loudly rang in my ears.  “We need a bigger boat!”  

 

My Beavertail B-2 is not designed to run in three footers and the water dumping into the cockpit was above my ankles and not draining fast enough.  The tarpon was still running upwind and I had to slow it down somehow.  I switched places with Bill at the bow and cranked the drag way down on the Tibor reel.  Bad move on my part.  

 

I jumped back behind the helm, put the boat in neutral, and started bailing with a coffee cup, hoping to help my failing bilge pump.  That’s when the fish made another high speed surge right upwind.  The tight drag caused the reel’s loose Dacron backing to dig into itself tighter and tighter with each outgoing turn.  When I heard the loud snap I knew exactly what happened.  The backing popped and I lost not only an entire $80 fly line but Marshall’s prize tarpon as well.

 

Most anglers would have melted down into a quivering mass of temper and profanity at that point, myself included.  Marshall just looked quietly down at the reel and out to Charlotte Harbor where his fish was swimming away, trailing an expensive souvenir from their brief but violent encounter.   He never said a word.  When you’re twelve years old I guess your fish of a lifetime should probably stay out there for a little while.

 

Besides, everybody needs a good “One That Got Away” story, and Marshall now has one that will last a very long time.  

 

 

 

July 2010

I didn’t think I had much chance of catching anything so late in the afternoon. It was windy and the tide was too high but none of that mattered.  I just wanted out of the house after watching Penn State lose to Illinois and an hour of bonefishing was the perfect cure for my frustration with the struggling Nittany Lions.

 

I parked the Jeep at our usually spot, just below the power lines and looking out towards our sister island of Culebra sitting ten miles to our north.  Amanda and I started hiking down to my favorite flat at the east end of a stretch of sand called Encampment Beach.  Our dog Maggie was in the lead, chasing a small herd of wild ponies and generally acting like the crazy mutt she is.  After only a hundred yards she started barking at an older man climbing over the rocks that serve as a natural jetty.  He was clearly a local, wearing torn jeans and a long sleeve shirt despite the heat, but it was what he was carrying on his shoulders that made my jaw drop.

 

He had a three foot length of heavy bamboo and hanging from each end, tied by a short length of trap line, were two huge silver fish about the size of a ‘57 Chevy’s hubcap and just as shiny.  From fifty yards away I recognized their unmistakable shape as permit, a species I’ve chased all over Florida and the Caribbean.  Actually they were really big permit.   They’re one of salt water’s most difficult species to catch, especially on a fly rod, and I’ve had anglers come to Vieques from as far away as Sweden to chase permit without success.  But here came two prime examples being carried up the beach hanging from a piece of bamboo.

 

I stopped the fisherman immediately.  I had to know everything about his catch.  “Where did you hook them?  What kind of bait did you use?  Where is your rod and reel?”  These were just a few of the questions I managed to spit out in amazement.  His answers surprised me even more.

 

He caught them on the same flat where I regularly chase bonefish but have never hooked a single permit in over two years.  His bait was a hunk of conch tossed out on a simple twenty pound test hand line called a Cuban yo-yo back in the States.  A yo-yo is nothing more than a cheap plastic ring and he probably never used a proper rod and reel in his entire life.  He just sat down on a rock, opened a beer and waited for the permit to come to him.  It obviously worked very well that day.  

 

What was the most amazing thing of all was his lack of excitement at a catch that had me going through the roof.   Hooking a single permit is the very essence of a perfect day on the water.  Back in the Florida Keys, where they’re a lot more common, catching two fish this size in one morning could get your picture in the sports page.  The fisherman in front of me, with fifty pounds of Puerto Rican permit hanging off his shoulders, looked about as excited as someone coming home from the grocery store.  He was happy with his catch but it was clearly nothing extraordinary for him.  

 

Judging from his accent he was probably born and raised on Vieques and as I was taking his picture I couldn’t help but marvel at the differences between us as anglers.  I was carrying the newest Sage fly rod and reel combo worth nearly $1200 and he had a yo-yo that sold for about $5 at the hardware store.  I was wearing a pair of $180 Costa Del Mar sunglasses with polarized lenses to help cut the surface glare and spot fish, and he wore a set of bifocals to help him tie knots.  I had on a new pair of Teva water shoes to protect my feet from the sharp coral and sea urchins, and he was barefoot.  Finally, he was the one with two incredible fish hanging on his shoulders and I knew I’d probably get skunked before I even started casting.

 

He was eager to get home with his catch so I took a few more quick photos and said adios. When I was guiding in Key West I never thought to bring a permit home for dinner. Killing a permit, the Holy Grail of fly fishing, is a huge taboo among the flats guides up there. Catching a one of these fish on fly in the Keys elevates the guide and angler to a higher place in the sport.  You become part of “the elite” and eating a permit is pure sacrilege.

 

This isn’t the case down on Vieques and I’m actually happy about that. The truth is that permit are delicious and the two fish being carried up the beach by my fellow angler would feed his family well that week.  After fifteen years of looking at permit as a nearly mythical creature it was a nice wake up call to see them as a lot of my Puerto Rican neighbors do; just another great tasting fish in the sea.  

 

And as I predicted, my high tech fly rod and I came home empty that afternoon.  We were shown how it’s done by a hand line, a hunk of conch, and a clearly superior fisherman.  

 

 

 

August 2010

Everyone knows that redfish aren’t picky eaters.  They’ll hit everything from cut ladyfish to dry flies, but they really love crabs.  Last month I was poling the southern Matlacha Pass just before sunset with one of my regular anglers, keeping Bert’s Bar within sight so Eric and I could race in once the no-seeums found us, when I noticed the water was filled with crabs of all sizes.  There were huge blue claws waving defensively at us from the bottom and smaller pass crabs clinging to the struts of my trim tabs.  They were everywhere, even paddling along the surface.  That’s when the first school of reds started pushing towards us, heads down and tails up, grabbing every crustacean in their path.  Eric dropped his hand-tied pattern in the middle of the school and it was clobbered instantly.  Ten minutes later we had the perfect 29 inch redfish, his first on fly, next to the boat.  When we held it up for some photos we could feel the hard pieces of crushed crab shell packed tight in its belly.  

 

A few days later we watched another feeding frenzy, this time involving dozens of tarpon as well as countless ladyfish and catfish feeding on an acre of bait.  In addition to crabs they were busting shrimp, pinfish, the occasional tiny flounder and even puffer fish.  It was an amazing sight to see so much food thrown together and the tarpon couldn’t have looked happier eating such a collection of hard shelled, clawed, and pointy things.  

 

That’s when I was reminded of an article that seems to spread across the internet every few years.  It was a scientific study promoted heavily by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) declaring that fish feel a significant amount of actual pain when hooked.  Some of my tree-hugging friends (yes, I have a few) forwarded that article to me and I read it carefully, thought about it, and declared it total BS.  It’s obvious what “research” like that is trying to accomplish, which is to make us think that fishing is cruel.  Of course I don’t agree with that notion and I really hate seeing it pushed on non-anglers and especially on kids.  Check PETA’s website and you’ll see them unapologetically do this with a very heavy hand.  I have absolutely no background in marine biology or neurology of any kind, but I know slanted reporting when I see it, so here’s my totally unscientific take on this subject.

 

First, let’s go back to the redfish in that photo for a moment.  After Eric struck it with the fly it did what many reds usually do, shook its head briefly and slowly swam away from us.  The 1/0 hook point didn’t faze it in the least.  Only when the line came tight did the fish go berserk.  It felt resistance, something totally unnatural, and that triggered its flight response.  A metal hook jabbing that fish in the mouth was meaningless, it simply didn’t feel it as pain like you or I would.  Don’t believe me?  Then here’s a quick test for you to try yourself, again totally unscientific.  Go find a live, palm sized blue crab, pop it in your mouth and chew hard.  Then, on your way to the emergency room, ponder the fact that redfish do the same thing all day, every day.  They eat live, hard shell crabs like we eat Ben and Jerry’s.  Except the Ben and Jerry’s doesn’t fight back.  

 

At this point it might sound like I have a problem with the animal rights crowd, and I do, even though I’m with them on a lot of issues.  I’m not a vegetarian, far from it, but I detest animal cruelty, especially against dogs.  Michael Vick should still be taking prison showers, not making millions in the NFL.  I also think commercial whaling is an atrocious and inexcusable act.  I love that TV show “Whale Wars” and I keep rooting for those incompetent hippies to finally sink those Japanese harpoon ships one day.  Most of animal rights people have their hearts in the right place but it’s the PETA folks that take things too far.

 

When they pull stunts like breaking into a New York fashion show screaming “Fur is Murder!” and tossing fake blood on the runway models, they’ve lost me forever.  You people who do this might think you’re heroic but terrorizing a bunch of anorexic young girls doesn’t make you a vegetarian Rambo, it just makes you a gutless clown.  Try this instead if you want my respect.  Drive out to the Ragged Ass Saloon here on Pine Island next weekend (you can’t miss the place, just look for all the Harleys,) then go inside and try throwing fake blood on some of the women in there.  They won’t be wearing full length chinchilla but hey, if “Fur is Murder” so is leather.  Wearing one dead animal is no less cruel than wearing another, right?  I’ll sit outside and sell tickets to that one.  After the long, hard season we’ve had I could use some entertainment.  

 

 I try not to get too philosophical on the subject of fish.  They’re magnificent animals and I make my living thanks to them, but I don’t assign fish the same “rights” as a human or consider their “feelings” like those of my pets.  I release most of the fish I catch and quickly dispatch the few I choose to eat.  And I have no problem putting a hook into the bottom lip of a big red simply because I want a closer look and a photo.  They’ll shake it off and just go hunting something else to eat with big claws or spines.  They’re fish after all, and they’re a lot tougher than us.  

 

 

 

 

September  2010

My Best Fish Ever

One question I get asked all the time, especially during a charter when the bite slows down, is, “What was the best fish you ever caught?”  And for a long time that was tough to answer.  

 

There have been a lot of memorable fish over the years.  A huge palomino trout from Pennsylvania when I was twelve always comes to mind, but I foul hooked it on crowded Stone Creek during opening day so I don’t count that one too much.

 

Freshwater rivers and lakes were a great place to learn how to fish but once I hit the saltwater flats there was no turning back.  How can you possibly compare a bass or bluegill to a jumping tarpon or tailing redfish?  The answer is simple:  you don’t.  

 

It was the bonefish that made me a saltwater junkie.  I hooked the first one I ever saw on a Middle Keys flat casting a crab fly I tied myself.  That was eighteen years ago and at the time I declared it the “Greatest Fish I Ever Caught.”  That three-pound bone would lose its “Greatest Ever” title quickly but the species would always stay at the forefront of my respect and affection.  

 

My biggest bonefish was a fat ten and a half-pounder that I landed about twelve years ago near Key West.  That was a memorable fish.  I actually thought it was a barracuda when my buddy first pointed it out to me.  It was sitting dead still over a sandy patch in two feet of water and, still thinking it was a cuda, I decided to hit it with my shrimp fly just for target practice.  I was surprised when it shot forward and ate the bonefish pattern, but barracuda are prone to do that, especially when you don’t want them to strike.  I was more surprised a few seconds later when my leader was still intact.   The blistering runs were like being hooked to the back of a Corvette and the fact that fish never jumped told me I had a really big bonefish instead of a typical cuda.  

 

Ten and a half-pounds is an impressive bonefish but they get much bigger. In Islamorada, the bonefish capital of the Keys, a fish that size will get you some high-fives but not much more.  You need to beat the twelve-pound mark to get on the sports page and the current fly rod world record is over fifteen-pounds.

 

So that was the best bonefish I ever caught until four years ago.  Things changed when I was on my honeymoon down in Grenadines, a group of islands with practically no bonefishing opportunities whatsoever.  Grenada wasn’t my first choice but when you fish for a living you have to make some compromises.  It was still a fantastic part of the Caribbean and I packed my fly rod to use at the numerous beaches down there, but with little luck for the first few days.  

 

My wife and I took an overnight trip to the smaller island of Carriacou, an hour’s ferry ride north of Grenada.  Carriacou is a lot like our own Captiva, smaller and sparsely populated but with even more fantastic beaches.  None of the locals knew much about finding bonefish but I still walked the beach below our guest house tossing a little Clouser fly into the surf hoping to bend a rod on something.

 

My line came tight after a few casts and I was thrilled that a hit finally happened.  I got a two second run and then a few quick tugs.  This told me that I hooked a snapper or small jack.  I hand-stripped the line and my catch floated in with a wave at my feet.  It was a tiny bonefish, less than ten inches long and weighing maybe one pound.  It was the smallest bonefish I’d ever seen.  

 

Amanda started walking over to get a picture of my unimpressive catch when the beach behind me erupted with noise.  A half dozen school kids in their swimming trunks came running down the sand, quickly surrounding us and jumping up and down pointing at my catch.  They were jabbering questions in their heavily accented patois, an island version of English that I could barely understand.  These kids had never seen a fly rod before, let alone somebody use one to catch a fish, and I had never seen anyone so excited over a tiny bonefish.  

 

The oldest boy finally asked me in his tourist English if they could keep the fish. Even though I’ve always released them, I knew that bonefish are popular throughout the Caribbean for fish stew.  This one would go home as part of their evening meal.  When I handed it over the kids actually broke out into a song right there on the beach.  It was in the same heavy patois but this time I understood their meaning.  They were singing their “We Caught a Fish Today” song.  It was also one of the best parts of our honeymoon.  

 

And that’s what made the smallest bonefish I ever caught the best fish I ever caught.

 

 

 

 

 

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