Author: Steve Waters

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Trolling the water with ballyhoo, bonito strips

Just about every offshore angler in South Florida prefers to fish with live bait for everything from sailfish and dolphin to kingfish and tuna, but there are times when using dead bait can be just as effective.

In fact, trolling rigged ballyhoo and bonito strips can sometimes be more effective than live bait. So just because you aren’t able to catch or buy several dozen live baits for a day of fishing doesn’t mean you can’t catch fish.

One advantage of using a dead bait is that it can be fished exactly where and how it needs to be fished, whereas a live bait can swim out of the target zone or get tangled with another line.

In addition, some predators prefer an easy meal as opposed to chasing a live baitfish that’s trying to get away.

Capt. Abie Raymond of Go Hard Fishing (gohardfishing.com and @abie_raymond) trolls bonito strips for kingfish, sailfish, tuna, bonito, wahoo, and dolphin when fishing out of Bill Bird Marina in Miami Beach.

When his anglers catch a bonito, he fillets the fish and removes most of the meat from the skin with the blade of his knife until the fillet is an eighth of an inch thick, which allows a hook to penetrate a fish’s mouth more efficiently. Raymond then cuts the fillet with the blade angled to produce a beveled edge, which is hydrodynamic and yields a strip that resembles a thin baitfish.

He squares off one end of the strip and pokes a hole in that end with the knife. Then he sprinkles kosher salt over the strips to remove water from them and toughen them up, and he places them in a zip-closure plastic bag.

Raymond rigs a bonito strip on a 4- to 6-foot, 50-pound fluorocarbon leader with a perfection loop at one end that is attached to a snap swivel. The other end of the leader has a flashy, reverse-feather Mylar Sea Witch — his favorite colors are pink-and-blue and blue-and-white — above a 7/0 J hook tied to the leader with a six-turn improved clinch knot. Raymond puts a 4-inch piece of Monel wire through the hook eye, wraps it three times below the eye, and then places it back through the eye.

The Monel goes through the hole in the strip, with the meat side of the strip touching the shank of the hook. The wire is then wrapped below the tag end of the clinch knot to secure the strip, and the hook point is poked through the center of the strip. Raymond fishes bonito strips on a Penn International 16 conventional reel spooled with 20-pound line.

“I’ll put out two of those strip baits on my outriggers 80 to 120 feet behind the boat, along with a lure like a Billy Bait or Dolphin Jr. We stagger them, so a 20-foot lure, a 40-foot lure, an 80-foot strip, and a 100-foot strip would be my typical four-bait spread,” said Raymond, adding that anglers need to determine the most effective distances for their baits based on their type of boat and its engines. Strip baits might raise more fish closer to a boat with one brand of outboard motors than the same boat with a different brand of outboards.

Raymond favors bonito strips over rigged ballyhoo because strips last longer and can be cut to size to resemble a 4-, 6-, or 8-inch flying fish, with the wings imitated by the Sea Witch.

“Another huge advantage of a strip over a ballyhoo is if a sailfish grabs a ballyhoo and rips the tail off, you’re done,” Raymond said. “A bonito strip, he’ll just grab it and grab it. It might stretch and get longer and the meat might come off, but the skin’s still there swimming and looking beautiful.”

Capt. Chris Lemieux of Boynton Beach (lemieuxfishingcharters.com) also loves to troll bonito strips with Sea Witches, which is a great way to catch kingfish as well as dolphin, tuna, and bonito this time of year.

He fishes the strips behind planers on heavy, two-speed, conventional outfits spooled with 80-pound braided lines that are placed in rod-holders on each side of the stern of his 27-foot center console. A weighted, rectangular piece of metal, a planer dives to a range of depths depending on how much line is let out. One end of a planer is attached to the mainline and the other is attached to the leader. Lemieux uses 80 feet of 60-pound fluorocarbon leader, which he pulls in by hand after the planers are reeled to the rod tip.

“Some guys use a lighter leader, some guys use heavier, it just depends on your preference,” he said. “When the fish are biting good, I try to get a little heavier on them. When it’s a real slow, picky bite, you can go down to even 40-pound leader if you want to.”

Frozen ballyhoo, which are available at most tackle stores, also catch a variety of fish and are especially effective for dolphin. Raymond rigs skirted ballyhoo on a 7/0 J hook tied to a 15-foot, 50-pound, monofilament wind-on leader on a 20-pound spinning outfit.

“You fish it like a strip, 80 to 120 feet behind an outboard boat,” said Raymond, who trolls at 6 to 6½ knots.

Presented properly, dead ballyhoo and bonito strips look so real, even the most finicky fish can’t help but eat them.

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Blackfin tuna, abundant and delicious

South Florida offshore anglers have their pick of species in May, and many of them put blackfin tuna at the top of their fish wish list. Even though the grouper season opens on May 1, and fried grouper is delicious, those fish can be difficult to catch.

Blackfin tuna, however, are abundant this month. They can be caught with live bait, dead bait, and trolling lures, and they are exceptionally tasty grilled, or pan-seared on the outside and rare on the inside.

Unlike grouper, there is no minimum size limit for blackfins, although most of them range in weight from 10 to 30 pounds. The daily bag limit is two tuna per angler or 10 per boat, whichever is greater. That means two fishermen can keep 10 blackfins and six anglers can keep a total of 12 fish.

The first step in catching blackfins is finding water where they hang out. According to Capt. Skip Dana of Deerfield Beach, purple-blue water is ideal, but tuna can also be caught in green water. More important than the water’s color is the presence of baitfish.

“I tell people to find water that’s alive, where it’s got baits and activity,” Dana said. “If you find that good, alive water, the tuna will find you.”

When he fishes in tournaments, Dana will drift with live baits such as pilchards, sardines, and goggle-eyes on flat lines, which his crew casts out behind the boat, as well as live baits on kite lines, which splash on the surface suspended from a fishing kite.

“When the conditions are right, you want a full spread out,” said Dana, who also has his crew put chunks of sardines in the water to attract the tuna, but not too many chunks.

“I think some guys over-chunk,” said Dana, who uses frozen sardines sold by tackle stores. “Don’t get crazy. You want a slow, steady stream of chunks, but not too much.

“There are so many sharks, you can’t chunk that much, otherwise you’ll have sharks up in the chum, and triggerfish.”

Local anglers lose a lot of blackfins to sharks, often reeling in only the head of a tuna after it’s been chomped. So after hooking a tuna, it’s essential to reel in the hard-fighting fish as quickly as possible.

Capt. Bouncer Smith said anglers can also chunk for tuna using a 25-pound flat of herring or squid. “You can cut it up in advance or cut it as you chunk it,” he said.

Smith noted that even when your chunking attracts tuna behind your boat, the fish won’t always eat a bait drifted back on a hook. When that happens, anglers need to go lighter and smaller with their tackle. So if you usually fish with 30-pound leaders and size 5/0 circle hooks, you might want to downsize to 20-pound leaders with a 2/0 or 1/0 hook.

Dana said that most anglers would do fine using two spinning rods with 3/0 to 5/0 hooks. Using dead or live baits, he’d put one on the surface and the other down with a 1-ounce sinker and drift in 150-220 feet.

Be aware that multiple hookups can occur when the tuna are chummed up and in a feeding frenzy. That can result in crossed lines, so it’s important for anglers to pay attention to where their fish are headed so they can go over or under a fellow angler’s fishing line.

The time of day also can be a factor in tuna fishing success.

As Capt. Mario Coté of Hollywood pointed out, blackfin tuna have big eyes that allow them to take a careful look at a bait. He uses 20-pound conventional outfits with 15-foot leaders of 40-pound fluorocarbon, which is invisible in the water. He also likes to fish for tuna early in the morning, late in the afternoon, and on cloudy days, because that’s when the sunlight is less intense.

“If you were in the water on a sunny day and you had to look up to see something, it wouldn’t be easy,” Coté explained.

Coté fishes with live pilchards on two flat lines and on two weighted lines, one down about 50 feet and the other close to the bottom. He hooks the pilchards through the nose, although other anglers hook the baits toward the tail so the pilchards swim down.

Now is also a great time to catch a tuna from a kayak. Joe Hector of the Extreme Kayak Fishing tournament series uses live bait and jigs for blackfins. His live-bait outfit is straight 30-pound monofilament with a 2/0 to 3/0 hook on a medium-heavy spinning rod. “I know the 2/0 hook is small, but I’ve had way more tuna bites on a 2/0,” said Hector, of Deerfield Beach.

“They’re definitely deep as well, so I would definitely recommend taking a jigging rod and hitting the deeper wrecks and jigging your butt off,” added Hector, who uses a vertical jig, a long, heavy piece of metal with one or two hooks attached to it. “Start at 250 feet if you’re drifting in and 80 if you’re drifting out.”

No matter how you catch a blackfin tuna, and whether you marinate it in soy sauce or teriyaki sauce or sprinkle it with olive oil, salt, and pepper before grilling or searing it, you’ll forget all about fishing for grouper once you taste it.

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Diving for lionfish in April

The last day of Florida’s lobster season was March 31, and the seasons for grouper and hogfish don’t open until May 1, so what’s an underwater hunter to do in April?

Spearfishing expert Jim “Chiefy” Mathie sets his sights on a great-tasting exotic fish.

“There’s really not a lot of species to go after because of the lack of opportunity for lobster, hogfish, and grouper,” said Mathie, a retired Deerfield Beach fire chief. “So we target lionfish.”

Native to the South Pacific Ocean, lionfish were first discovered off South Florida in the mid-1980s. The belief is that the lionfish were someone’s pets and when the fish outgrew their aquarium, the owner dumped them in the ocean. From there, the invasive lionfish have spread throughout the Caribbean, into the Gulf of Mexico, down to South America, and up the Atlantic coast to North Carolina.

The fish have no natural predators in those waters, which means bigger reef fish such as grouper don’t realize they can eat them. Lionfish feast on tiny grouper, snapper, shellfish, and other native species. Left unchecked, lionfish can take over a reef. That’s where spear-fishers come in.

Although lionfish are here to stay — researchers in submarines have documented lionfish in 1,000 feet of water off South Florida — divers with pole spears and spearguns do their part by reducing the lionfish population. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is doing its part to combat the lionfish invasion by having no size or bag limits and no closed season. The agency has an informative web page at myfwc.com/fishing/saltwater/recreational/lionfish.

Mathie, who said he and his dive buddies had “an outstanding lobster season” diving primarily in 35 to 45 feet of water, noted that spear-fishers keep lionfish populations under control on coral reefs in those depths.

“We’ve seen a few lionfish, but in this location we do a very good job of harvesting lionfish in the shallow waters, just because it gets a lot of pressure from the divers. That’s actually a good thing because we’re kind of keeping them in check shallow,” said Mathie, author of the lobstering and spearfishing books “Catching the BUG” and “Catching the Spear-it!” that are available at local dive shops and online.

Deeper reefs that don’t receive that much pressure tend to have more and bigger lionfish, so that’s where Mathie and his Chiefy crew hunt.

“We change our tactics in April to head out into roughly the 80- to 100-foot depth. We call that the third reef or the east side of the third reef,” Mathie said. “It also gives us an opportunity to check out what’s going on out there, because lionfish and lobster like the same terrain. So those are areas that, when the season allows us, we can go back to for lobster. So it’s kind of a mixed bag for us from that standpoint. While you can’t take them, you can certainly explore and find some new locations.”

Lionfish are an ideal species for divers new to spearfishing because, as Mathie noted, they don’t swim around a lot, so they’re easy to shoot, especially compared with grouper and hogfish, which are the ultimate species for the majority of underwater hunters.

Given their small size — the state-record lionfish speared in the Atlantic Ocean was 18.78 inches off of Islamorada, and an 18.7-inch, 3.77-pounder shot last year off of Destin is the Gulf of Mexico state record — lionfish don’t require the use of big spearguns. Mathie and his crew use 3- to 4-foot, hand-held pole spears with three- or five-prong tips, which prevent a fish from spinning after it is speared.

Lionfish have 18 venomous spines, 13 on the top and five on the bottom, so care must be taken when handling them. Getting stung by a spine can cause intense pain. The pectoral fins, which are not venomous, give the fish its name because when they’re fanned out in the water, they look like a lion’s mane.

“Typically, after you spear them, you treat them like a bass. You put your thumb in their mouth and you hold them; that way you’re pretty much away from their spines,” Mathie said. “What we like to do is use a pair of paramedic (or trauma) shears to trim up those venomous spines. But there is an element of danger when you’re trimming them up under the water with shears.”

Mathie said a safer alternative is to use a Zookeeper, “a plastic tube with a one-way funnel. You keep the lionfish on the spear and stick the fish in there without having to touch it at all, pull the spear back out, and the lionfish stays in that tube.”

The hard-sided Zookeeper, which is manufactured in Sunrise, also keeps the spines from accidentally touching your body as you swim. They are sold online and at local dive stores.

This time of year, Mathie and his friends try to fill their Zookeepers, put the fish in a cooler when they get back in the boat, and fillet them at the dock.

“They’re excellent eating,” Mathie said. “They have a pure white fillet, no bloodline, a flaky texture, and almost a sweet taste. You can do anything with them. You can make ceviche or sear them in olive oil with salt and pepper and eat it right out of the pan, it’s that good.”

And that alone is a good enough reason to keep diving this month instead of waiting until May.

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All the lowdown on catching sailfish

If there’s a secret to why certain captains and crews excel at catching billfish, it’s that they don’t leave anything to chance.

They begin their preparation well in advance, making sure that they have enough baits and that their tackle is in tip-top condition. While they’re fishing, they constantly watch their lines and also keep an eye out for free-jumping fish. And they don’t let up until they head back to the dock.

It used to be that January was the best time of the year to catch sailfish in South Florida, but now March and April are the best months. If you’ve always dreamed of catching and releasing one of the acrobatic, hard-fighting fish, here are some tips to help you accomplish that goal, as well as to catch more sailfish.

“It’s the littlest thing that makes the difference,” said Capt. Casey Hunt, who grew up fishing in Pompano Beach and now runs charters in Key West (cnitadventures.com). “Every single time a line goes in the water, it’s perfect. The hooks. The knots. You’ve got to spend that extra time because that extra time is going to catch you more fish.”

Whenever Capt. Bouncer Smith talks about fishing, he stresses the importance of being ready for anything.

“One of the things I always try to emphasize is be prepared for a lot of different things,” said Smith. “Carry the things that might save the day, like a box of jigs.”

While you’re fishing for sailfish, always bring some spinning rods so you can cast a live bait or jig to any dolphin you encounter, as well as any sailfish that suddenly pop up next to the boat.

“I cannot tell you how many guys go offshore and don’t have anything to catch a dolphin,” Smith said.

For Capt. John Louie Dudas of Miami, who has won countless sailfish tournaments, one of his keys is to never quit.

“Things can change in a split-second,” said Dudas, who has pulled out tournament victories by taking advantage of a last-minute bite.

He also doesn’t hesitate to go after free-jumping sailfish. The reason is that where you see one sailfish, there often are a lot more around.

As he heads over to where he saw the fish, his crew members grab spinning rods so they can cast out baits when they arrive.

“You don’t have to be on top of [the sailfish],” Dudas said, “just get ahead of them. When one comes up, they’ll be like a school of dolphin. They’ll be aggressive.”

When Hunt is targeting sailfish, he fishes in areas with good bottom structure such as coral reefs and rocky outcroppings, something most anglers don’t ever consider unless they’re fishing for snapper and grouper.

“Knowing the bottom in the areas you’re going to fish is huge,” he said because good bottom attracts bait, which attracts gamefish. “It makes a difference whether you’re sailfishing, king fishing, or grouper fishing.”

He added that he was one of the first captains to work with CMOR Mapping, which provides high-resolution, detailed images of everything on the bottom.

Hunt also is big on looking for temperature breaks, no matter how small. His crew once caught 13 sailfish where the difference in temperature went from 75 degrees to 75.7 degrees. That’s where the bait was, and so were the billfish.

“A tenth of a degree, two-tenths of a degree can make a huge difference,” he said. “Because there’s something there, there’s something going on, something’s getting ready to happen.”

Once you get into sailfish, something that Capt. David Fields — who has won sailfish, blue marlin, and white marlin tournaments — and fellow multiple tournament winner Rob Ruwitch agree on is that anglers should have the fishing rod in their hands before a fish eats the bait.

“If the fish gets there first,” Fields said, “he wins.”

Rather than letting a fish pop the line from a kite clip or outrigger clip, Ruwitch points the fishing rod at the clip so the fish feels as little pressure as possible.

Once a billfish is hooked, knowing how to properly use your tackle will help you land the fish. Ruwitch recommended that anglers learn how much drag they can apply without the line breaking while fun fishing.

“Go to a wreck, hook an amberjack, and find out how much pressure you can put on it,” he said. “The most important thing that I’ve found with drag is the lighter, the better.”

Hunt has always been a proponent of using the lightest tackle possible. His outfit for sailfish, as well as kingfish, is an Accurate Valiant 600 conventional reel with a 7:1 gear ratio because it quickly takes up slack line, and a 7-foot light-tip Accurate rod.

He puts 450 to 500 yards of 30-pound Momoi Diamond Braid on the reel as backing, followed by a 250-yard topshot of 20-pound Momoi Diamond Illusion, a green, “super tough” monofilament, and a 50-pound fluorocarbon leader. His preferred sailfish baits are goggle-eyes and threadfin herring and, if possible, sardines to use as pitch baits for fish that he can see.

When it’s time to move and reel in the lines, Hunt has his anglers work the baits, reeling them in a little, then hesitating before reeling again, rather than mindlessly cranking them back to the boat.

“Sometimes you’ll get a good bite like that,” said Hunt, who, because he’s always prepared, is always ready when that unexpected bite happens.

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Fish for fresh grouper before year’s end

The grouper season in South Florida closes for four months on January 1, so time is running short to catch one of the hard-fighting, great-tasting fish.

The good news is that now is the best time of the year to catch grouper according to the legendary Capt. Bouncer Smith, who retired after 54 years of running fishing charters in Miami Beach.

Live-baiting around coral reefs and wrecks is the most popular way to catch grouper. Boaters can either anchor up-current or drift or troll with their baits.

“Probably the most consistently productive bait that is readily available is pinfish,” Smith says, noting they can be caught on hook and line or in a pinfish trap. “With that being said, if you caught live ballyhoo and slow-trolled them in 15 to 50 feet of water, wherever you find a reef edge, they’re very, very effective.”

But, adds Smith, there’s an even better live bait for grouper — a baby bonito of 1-3 pounds.

They can be caught trolling a homemade, Sabiki-like rig consisting of some small spoons and bonefish jigs with a small trolling lead in front of them. Meanwhile, Smith says, your grouper fishing rod is already rigged with a 9/0 triple-strength circle hook and a 120-pound leader about 20 feet long, tied to a three-way swivel with a 1- to 3-pound weight attached to a short piece of monofilament tied to the bottom of the swivel. His preferred mainline is 80- or 100-pound monofilament because the line stretches without breaking when you apply maximum pressure on a grouper to prevent it from heading back into a reef or wreck.

“You’re trolling those little lures around all the wrecks out to 200 feet, and at some point, you’ll catch baby bonitos, which are very prolific in the fall,” Smith says. “As soon as you catch a baby bonito, you hook it through the upper lip and you drop it down on the upstream side of the wreck. And you better have all the drag you can afford.

“That live bonito is the No. 1 black grouper food you can drop down. It’s a great bait anytime, but the little bonitos are very common in the fall and the black groupers get common in the fall.”

Another tried but true, but seldom used tactic that works for grouper is to troll dead baits along coral reefs, which was perfected more than 50 years ago by Capt. Buddy Carey of the famed Pier 5 charter fleet in Miami. Smith says the technique is still effective and not that difficult to master.

“The grouper see something going by that looks like it might be edible and they’re out to get it,” Smith says. “They come charging up off the reef.”

Smith trolls skirted ballyhoo, using a planer to get the bait near the bottom where the grouper hang out. A planer is a small, rectangular, weighted piece of metal that is attached to the mainline of a fishing outfit at one end and to a long leader at the other end.

When it is deployed, the planer, which comes in different sizes that travel at different depths, glides down through the water behind the boat. Depending on the size of the planer and how much fishing line is put out, the bait can be presented at a depth that will attract the attention of any fish in that zone.

Smith rigs the ballyhoo on a 7/0 triple-strength 3417 Mustad J hook at the end of a 100-foot length of 100-pound monofilament leader attached to the planer. He uses dual-speed Penn International reels, size 30 or larger. In low gear, the reel can pull a grouper away from a structure. Then, the high gear setting enables an angler to get the fish quickly to the boat, before a shark can bite it.

“The grouper on occasion will come up and hit the ballyhoo on top of the water, but basically you want the bait about 10 feet off the bottom,” Smith says. “If it’s real close to the bottom, they’ve got the advantage of getting back into the bottom. And if it’s too high, then a lot of them will say, ‘Oh, that one’s too far away.’ But generally speaking, they come charging up to get that morsel going by.”

Smith says that anglers can learn how to precisely troll for groupers by practicing with a planer over a sandy bottom. When the bait starts hitting the sand, mark the fishing line and record the RPMs of the engines. The next time you troll, run at the same speed and let out the same amount of line, and you’ll know how far down your bait is running.

The grouper season closure, which runs through April 30 in Atlantic waters, was implemented in 2010 to allow the populations of black, gag, and red grouper to increase in number and in size, as well as to protect the fish during their spawning seasons.

The minimum size limit for black and gag grouper is 24 inches and reds must be 20 inches. Anglers can keep a total of three grouper per day, but only one can be a black or a gag. The other two, or all three, can be red grouper.

Follow Capt. Bouncer’s advice and you’ll be able to enjoy several delicious meals of fresh grouper for the holiday season. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until May.

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Look to November for fishing mutton snapper

After a cold front sweeps across South Florida in November, Capt. Abie Raymond knows that it’s time to fish for mutton snapper.

Now is when the tasty snappers gather on reefs in shallow water to take advantage of the reduced water clarity caused by the wind and waves. The limited visibility allows the sharp-eyed muttons to aggressively feed on ballyhoo, a baitfish that is plentiful this time of year.

“When you get a northwest wind, a little cold-front wind, and you get that north swell that creeps down and splits the gap between the coast of Florida and the Bahamas and agitates the bottom, all the way into the first reef especially, you’ll get this milky water in there,” Raymond says. “It’s just sediment in the water, and it makes the ballyhoo so much easier for the muttons to catch. Once that water gets dirty, they can ambush them way easier.

“You can catch muttons decent on the clear days, but when you’re sitting in a boat that’s anchored, it’s so much better when the water’s a little bit dirtier.”

The first step in catching mutton snapper for Raymond, whose Go Hard Fishing (gohardfishing.com and @abie_raymond) runs out of Bill Bird Marina in Miami Beach, is to catch ballyhoo. As he drives his 28-foot C-Hawk center console south from Haulover Inlet to Key Biscayne, he looks for the baitfish jumping out of the water.

When he spots “showering” ballyhoo, he anchors near a patch reef in 20 feet or ties up to a mooring ball on a reef and puts a block of frozen menhaden chum in a fine-mesh chum bag. That way he doesn’t “over-feed” the ballyhoo.

His preferred way to catch ballyhoo is with an 8-pound Shakespeare Ugly Stik rod with a 2500 Penn Spinfisher reel. To the end of the 8-pound monofilament line, he ties a tiny No. 20 gold hook baited with an even tinier piece of frozen shrimp, then he floats it back to the baitfish, which pick the offering off the surface. He uses a de-hooker to drop the ballyhoo into the livewell without touching the baitfish.

With plenty of bait, Raymond anchors near patch reefs in 10 to 30 feet of water from Cape Florida in Key Biscayne to North Key Largo. Then he puts the same ground menhaden he used for the ballyhoo in a chum bag with larger mesh and puts out two ballyhoo, one on each side of the boat.

The baits are hooked on ½- or ¾-ounce jigs. Raymond prefers Hookup Lures jigs — chartreuse is his favorite color, but pink and white also are effective — and says Troll Rite jigs work well. He breaks off the ballyhoo’s bill with an upward snap and runs the jig hook through both of the bait’s lips and through the front of its skull to keep the hook in place.

The ballyhoo are fished on 7-foot, 20-pound Ugly Stik rods with 7500 Penn Spinfisher reels spooled with 20-pound monofilament line and four-foot, 30-pound fluorocarbon leaders. (The dirty water and light mono allow Raymond to use shorter leaders compared with anglers who use 30-foot leaders for wary muttons.) He ties a four-wrap spider hitch in the main line and attaches that to the leader with an eight-wrap no-name or Yucatan knot. He attaches the jigs with an improved clinch knot.

Unless he has patient anglers, Raymond leaves the mutton outfits in the rod-holders.

“The reason I have them sit in the rod-holder is because they need to be real still,” he explains. “Customers have a tendency to want to wind and wind and wind. The rod-holder doesn’t have that tendency.”

Patience also is essential for letting the chum attract the snapper, as long as there is some current. As Raymond notes, “The longer you can sit on one of those patch reefs and wait to get a quality fish or two, the better. If you can allocate about two hours at one patch reef and let that chum really get established and let those fish really settle in and come running from all the other patch reefs, a lot of times you’ll do better. If you don’t have current, you give it half an hour, 40 minutes and you move on to the next one.”

While waiting for the muttons to show up, Raymond has his anglers fish some lighter spinning rods with strips of ballyhoo and drift the baits back in the chum slick for yellowtail snappers. Or he’ll have his anglers fish fresh dead shrimp on the bottom to catch porgies, hogfish, groupers, and yellowtails.

As good as the fishing can be this time of year, Raymond typically has the patch reefs to himself because so few anglers realize that mutton snapper can be caught in such shallow water.

“Most people just run right past that stuff,” says Raymond of when schools of ballyhoo jump out of the water as they’re being chased by the snapper, along with hungry sailfish and dolphin. “It’s usually happening in 20 to 60 feet of water and most people think that’s probably bonitos in there, that’s probably mackerel in there. Not this time of year. Most of the big muttons I caught last year were in less than 70 feet of water.”

So instead of going deep for mutton snappers, follow Raymond’s game plan and you’ll come home with enough fish for several delicious dinners.

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October brings opportunity to fish the mullet run

People who complain that South Florida doesn’t have a change of seasons don’t fish the annual fall mullet run.

For local anglers, nothing signals that fall has arrived like the mullet run. That’s when schools of silver and black mullet migrate south along the Atlantic coast while being feasted on by a host of predators such as snook, tarpon, jacks, sharks, Spanish mackerel, and bluefish.

October is the prime time to fish the mullet run, both offshore and inshore. One of the attractions of the run is that anglers never know what they might catch from one cast to the next. Another attraction is that they don’t need live mullet to catch gamefish. Half of a mullet and a variety of lures such as topwater plugs and soft-plastic baitfish and shrimp imitations can be just as, if not more, effective.

Schools of mullet can appear suddenly and then disappear. Sometimes they linger inshore for several days before moving on. As Capt. Chris Murray of Stuart, who fishes offshore as well as in the Indian and St. Lucie rivers, said, “They come in in droves, and then they’ll pause and then there’ll be another drove.”

“They could be here for several weeks or a month,” added Capt. Mark Nichols of Stuart. “It just depends on whether the weather pushes them south.”

Murray usually cast-nets several dozen mullet wherever he sees the baitfish pushing water. After catching bait, he recommended that you cruise around until you spot another mullet school, then closely watch to see what the baitfish are doing and what’s feeding on them.

Tarpon often jump completely out of the water, then come crashing back into the middle of the school. Snook like to hang below the school and suck in mullet with an audible pop. Jacks will charge into the school and send mullet flying.

Murray likes to fish live mullet on a 7-foot light- to medium-action spinning rod with a 4000-size reel spooled with 20-pound braided line. He usually attaches a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader tied to a 3/0 Owner Mutu Light circle hook. He clips an indicator float to the leader, which allows him and his anglers to keep track of the bait.

“I vary my leaders. I like to actually start lighter,” Murray said. “Normally I rig up two that are 25-pound, two that are 30, two that are 40. When I know what kind of fish are there and what kind of heat I have to put on them, normally 40. If they’re small snook, 25 or 30 is fine.”

When drifting or slow-trolling, he hooks a mullet through the upper lip and has his angler cast it to the edge of a submerged oyster bar, which snook, tarpon, and other species use as ambush spots. Murray then has the angler open the bail of the reel and slowly let out the line.

Fishing in the St. Lucie River with Murray and Anthony Javarone, it wasn’t long before our mullet got nervous, then violent splashes appeared by the baits. Whatever went after my mullet missed, but a big fish nailed Javarone’s bait.

Following Murray’s instruction to let the fish swim for a few seconds before closing the bail and reeling the line tight, Javarone was hooked up to what turned out to be a 15-pound jack. The fish took Javarone from one end of Murray’s bay boat to the other before it finally tired. With a gloved hand, Murray lifted the jack out of the water by the tail, let Javarone pose with it for some photos, then released it to resume its mullet-marauding ways.

Big jacks also feed on schools of mullet traveling along the beaches and in and out of inlets. Tarpon and Spanish mackerel will crash into a mullet school, then they and snook, bluefish, and jacks lurking underneath gobble up the stunned and maimed mullet. That’s when fishing a mullet head on the bottom can be extremely effective.

Fishing around the rocks at the mouth of St. Lucie Inlet, Capt. Greg Snyder of Stuart uses a DOA plastic shrimp to catch snook ranging from under the minimum size limit of 28 inches to over the maximum size limit of 32 inches. He fishes the shrimp on a spinning outfit with 30-pound braided line and a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader.

“They use the rocks as a trap,” said Snyder of the snook. “The bait hits the rocks and gets confused and the snook take advantage of it.”

The key is to let the shrimp drift with the current and to be aware of any taps or hesitation in the drift, because that means a snook has taken the lure.

“Let the tide do the work and keep in contact with the shrimp,” Snyder said, “because you need to be able to set the hook when they eat.”

Why would a snook eat a shrimp when mullet are abundant? I posed that question to Nichols, the founder of DOA Lures.

“The first of the mullet run, the fish are all over the mullet,” Nichols said. “But after three weeks of eating mullet, they’re ready for something different.

“I think it’s just easy for them to eat a shrimp,” he added. “They have to work hard to catch a mullet. It doesn’t take anything for them to catch a shrimp.”

And when the mullet are running, it usually doesn’t take anything for anglers to catch a variety of gamefish.

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September means snook season on the Atlantic

Snook fight hard and are delicious to eat, and there’s no better time to catch the fish than in September.

Snook season opens on Sept. 1 after a three-month closure on the Atlantic coast. One of Florida’s most popular saltwater gamefish, snook are protected during the summer because that’s when they gather at inlets as they prepare to spawn and are easy to target.

After spawning in South Florida, many snook head back into the Intracoastal Waterway and local canals. But a bunch remain in inlets, as well as off beaches and around fishing piers, where they can be caught on live bait and a variety of lures such as jigs, plugs, and soft-plastic baitfish imitations. That means land-based anglers have just as good a shot at catching a snook as those fishing from boats.

Because snook are so fun to catch and so good to eat, they are intensely managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Anglers are allowed to keep only one snook per day with a total length of 28 to 32 inches along the Atlantic coast.

The season is closed from June 1 to Aug. 31. Open season is Sept. 1 to Dec. 14, and then it closes Dec. 15 to Jan. 31, when the potential for cold weather can make snook so lethargic that unethical anglers could simply scoop up the fish with a landing net. The season reopens from Feb. 1 to May 31.

For anglers without boats, the fishing piers in Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach are good places to try to catch a snook, but it can be a challenge. One of the great mysteries of the undersea world is why snook that are caught and released at fishing piers all summer suddenly stop biting when the season opens.

It’s not that the fish have left the piers — you can usually see snook swimming in front of the underwater camera at Deerfield Pier (https://deerfield-beach.com/1474/Live-Cameras) — it’s that they’re not too interested in eating. Nevertheless, a few people always manage to catch a keeper snook.

Some anglers use sabiki rigs to catch baitfish such as pilchards, then put the baits back out on heavy outfits with egg sinkers to keep them near the bottom where the snook hang out. You can also use a small gold hook baited with a piece of shrimp to catch small jacks, pinfish, and croakers for bait. Or you can buy some live shrimp, the bigger the better, to tempt a snook to bite.

When fishing from piers at night, the best place to fish your bait is along the shadow line in the water, because snook typically lurk on the dark side of the line and ambush baitfish that swim along the edge.

Boat docks and bridges also harbor snook this time of year. Snook hang around pilings and wait for the tide to bring baitfish or shrimp. Anglers who fish at night prefer bridges and docks with lights and, like pier anglers, fish their baits and lures so they drift from the light side of the shadow line to the dark side. If you’re fishing a dock without lights, cast your lure or bait under the dock and let it sink to where the snook are waiting.

Tom Greene of Lighthouse Point, who has fished for snook for more than 60 years, said bridges across the Intracoastal Waterway in Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, and Boca Raton can be snook hot spots at the start of the outgoing and incoming tides. The fish will almost always be on the down-current side of the bridges.

Greene said he’d cast a Flair Hawk jig and bounce it on the bottom parallel to the bridge and along the shadow line. He also recommended working a Spooltek lure along the bottom.

“The secret of snook fishing is that snook are feeding on the bottom, not on top,” said Greene, although he acknowledged that the fish will occasionally hit a top-water lure.

Those who prefer to fish in canals can try the Hillsboro and Cypress Creek canals anywhere west of U.S. Highway 1. Greene suggested slowly trolling diving plugs from a small boat early in the morning and in the evening. He said kayak anglers should fish early and cast plugs or DOA plastic shrimp around seawalls and docks.

Rain also plays a role in snook fishing this time of year. After heavy rains, spillways in South Florida are opened to release the excess water into the Intracoastal Waterway. Snook wait at the spillways to feed on small freshwater fish such as bluegills, shad, and shiners that are swept through the water control structures.

Greene said the top spillways include the Cypress Creek in Pompano Beach and the Hillsboro in Boca Raton. His favorite way to fish the spillways is to hook a live or dead bluegill, shad, or shiner through the bottom of the mouth and out through the top on a 1/2- or 3/8-ounce jig. He casts the bait into the fast-moving water at the mouth of the spillway and bounces the jig on the bottom.

“I would find myself at a spillway at daylight and fish that,” Greene said. “If you can’t make the daylight bite, fish a spillway late in the afternoon. If you have to work all night, you can still fish them in the middle of the day because fish at spillways will eat all day.”

And if you’re successful, you’ll be eating fried or grilled snook for dinner.

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Now’s the time for dolphin fishing

Now’s the time for dolphin fishing

It used to be that May and June were the best months for dolphin fishing in South Florida, but that has changed. August and September are now the best times for catching the colorful, delectable fish from Palm Beach to the Florida Keys.

“I think the last few years, August is the peak,” Capt. Abie Raymond said. “September usually has some big ones, but not as many numbers.”

Raymond is a Miami Beach native whose Go Hard Fishing (gohardfishing.com, @abie_raymond) offers offshore and inshore charters as well as trips in Miami-Dade County’s freshwater canals for peacock bass, largemouth bass, and clown knifefish.

In addition to witnessing firsthand the transition from a springtime dolphin bite to a summertime bite, Raymond has come up with a couple new techniques for catching what is considered one of South Florida’s favorite saltwater fish to eat.

For starters, he uses minnow-sized pilchards that he nets before he heads offshore to attract dolphins to his boat around weed lines, weed patches, and floating debris, which he searches for from the tower of his 28-foot C-Hawk center console.

“It fires the dolphins up and it gives you more opportunities,” said Raymond of the inch-and-a-half-long baits. “They keep the dolphins around your boat. You don’t have to worry, ‘Oh, where’s my rod? Where’s my bait?’ while the dolphins are swimming by.

“You just grab a scoop and throw it overboard. The baits swim back to the boat for shelter and the dolphins bust them all over the place for 10 minutes while you’re taking your time, rigging your rod, tying a new plug on, a jig, whatever you want.”

Raymond said the idea came from seeing dolphins spit out little baitfish as they jumped or hit the deck of his boat. He also saw the baits after filleting dolphins.

“Their stomachs are packed with them. That’s the kind of stuff they’re picking out of the seaweed,” Raymond said. “So I figured they’ve got to eat the heck out of them and they’re not going to get full on them. That’s the beauty of it. You’re not going to overfeed them like you would with big bait. Even if the fish shut off, you throw a scoop and they start blowing up. It turns them on immediately.”

The tactic worked to perfection on a trip with Raymond and his father, David, out of Bill Bird Marina in North Miami Beach.

After Raymond spotted a couple of dolphins near a weed patch from his boat’s tower, he climbed down, dipped up about eight of the little baits, and flung them into the water. Those two dolphins and a bunch of their schoolmates quickly surrounded the boat. 

Raymond baited several lightweight spinning outfits with small pilchards as well as with some bigger pilchards.

At one point, David Raymond and I were both reeling dolphin to the boat and a third fish was on an outfit that Raymond had hooked while he was trying to reel up the bait to get the line out of our way. He stuck that rod in a rod-holder so he could gaff our fish.

Raymond’s dolphin outfits — a 10-pound Ugly Stick rod with a 3500 Penn Slammer reel spooled with 20-pound braided line with a 2/0 J hook — produced a fun, exciting fight with the schoolies, which weighed 5 to 10 pounds. 

“The braid is so strong and so durable,” Raymond said, “and those little reels now are so capable drag-wise, it eliminates the need for heavy tackle.”

Raymond does bring out heavier spinning outfits — 7-foot rods with Penn 7500 Spinfisher reels with 20-pound braid — for another new tactic for catching dolphins around weed lines.

He uses a fishing kite to put a skirted ballyhoo 50 feet behind his boat and another skirted ballyhoo 100 feet back. With his boat 100 to 150 feet away, Raymond trolls the baits along weed lines and across weed patches. The lure-ballyhoo combos look like flying fish, which dolphin love to eat, as they skip across the water.

Raymond wriggles a dead ballyhoo back and forth with his hands to break the entire spine, which gives the baitfish life-like movement when it’s in the water. He also breaks the tail to prevent the bait from spinning, squeezes out any intestinal matter, and breaks off the bill with an upward snap.

He inserts a 7/0 Mustad 3407 triple-strength J hook through both lips and through the front of the bait’s skull to keep the hook in place, and slides a weighted skirt or feather — a Jet Head, Billy Bait, or Sea Witch — on top of the ballyhoo. 

The lure’s weight helps keep the bait in the water instead of flying above it. Raymond uses a 1-ounce skirt on the far bait and a half-ounce skirt on the short bait.

The hook placement in the ballyhoo’s head instead of its belly, as in a trolling bait, is virtually weed-proof, especially positioned directly behind a skirt.

“If you have to go through patchy grass, it doesn’t matter because your hook is out of the water,” Raymond said. “We’ll drag the baits right over it, and that’s what makes it advantageous. You don’t have to worry about constantly picking grass off your baits.”

Now’s the time for dolphin fishing

And that means you can spend much more time enjoying the best dolphin fishing of the year.

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Trolling for kingfish with Capt. Lemieux

Capt. Chris Lemieux had been fishing for about a minute when a kingfish grabbed one of the two bonito strips that he was trolling behind his boat.

That was followed by another kingfish and, as soon as Lemieux put out the next bait, another one.

That’s how good trolling for kingfish can be off South Florida during the month of June.

“Generally, we get the spring run right now and catch a lot of kingfish,” Lemieux said. “June and July are good, then it’ll kind of slow down and pick back up in August or September.”

Fishing on a sunny afternoon in 90 to 110 feet of greenish water just south of Boynton Beach Inlet, Lemieux saw the first kingfish get off and then so did the second one, but the next king, about an 8-pounder, made it into the boat. That was followed by a kingfish double-header of a 10-pounder and a 13-pounder for Lemieux’s customers.

His anglers also caught four bonitos, which are members of the tuna family that don’t taste anywhere near as good as their relatives. The hard-fighting fish are a challenge to land, and as one angler labored to reel in his third bonito, Lemieux joked, “Are you trying to let that fish get bigger?”

Lemieux kept those bonitos to fashion future strips, which consist of a thin layer of meat on the fish’s shiny skin cut into the streamlined shape of a baitfish. Fished in combination with a flashy, feathery lure known as a Sea Witch, bonito strips are especially effective this time of year.

He fished the strips behind planers on heavy, two-speed conventional outfits spooled with an 80-pound braided line that were trolled from rod-holders on each side of the stern.

“You catch them this time of year on the planer, the smaller ones,” said Lemieux, a Boynton Beach firefighter who, on his days off, runs trips on his Conch 27 center console for everything from snapper, tuna, and dolphin to sailfish, sharks, and swordfish (www.lemieuxfishingcharters.com). “I’ve caught kingfish on planers everywhere.”

Lemieux rigs a bonito strip on an 8/0 long-shank J hook. He slides a Sea Witch down the leader so it rests atop the strip, giving it the appearance of a flying fish or other baitfish. This day, he used a blue-and-white Sea Witch and a pink one. Both colors were effective.

He trolls with planers to get the strips well below the surface. Essentially a weighted, rectangular piece of metal, a planer dives to a range of depths, depending on how much line is let out. Lemieux fished a No. 4 planer on the long line, which he let out for 40 seconds, and a larger No. 6 planer on the short line, which he let out for 20 seconds, so both strips were down 30 to 40 feet. Staggering the strips prevents tangles.

One end of a planer is attached to the mainline and the other is attached to the leader. Lemieux used 80 feet of a 60-pound fluorocarbon leader, which he pulled in by hand after the planers were reeled to the rod tip.

“Some guys use a lighter leader, some guys use heavier, it just depends on your preference,” he said. “When the fish are biting good, I try to get a little heavier on them. When it’s a real slow, picky bite, you can go down to even a 40-pound leader if you want to.”

Another proven kingfish tactic is to fish live baits from a fishing kite. The kite flies behind the boat and baited lines are attached to clips on the line attached to the kite. That gets the baits away from the boat and allows them to splash on the surface to attract attention from kingfish as well as sailfish and tunas.

Lemieux put up a fishing kite with three lines baited with live goggle-eyes on Fin-Nor Marquesa Pelagic 40 conventional reels with a 20-pound monofilament mainline, a 40-pound leader, and a three-foot piece of wire leader attached to a 6/0 hook. Lemieux also put out three flat-line live baits on spinning outfits.

Things got interesting when the kite bait closest to the boat got whacked by what turned out to be a 43-pound kingfish. Moments later, a huge bonito took off with a flat-line bait. Fortunately, the two fish did not tangle the lines.

The big king dumped a bunch of line, but Lemieux chased it down, gaffed it, and lifted it into the boat. After that kingfish, and the bonito, his exhausted anglers called it quits.

“There’s always a few smaller kingfish around like we caught trolling, and there’s always a few big spawners around,” Lemieux said. “If you have access to live bait, you’re going to catch bigger fish on the live bait.”

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Hogfish, grouper season upon us

By Steve Waters

April is a very special month for many anglers and divers in South Florida. The first of April marks the opening of hogfish and grouper season, and it has been a long wait for this enthusiastic bunch. Hogfish season closed last fall on November 1 in local waters, and grouper season has been closed since January 1 of this year in Atlantic waters.

April is a disappointing month for scuba divers who fish for fresh lobster, as the lobster season closes on April 1 of every year. Seasoned divers like Jim “Chiefy” Mathie, a retired Deerfield Beach fire chief, focuses on spearfishing for lionfish with his buddies, meanwhile taking note of where hogfish and grouper tend to congregate.

The good news, said Mathie, is that he’s been seeing plenty of fish. However, it’s important for divers and anglers to know that grouper and hogfish hauls have restrictions on bag and size. Black and gag grouper must measure at least 24 inches long and red grouper must be 20 inches long. Anglers and divers can keep a total of three grouper per day, but only one can be a black or a gag. The other two, or all three, can be red grouper.

The limit on hogfish is one per person per day with a minimum size of 16 inches long from the tip of the nose to the fork of the tail. In previous years, hogfish season was open all year, the daily bag limit was five, and the size limit was 12 inches. Mathie has seen an improvement in the hogfish population since the regulations took effect in 2017. “We definitely are seeing a lot of big males,” Mathie said, explaining that male hogfish big enough to spear have a long snoot with a dark stripe down the forehead.

Mathie is the author of “Catching the Spear-it! The ABCs of Spearfishing,” which is sold retail by most area dive shops as well as through online sources such as www.chiefy.net and others. The author shares many excellent tips in his book, but the sportsperson must always keep in mind the 3 R’s–recognition, regulation, and

range. In other words, be able to identify the fish, know the size limit, and be close enough to shoot it with your speargun. Spear fishermen must check off the 3 R’s relatively quickly with black and gag grouper. Unlike hogfish and red grouper, which often try to hide behind a sea fan when a diver approaches, blacks and gags don’t usually stick around.

In May, Mathie and his dive buddies concentrate on hunting the west-facing side of the third reef. The top of the reef is about 50 feet below the surface and the bottom is 60-65 feet. The reef holds large numbers of fish, including keeper-sized grouper and hogfish. Wrecks in 65 feet also are good spots to shoot big grouper and hogfish. Some years, Mathie and his friends hunted those spots for the entire month of May. Then they moved on to wrecks in 110-120 feet.

Capt. Skip Dana of the Fish City Pride drift boat in Pompano Beach fishes for grouper in wrecks from 75-240 feet. He notes that wrecks in 75-120 feet are good for gag grouper. Blacks are on the same wrecks as well as deeper ones. Reds can be as shallow at 30-40 feet around rockpiles, ledges and grass patches, and on wrecks.

The GPS coordinates for Florida’s artificial reefs are available at: myfwc.com/media/19397/artificialreefdeploymentlocations.pdf

Once a keeper grouper is hooked, there’s a good chance it may get away. The fish typically swim right back into the wreck or reef where they were hanging out.

Capt. Bouncer Smith of Bouncer’s Dusky 33 Miami, FL Fishing Charters, and author of “The Bouncer Smith Chronicles: A Lifetime of Fishing,” says having the proper tackle is essential for getting a grouper away from its home and up to the boat. Although braided line is popular with offshore anglers, Smith prefers using monofilament for his main line.

 

“If you’re truly targeting big groupers, you’re better off with real heavy monofilament and the craziest, tightest drag you can imagine fishing,” he says. “Braid doesn’t give to the pressure. Braid either holds or it breaks.

If you’re using 100-pound monofilament line or 80-pound monofilament line and a 120-pound leader, you can fish a lot more drag because when you’re turning your head and ducking, waiting for that line to break, it’s going to stretch instead of break. Therefore, you can put a lot more heat on that grouper with heavy mono than you can with braid.”

 

As Smith explains, monofilament line is like a palm tree in a storm. It will bend and sway, but it won’t break. Braided line is like an oak tree, which might be uprooted or snap in a strong wind. “The nice thing about braid is it makes it easier to get to the bottom and hold the bottom, but when it comes to stopping a fish, monofilament is far superior,” Smith says. “If you set the drag at 30 pounds with braid, when you reach 30 pounds then the line’s going to break. When you set the drag at 30 pounds with mono, instead of the mono breaking, it stretches. So, you’ve got a lot more give.”

As for tackle, Smith says the ideal grouper outfit is a dual-speed lever drag Penn International reel with a 7-foot, solid fiberglass rod because, similar to the palm tree, “They bend but they never break. However, these days most people use a 5½- to 6-foot stand-up rod.”

 

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Springtime fishing in the Everglades

By Steve Waters

When water levels drop in Everglades canals in the spring, the fishing is as good as it gets.

How good? So good that Capt. Alan Zaremba says there’s no such thing as a bad cast. Just get your lure somewhere on the water and chances are excellent that you’ll get a bite.

The reason is that as water levels fall in the marshy interior of the Everglades, bass and other species are forced into the canals that crisscross the River of Grass.

“You can catch bass here year-round, but this is the time of year when you can catch a lot of bass. They’re concentrated, coming out of the marsh areas,” said Zaremba, of Hollywood, who specializes in guiding anglers for peacock bass in South Florida’s urban canals, but focuses on the Everglades this time of year.

“This year we’ve got optimal conditions. So depending on when the rainy season kicks in, which I figure is usually the third or fourth week in May, get out now while you can and enjoy it.”

On a typical day, Zaremba might have two anglers catch and release well over 200 largemouth and peacock bass in an eight-hour trip. In addition, his charters catch bluegills, spotted sunfish, shellcrackers, speckled perch, chain pickerel, mudfish and non-native species such as oscars, Mayan cichlids and jaguar guapotes.

On a recent two-hour trip late in the afternoon, Zaremba and I caught about
40 largemouth and peacock bass, as well as some Mayans and oscars, using a 5-inch Bagley Minnow B floating jerkbait on 6- to 7-foot medium action spinning rods with 15-pound braided line and 20-pound monofilament leaders.

Sometimes the bites would come as soon as the lure landed on the water.
Other times bass would hit after we’d reeled back the lure almost to Zaremba’s flats boat. And several times we got bites when the lures were simply sitting on the surface while we were deep into conversations about fishing, family or current events.

“Anybody can throw it and catch fish,” said Zaremba of his favorite lure,
which he sells on his website www.worldwidesportsfishing.com. “It will catch all different species, so they don’t have to be a Joe Pro, and I think that’s important. You can drag it out the back of the boat and something’s going to hit it. You could be talking to your partner and something comes up and hits it. Sometimes we catch two bass at a time on those lures.”

Other lures that Zaremba likes when Everglades water levels are low include topwater plugs such as Baby Torpedoes, Chug Bugs and Pop-Rs, and his fly-fishing customers have great success throwing poppers and woolly buggers. Zaremba also likes seven-inch Gambler ribbontail worms, which can be reeled on the surface through the lily pads, hyacinths and other vegetation that lines most canals to imitate a small snake.

Zaremba said live worms such as nightcrawlers will catch oscars, Mayan
cichlids, spotted sunfish and bluegills. He added that live shiners are not necessary or as effective as lures.

“You’ll catch more fish on the artificials right now than you will on live bait,”
Zaremba said. “And how many dozen live baits would you have to bring out here to catch 200 bass? You’re going to need a lot of shiners.”

The other attraction of the Bagley Minnow B is that it can be fished a variety of ways and it holds up well even after catching hundreds of fish in the Everglades, which run from Tamiami Trail to the Broward Palm Beach county line west of U.S. Highway 27 and from Loxahatchee
National Wildlife Refuge to Sawgrass
Recreation Park east of 27.

“They last a long time,” said Zaremba of the jerkbaits, which he upgrades with Daiichi blood-red treble hooks. “And I can use it twitching on the surface. I can use it as a jerkbait down below. And I can troll with it. Anytime you can work something a bunch of ways, you can target different things.

“If you find the bass are out on a deeper ledge, they’ll come up and hit that
jerkbait, which might be going down only three feet. But it’s giving off enough flash and it also has a rattle in it, so it makes a little more noise.”

Good spots to fish include the canals along Interstate 75, which is more
commonly known as Alligator Alley. Lots of smaller bass bite in the finger canals north of the Alley on the west side of U.S. 27. As water levels continue to drop, the fishing will only get better everywhere.

That makes this a great time to introduce youngsters to fishing. Growing
up in Miami, Zaremba said he and neighborhood kids would fish in local
canals. Given the residential and commercial development in South Florida
over the past few decades, kids no longer have that type of access to fishing.
Bringing them out to the Everglades for a few hours of catching fish can hook them on the sport.

It helps to use what Zaremba calls his three-stop rule for kids:
“Stop and fish for a while and when they start getting antsy, you go for a little boat ride.

Start fishing again. They start getting antsy, go for a little boat ride. That gets them back in the groove again. Start fishing again and when they get antsy for the third time, it’s time to go to the house, whether that’s two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours. Every kid’s different.”

But they’ll all love catching lots of fish.

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