Florida Keys and Fishing on the Road
The last week has been quiet for us in terms of fishing in the Northeast. I had to go to Florida for a work trip, but I took some time over the weekend to check out the Florida Keys and get a taste of the fishing down there. The Keys are a crazy place, and the economy seems to be based off of drinking, conch fritters, and fishing. The average half day charter is expensive, north of $600 depending on what you are targeting. There was nothing in specific that I wanted to catch, so I just brought the basics and explored around the endless bridge pilings and mangrove patches.
When I travel and plan to fish, I generally follow the same formula. I pack a durable rod in my suitcase, usually something like a 4 piece ugly stick, and pair it with a do-all reel in the 4000 size class. In this case, it was a Penn Battle 3, which can handle pretty much any inshore Florida fish that you throw at it other than tarpon and sharks. In terms of lures, I keep it really simple and play the hits. Bucktails, metal jigs, SP minnows, and spooks are all I need to make a solid go of it. No one goes a Paul McCartney concert to see him play the new stuff. You want to see the classics. The only time I switch it up is if an especially crusty looking old timer slips me some inside lure knowledge during one of my world famous fisherman interrogations. Legend has it that as a kid I once asked a New Jersey surf fisherman so many questions that he turned himself into the game wardens for undersize fluke just to get away from me.
With that said, for most of the trip the lures stayed in the suitcase and I fished bait. For me, its the best way to get a quick picture of what’s going on under water. I picked up some size 1 hooks, and rigged them with a sliding egg sinker and some 20# flourocarbon. You could call it a seeker pattern. Then I loaded up on frozen shrimp (I didn’t notice any difference in fish interest between frozen and fresh shrimp, which surprised me). When I fish bait I move around a lot, never letting my bait sit for more than 2 or 3 minutes without a bite. This kind of fishing aggravates a lot of my fishing friends, because by the time they get rigged up and baited I’m running off to the next spot. But it really works for me. Once I find some fish I’ll stick around for as long as the bite lasts or I want to target something different.
My experience shore fishing the Keys is this: You can catch a ton of fish throwing shrimp around the mangroves. You will catch a lot of undersized fish, but with the right tackle its a blast. We caught grunt, lane snapper, mutton snapper, spot, and a few other types of tropical fish that I’m sure have names. Now its back to ice fishing, I’ve got a lot of fishing planned for the next few weeks as long as it stays cold.
-Grady
