Sometimes blessings just fall in your lap. I was doing a consulting job for a company in Kansas. They sent me down to check out some equipment in Florida. As soon as I walked in the owner's office, I knew that I was in trouble. You could tell by the mounted fish and pictures that Dave Raska was a hardcore fisherman and we got sidetracked for a few minutes talking about fishing.
Well, we wrapped up early on our project, so Dave said, tomorrow I'll be by at 5:00 to pick you up at the motel. What's going on? I'll take my boat and I hired a buddy, Mitch Mitchell, owner of Reel Chaos www.reelchaos.com (305) 587-1150, and we're going fishing.
This was one time that the boss was definitely right! As you can imagine, no one complained, and before you knew it we were cruising out before daylight into the legendary Florida Keys. As you know, they are famous worldwide for their tarpon fishing as well as numerous other species.
Today we were planning on hitting the snappers, specs, groupers and maybe a few reds. There's no way that I'll be able to tell you how cool the Keys are in one short article, but let's try.
We left Mitch's house and cruised on out into the endless mangroves, waterways and islands.
Over the course of the day... I don't have a clue but we had to of gone out at least 40 miles. We started off by pulling up to the mangroves which are a tight growth of brush in the shallows. Throughout the day we never were in over 6 ½-feet of water and 90 percent of the time 2 to 4 feet.
The first stop was to check a few bait traps and grab some tin fish for bait. They are a smaller fish somewhat resembling a bluegill but we ended up mainly using a shrimp with a small egg sinker hooked up 18-inches below a cork which we flipped out to the base of the groves. The red snappers lurk in the edges and they'd come out and hit your bait. Dave taught us that the closer you get to the base of the grove, the bigger the fish.
We hung quite a few with most of them being a little small. If I remember correctly, they must be over 14 inches. Tomas caught a decent grouper in the other boat.
After a couple of hours we pulled up stakes and took out for a 40-minute cruise weaving through and around the mangroves to another spot. Dave has a 300 Suzuki on a 22-foot Tarpon boat so it will cover some ground. We hit one tight waterway through the mangroves that was absolutely beautiful. We cruised down it and then shot out on the other side. Somewhere along the way we came upon an island with a hotel type resort on it. I guess these islands string out on down towards Cuba. Ok, I'm stretching it a little.
We then hit the open water for speckled trout, which they call specs. To catch them we used the same set-up as before but dropped our shrimp down a few more inches. We were using rather large bobbers and Dave told us to flip them out as high as we could to make a splash. Specs and reds like noise. You twitch the end of your rod to pop the cork but Mitch cautioned me not to reel too fast.
They'd take our bobber down and Dave repeatedly told me to count to three before I started reeling. That is hard to do. I lost somewhere around 3,000,000 for every one that I hooked. Randy in the other boat landed a really nice spec.
We fished hard all day and surprisingly did not get one drop of rain. The day before it had rained five times just on the way to lunch and back. Being from Idaho and getting in the fall mood I never even thought about getting sunburned but we did. A few of us semi-good.
Wow, what beautiful country. Dave and I are already planning another trip in the very near future. If you happen to get cold and a case of cabin fever this winter, you might just think about giving Mitch a jingle and see what he'd charge you for a trip. If you didn't catch a single fish I think you'd still have a good time seeing the country. They've got quite a bit more water than you'll see in a lifetime in Nevada!
[[In-content Ad]]
