While federal and Florida state officials come to terms on this year’s Gulf gag grouper season, an announcement of the dates is expected any day. Anglers in the Southeast are hoping for a season longer than last year’s. That drastically reduced season scuttled trips, cost businesses revenue, and frustrated many anglers, especially along Florida’s west coast, where gag grouper holds high status among anglers.

“Last year, reducing the gag grouper season from 6 months to 45 days was a detriment to not only myself and many other guides in the area but also to our tourism industry as a whole,” said Capt. Katie Jo Davis of Yankeetown, Florida.

Capt. Davis runs a Young Gulfshore 22, perfect for shallow water grouper out of her home marina, Fisher’s Marina and Campground in Yankeetown. Her home waters are known for hot gag grouper fishing. With her vessel, she can fish inshore shallows for trout, reds, and other species and go up to 25 miles offshore to target fish, including gag, on rockpiles. In the Crystal River area where she often fishes, 25 miles out puts anglers over 30-foot depths.

“I’m able to catch gag grouper year-round in this area,” Davis says. Most often she’ll fish with a Shimano Twin Power 8000 spinner on a Shimano Trevala rod and use live pinfish or frozen herring on the bottom.

“Water temperatures play an important role in determining exactly how far the gag grouper move in and out from shore,” Davis says. “If the water temperature is still too hot, many of those fish will stay a bit offshore where the water is cooler,” she says. “However, there are always gag grouper around to catch.”

Shorter Gag Grouper Season, Less Tourism

Davis says the shortened gag grouper season last year caused trip cancellations by anglers who target gags, especially for charters out to the Middle Grounds. She expects the same this year if the season comes up short on dates to fish.

“I have not noticed a decline in our gag grouper population here,” Davis says. “For myself, should gag grouper be shortened or closed, I will have to focus on targeting other fish such as hogfish and mangrove snapper. Fortunately, I can always switch to inshore fishing, which is always great in our area.”

Federal fishery managers consider gag grouper in the Gulf to be overfished based on a 2022 stock assessment. Any overage to the annual catch limit (ACL) is deducted from the following year’s ACL. By this means, federal officials plan to rebuild the stock to more sustainable levels.

Gag Grouper Numbers Revised

The good news is that the magnitude of the payback applied to the 2024 annual catch limit is much smaller than the 2023 overage that was first calculated. That bit of good fortune happened after a loud public outcry over last year’s shortened season and the Gulf Council’s request that NOAA Fisheries review the landings estimates.

At their meeting this April, the Gulf Council received notice that NOAA revised their initial recreational landings data for gag grouper. According to the presentation, the estimates were lowered due to three main data collection factors: additional responses to catch surveys, a reweighting of highly influential catch interviews, and changes to fishery survey intercepts. The revisions were all part of the transition from the federal data collection program to the Florida state data collection system. With the revised data, the 2024 overage adjusted annual catch limit for recreational anglers is 163,376 pounds gross weight. This overage, lower than expected at the start of the year, is being used to calculate the season dates. That curious twist in fisheries statistics might result in a longer season than many anglers expect.

With that glimmer of hope and the recently announced 103-day season for Gulf red snapper set to open June 1, anglers and charter captains like Katie Jo hope they can target both species at least some days this coming fall. The margin of chances for a longer season may be slim, but that doesn’t stop anglers passionate about gag grouper fishing from hoping for the best.

Atlantic Gag Grouper Season

On the Atlantic side, gag grouper season along with other shallow-water grouper species opened on May 1. However, the gag season is slated to close on June 15 because NOAA Fisheries estimates that the recreational landings will reach the annual catch limit (ACL) of 133, 075 pounds gutted weight by that time. NOAA Fisheries reduced the length of the season because recreational landings in 2023 exceeded the set recreational catch limits. The way things are lining up, boating a keeper gag grouper off Florida this year might be far more difficult than ever before.

The post Gulf Gag Grouper Season Hangs in the Balance appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

An 80-foot Viking yacht, a network of fish-attracting structures, SONAR technology, and the last bait on the boat combined to help a group of Florida men catch the fish of a lifetime.

The six-person crew of the Flat Dangerous were just out for a shakedown cruise on April 24, and thought they would try for blue marlin in the Gulf waters off Destin, Florida. The shakedown was a good idea — the group lost three fish to old mono on their reels before re-spooling with fresh. The new stuff held up well enough for the crew to christen the boat with a massive 888-pound bluefin tuna.

“It took every single one of us to pull it into the boat,” said John Balters of Destin, a mate on the boat and sophomore at the University of Miami. “Once we got it in, there was just a bunch of cheering and photos. It was just incredible.”

Aboard were the boat’s owner, Warren Wlliamson, Capt. George Gill, first mate Eddy Griffith, friend Kole Melancon, Balters, and Dennis Bennett, who knows a bit about catching big tuna. Bennett had a hand in Rick Whitley’s 2017 catch of an 827-pound bluefin, the current Florida record. (The Flat Dangerous fish was fought by multiple anglers, disqualifying it from eligibility. The International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record bluefin is 1,496 pounds, caught by Ken Fraser in Nova Scotia in 1979.)

Fish Aggregating Devices Produce Fish of a Lifetime

Capt. Gill took the boat out to the Capt. Kelly Windes FAD Buoy Network, a string of fish aggregating devices installed in 2020 60 miles off the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area. The group began looking for blue marlin in about 2,000 feet of water at about 8:30 a.m. They caught small yellowfin, skipjack, and blackfin tuna, which went into the boat’s tuna tubes to stay frisky for the real fishing.

Soon Bennett, on the bridge with the captain, noticed marks on the sonar similar to those he saw back in 2017. It was time to get a bait in the water. “It gets maybe 30 yards behind the boat and probably about 20 feet under water, and I just see this huge flash in the water,” Balters said. But they barely had the first angler sat in the chair when the first fish was gone, hook and all.

The group swapped in another Shimano Tiagra 80 Wide reel and continued patrolling the FAD. Another mark, another bite, and then this fish too was gone. And then another. The anglers switched to a Shimano Talica 50 with fresh mono, caught another small tuna, and got a bite with an explosive rise in shallow water. But 30 minutes into that fight, “this one just pulled the hook. Nothing we could do on that one,” Balters said. He began to worry aloud: “We missed our shot. We had three hookups. That’s all God’s giving us.”

They were down to one blackfin tuna, and it wasn’t all that frisky after several hours in the tuna tube. The crew stripped one of the Tiagras and re-spooled with fresh line. Eventually, there was yet another mark in the fish-rich water around the FAD. In went the bait.

“It just kind of laid sideways,” Balters said. “I’m like, ‘Oh man, we’re not gonna get a bite.’” And soon after came a strike that “looked like someone dropped a car in the water.” This was the big one. “We’re having to follow him a little bit. He goes straight down and strips us of all the mono we had just put on and goes into our braided backing.”

Perhaps an hour into the fight, the fish became entangled and died. Then began several hard hours of pulling the dead weight to the boat. The crew had to bend its fins flat along its body to get it to fit through the tuna door.

They got back to Destin after 9, welcomed by a small crowd of well-wishers, and got the triple eights on the scale at Boshamps Seafood and Oyster Bar. They saved the filleting for the morning.

“I was sore the next day for sure,” Balters said. “When it was all said and done, it was four huge tubs of just pure meat. It all went quickly, but probably all of Destin got some.”

The post Massive Bluefin Caught in Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

How can you distinguish dyed-in-the-scales tarpon fanatics from other anglers? It’s easy. Broach topics like sports, politics, religion or business, and all you’ll get is a wan smile and an appeasing head nod. Mention tarpon, however, and it’s like plugging in the Christmas tree lights — eyes go ablaze and hearts go aflutter.

What accounts for this love of fishing for Megalops atlanticus, better known as tarpon, silver kings and poons? They’re big, they’re powerful and they’re beautiful. And, once the hook is set, the fight is like a choreographed scene replete with hole-in-the-ocean jumps and hold-onto-your-rod-for-dear-life runs.

A great aspect of Florida tarpon fishing is that, depending on the chosen method, even a rookie can land a 100-plus-pounder. That’s most often accomplished by fishing live bait on a circle hook in a channel where poons aggregate. However, the necessary skill level escalates exponentially when sight-fishing for silver kings. That scenario puts an angler on the bow of a skiff in shallow water, wielding the weaponry of light tackle or fly gear.

The best Florida tarpon-fishing seasons vary from one area of the state to another, by habitat and size of fish, and time of day (day vs night). The bottom line is that you can find/catch tarpon somewhere in Florida every month of the year.

Many passionate tarpon tamers progress from the bait-soaking stage to sight-fishing. No matter one’s style preference, however, Florida tops all states in presenting year-round opportunities for catching tarpon.

How to Catch Tarpon

Before the advent of circle hooks, it was difficult to master the timing needed to set the hook on a tarpon. Their bony mouths coupled with a penchant for quickly dispelling hooks with frantic jumps and furious head shakes usually left anglers with short-lived thrills. Circle hooks changed all that.

Live baits such as mullet, horse shrimp, pinfish, pilchards and crabs on a circle hook often seduce hungry poons. Freeline the offering so it floats with the current or tie the line several feet above the bait to a balloon that breaks away when a strike occurs. Cut baits weighted to lay on the bottom also get their measure of strikes, as tarpon are avid scavengers.

When you get a hit, remove slack and let the circle hook do its job as designed by turning and lodging into the corner of the fish’s jaw. Tarpon average 30 to 80 pounds, but big mommas and poppas can run double those sizes and more. Unless you’re deft at quickly landing a big fish on light tackle, go with medium to heavy spin or conventional gear and a sturdy measure of fluorocarbon leader. Avoid overly long battles if possible, as these often render tarpon too tired to escape the mighty maws of hammerheads or bull sharks. Catching tarpon on lures is big fun, especially fish less than 100 pounds, with sturdy saltwater hooks.

They will hit just about anything worked slowly with a bit of flash and color emulating minnows. Top-water, sinking and diving lures do well — go with single hooks rather than trebles to reduce jaw damage.

Once a tarpon is hooked, keep the pressure on when the fish runs. Follow if in a boat; if fishing from shore or a pier, you’d better have a large-arbor reel with plenty of line or you’ll be spooled.

When the poon stops running, pump-and-wind like a metronome on speed. At the first sight of the fish going airborne, “bow to the king” by pointing your rod at the fish and leaning toward it to create line slack. If a big fish jumps and lands away from you, a taut line often breaks.

Look for signs of tarpon such as rolling fish at the surface to gulp air or swirling at the water’s surface caused by their tails. Chumming by stunning live baits (squeeze the heads or bounce them off an outboard engine’s cowling) will quickly reveal if you’re amid poons or instead need to reposition. The following tarpon fishing locations are but a few of the many silver king kingdoms around Florida, but are among the best-known.

Tarpon Fishing in the Florida Keys

Almost all line-class and fly-tippet world records for tarpon caught in U.S. waters come from the Florida Keys (usually referred to simply as the Keys). These 43 islands connected by 42 bridges extend over 100 miles southwest of Miami from Key Largo to Key West. The Keys form a separation between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, including the shallow estuary of Florida Bay.

Flushed and nourished daily by ocean and Gulf tidal currents, the reefs, channels, canals, bridges and flats host a food chain from invertebrates to shellfish to baitfish. This abundance makes for an expansive game fish restaurant, and diners like tarpon don’t need to make reservations. While some poons are residential in nature and remain permanent locals, studies reveal that in the spring and fall, large schools of tarpon follow migrating mullet swimming up and down both Florida’s coasts and in and around the Keys.

If you like to play bridge, you can pick up tarpon in the Upper Keys at Bridge #2, Bridge #5, Long Key Bridge and Seven Mile Bridge. Florida Bay is a prime area, particularly the deeper moats around some of the small keys and in channels bisecting the myriad mud and grass flats. The Atlantic and Gulf “strips” — the edges of flats around Islamorada, Marathon and Key West — are renowned tarpon sites. Same goes for Key West Harbor.

Tarpon Fishing in Miami

Deep cuts with a lot of moving water excite tarpon populations off Miami and around Biscayne Bay. The most prolific haunt for tarpon year after year is Government Cut. It’s the manmade channel with a U.S. Coast Guard station on one side and, on the other, Miami’s port that features a slew of cruise and cargo ships. This wide and deep cut divides Miami Beach from Fisher Island, with a jetty at the mouth.

Late afternoons and evenings, with a moving tide, make for frequent tarpon encounters and a respite from the tropical sun. Full moons in April, May and June are notorious for tarpon action. If relegated to one choice of baits, go with a silver-dollar-size blue crab. If oversize live shrimp are available, try those second. It’s nice, though, to have a complement of offerings besides crabs, such as fresh-cut bait or diving/noisy lures.

Mullet migrate along the beaches during the fall, making for good shore fishing near Haulover Inlet. Bear Cut is known to hold poons, especially those loitering between Biscayne Bay and Key Largo.

Tarpon Fishing in Boca Grande

Calling itself the “Tarpon Capital of the World,” Boca Grande Pass’s tarpon action can become so frenzied at times with so many simultaneous hook-ups that it becomes quite a spectacle just watching skiffs winding in and around each other to avoid breakoffs.

Boca Grande Pass divides the southern end of Gasparilla Island and the northern portion of Cayo Costa. The pass is southwest of the outflow of Charlotte Harbor, which itself is a repository of spawning tarpon from spring to October. Boca Grande Pass is deep, ranging from just over 30 feet to nearly 70 feet.

From early April through July, schools of tarpon sometimes numbering in the hundreds migrate through the pass. Because of the swiftness of the current here, the drill is to drift the pass rather than anchor. Baits, lures (particularly tipped jigs) and flies of all types do well. Due to the large congregations of tarpon often present, fishing tournaments are popular, and a day’s fishing for an angler often results in multiple poon encounters.

I once battled a silver king in the 80-pound range on fly during a May visit, with scores of other skiffs present. Experienced guides were artful in averting tangles, but a few neophytes didn’t move their skiffs out of the way in time and a prop eventually dashed my clash. It didn’t make me very happy, but soon enough another battle ensued successfully.

Tarpon Fishing in Tampa Bay

Satellite tagging has revealed that tarpon migrate from as far as Mexico, following the Gulf coast to the Florida Keys and up the state’s Atlantic coast. At various times that brings silver kings off Tampa Bay, providing a number of haunts for anglers to check out.

One of the prime locations is Egmont Channel just north of Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay. It’s an ultra-deep channel by Florida standards, with depths exceeding 80 feet in some spots. An outgoing tide often flushes huge numbers of crabs from the bay through the channel and out into the Gulf. Tarpon know it well, and so do savvy anglers.

Drift with the tide and free-line a circle-hooked crab amid the fray. It’s some of the best tarpon fishing in the world when the action gets hot.

Other promising locations to pounce on poons include John’s Pass, Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Anna Maria Island, Fort De Soto Park, and beaches from Longboat Key to Pass-A-Grille. Dependable baits include menhaden, greenbacks (aka whitebaits), crabs and pinfish. If bait is scarce, cast deep-diving, shiny-and-noisy single-hook plugs.

The post Best Tarpon Fishing In Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Three anglers were standing in neck-deep water off a beach on the Florida panhandle, being circled by a 12-foot shark—the kind of shark that makes its living attacking swordfish, tuna, and other sharks. It was the next-to-last moment in a beach-fishing adventure none of them will forget, and it ended safely for all of them, including the shark.

On November 12, Travis Lucas and friends Joshua Smith and Ben Brandner caught and released a very large shortfin mako shark from the beach. It’s exceedingly rare to catch a mako from shore; they prefer deep water and the larger prey that live there. This was the first confirmed shore-caught mako at Cape San Blas, about an hour east of Panama City. The shark was released per the rules; harvesting Atlantic mako sharks has been prohibited since 2022 due to overfishing.

Lucas, Smith, and Brandner never expected to catch a mako, let alone one that’s about as big as they get. “We usually just target big species, like bull sharks,” Lucas recalled. A week earlier, they had caught a 12-foot dusky shark and a 13-foot great hammerhead.

The Hometown Sharkers Score Big

The group, “Hometown Sharkers” on their social media, specialize in overnight beach outings.
Lucas was set up with an Okuma Makaira 130 reel spooled with 200-pound Reaction Tackle braid, a 300-pound mono top shot, and a homemade 800-pound leader on a 7-foot Rainshadow rod. The 24/0 circle hook was baited with a chunk of a blacktip shark caught earlier in the day.

Lucas had dropped the bait from a kayak about 1,000 yards offshore at sunset and paddled back to camp. During the evening, “we ended up catching a smaller bull shark on another rod,” he said. After that, it was a calm, cool night on a quiet beach—until it wasn’t.

“We had actually dozed off,” Lucas said. “I woke up to the 130 screaming.” He got into his harness and immediately knew the fish was heavy, perhaps a tiger shark. “It started pulling pretty significant drag pretty effortlessly,” he said.

Ten minutes in, the fish “woke up” and began leaping in the moonlight, “pretty much back-to-back for three or four minutes in one position, and then again in the next,” Lucas said. Eventually, the acrobatics ended. The fish ran toward shore a couple of times, which made life easier for Lucas, and the fight was over in 35 minutes.

As the fish neared the beach, the anglers still didn’t know what they had caught. Maybe a hammerhead, they thought. When it reached the wash, they thought it may have been a great white. When they finally got a light on it, “there was a lot of screaming,” Lucas recalled.

Team Release

“Releasing that fish was one of the most memorable situations I’ve had,” he said. “We realized it was a mako. Josh runs out with the tail rope. I come out with bolt cutters and the hook remover. We get out there, assess the situation, get it unhooked, get the leader off of it. It was about 49 degrees, it was cold.”

Lucas’s wife, Flower, and the other guys’ girlfriends watched and held flashlights from the beach. The group began moving the mako to deeper water to ease its release. “So it’s pitch black outside. We get out past the sandbar, so we know she can swim off. She swims out 10 or 15 feet and comes back at us. She made three full circles around us before thrashing at the surface and then swimming off. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

The group saw for themselves why makos are sometimes confused with, blue sharks. “They are in every sense of the word ‘blue sharks’,” Lucas said. “When the light hits them they’ll go from deep purple to blue, and it’s a color you’d never expect to see from an animal. It almost seems like it’s a holographic. They’re pretty wild looking. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime fish.”

The post Massive Mako Caught on Florida Beach appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

You’ll find anglers on bridges and beaches, bait shops open long before dawn, big tackle stores that carry enough gear to outfit a fleet of sport-fishers, and a line-up of fishing tournaments year-round. Numbers tell the story, too.

Jacksonville has the highest rate, per capita, of fishing license holders of the four biggest Florida metropolitan areas. That beats Tampa-St. Pete, Orlando, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale. Jacksonville takes the crown for the hardest-fishing big city in Florida.

The region’s rivers, maze-like marshes, bays, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), jetties, beaches, and offshore grounds form a network of waters unlike any other in Florida. Two spring scenarios to target are shallow-water redfish and trout, and offshore, schools of migrating dolphin swarming at the Ledge.

Catch Seatrout and Redfish in Jacksonville

Big tides breathe life into Jacksonville’s extensive marsh-and-creek system.

“We have a 5-foot tidal swing, on average, every 6 hours, so the locations to fish are constantly changing,” says Capt. Buzz Brannon, who’s guided anglers in Jacksonville for more than two decades.  He runs an 18-foot Beavertail Vengeance in the shallows, stalking reds, trout, flounder, and other species on spin and fly. One of his favorite bites is for “hillbilly bonefish,” what some folks call redfish when they get them in the grass on big tides, he says.

For seatrout, Brannon likes dusk and dawn, low-light times. In the spring, when the finger mullet show up, both trout and redfish take topwater lures. “Anything with a hard edge along the St. Johns will be holding mullet,” he says.

Fishing the city’s infrastructure — bridges, docks, seawalls, and industrial installations along the water (where legally accessible) — produces a variety of species. Both natural and manmade habitats hold good fish in Jacksonville, one of the city’s many surprises for visiting anglers.

It’s been the best year of redfishing Brannon has seen for quite some time. In 2012, an increase in the redfish bag limit to 2 fish per person took a toll on the redfish. In September 2022, the bag limit was lowered back to one redfish per person, and since then, the fishing has been steadily improving, Brannon says.

The nourishment of those rich waters flowing in the St. Johns generates and draws abundant life to the nearshore and offshore waters, including a pelagic fishery that’s been a standout hotspot in recent years— the Ledge.

Big Dolphin off Jacksonville

About 55 to 65 miles off Jacksonville, depending on the marina’s location, the continental shelf slopes down from 120-foot depths and then drops off to 175 feet deep — the Ledge. The Gulf Stream runs nearby, and when its warm waters or any of its warm eddies circulate over the Ledge’s structure, prey, and predators get drawn into those dynamic flows. In winter, these waters hold good numbers of big wahoo, ranging up to 70 and 100 pounds, often caught high-speed trolling and more recently, Capt. Tim Altman of Hoodoo Charters says, by live-baiting.

“Guys are having incredible days for wahoo at the Ledge slow-trolling live baits like blue runners and bonito,” says Altman, a multiple-time wahoo tournament winner and a fanatic for those fish.

Capt. Altman runs 11-hour charter trips to the Ledge for pelagics including wahoo and dolphin aboard his Saltwater Challenge, a 36-foot Contender with triple Mercurys. In April, the game switches to catching big dolphin.

“We’ve crushed it the last few years for big dolphin at the Ledge, lots of them,” he says. “We’ll start going out for them between April 12 and 15, and the biggest fish are early in the year. We get a good month and a half of solid dolphin fishing.”

His good news about dolphin fishing may surprise people who’ve heard about a lack of fish in recent years around South Florida and the Keys.

“I’m aware that South Florida has seen a real decline in their dolphin fishing, especially around Key West, Marathon, and Miami. I can’t explain the difference in Northeast and South Florida fishing,” Altman says. “The old-school guys say the migratory pattern for yellowfin tuna has changed, so maybe that’s the case with dolphin, too, or maybe the currents have changed.”

Dolphin at the Ledge

Altman and his crew leave his Amelia Island marina at 5 a.m. and head out to the Ledge for an 11-hour trip. He’ll check RipCharts on his phone and screenshot the image of the temperature breaks at the Ledge. On his Simrad he also has SirrusXM weather for sea surface temperature readings offshore. He’s looking for temperature breaks with ocean water temps 76 degrees and warmer, weed lines, and edges.

“During dolphin season, as we get near the Ledge, I’ll put out small Nomads or a horse ballyhoo skirted with an Ilander on a planer with wire to target wahoo. Beyond the Ledge, we’ll run everything on the surface.

“Some days skirted stuff works, but I don’t believe there’s anything more effective for dolphin than a properly rigged, chin-weighted, split-bill ballyhoo,” he says. “When you see that big dolphin coming, or if you get a hit, you free spool it for 15 to 25 seconds, and I’m telling you that works.”

The dolphin come through in packs, and between times Altman and crew can also bottom fish for triggers, snapper, grouper, or whatever’s in season. They’ll likely have sardines in the livewell and they’ll chum dolphin by their boat with cuttlefish or squid, keeping a lookout, ready to throw a live bait to any big fish coming to the boat.

“You’ve got to be ready for those big fish. You’ll have a bunch of schoolies, the boat’s kicked out of gear and you’re live-baiting. The fish get all around you. Then you’ll see the dolphin scatter and that’s indicative of a shark or a big dolphin coming in to tear them up. I’ll tell you it’s incredible when you see that big dolphin coming through the water to you. Man, that’s fun.”

Jacksonville Florida Fishing Captains

• Capt. Tim Altman, Hoodoo Charters, (904) 859-6314, www.hoodoocharters.com
• Capt. Buzz Brannon, Northeast Florida Angling, (904) 570-7878, www.northeastfloridaangling.com

Bait Stores

•             B & M Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 249-3933
•             Brown’s Creek Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 757-1600
•             FishBites Trading Post, St. Augustine, (904) 217-8012

Note: Special thanks to the FWC and its licensing department for the analysis of its data on fishing license holders by municipality across the entire state of Florida.

The post The Hardest-Fishing City in Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

I watched a National Geographic documentary recently on the African savanna, highlighting the typical predator-prey encounters that the landscape is famous for. A wildebeest was at a watering hole and, predictably, its day was ruined by a pack of gnarly hyenas. I always felt sorry for the big beasts as they tried to fend off attacks from every quadrant. Sometimes the beasts get away, but many at least suffer wounds that eventually finish them off.

Which reminds me of the current state of Florida waterways, besieged by repeated thrashings from a pack of hyenas, in the form of ancient and inadequate sewer infrastructure, failing septic systems close to the water, heavy residential and corporate agriculture fertilizer runoff, stormwater runoff, freshwater herbicides and more. That’s a formidable, destructive pack of attackers.

And it’s all happening at once. The causes and consequences have been relatively ignored for years, and if these attacks do not stir panic in the hearts of Floridians who fish, boat, love the water, or care about their health — maybe they’re not paying attention.

The Real Culprit

Lack of political will and urgency — plus inadequate funding — is at the heart of the failures. It’s too easy to chalk it up to too many new residents coming in or too many tourists. The reality is Florida’s office-holders at every level, and the agencies they oversee, are stuck in a time warp. They seem to think you can still use 1950s technology and approaches that worked for a 1950s population, and somehow protect the resource that is suffering much greater pressure today.

Not to mention that development permitting is way too easy in the Sunshine State. If you fish in Florida, you’ve likely seen the bumper sticker that reads “Leaving Florida? Take a developer with you.” That attitude likely sprung from the over-development of the woods, freshwater springs, lakes and salt waters that long-time Floridians consider “True Florida.” And True Florida is rapidly disappearing.

Sewer, Septic and Stormwater Pollution

The Everglades water crisis — and efforts to restore the natural system — is the center of attention (even internationally) for good reason. But that’s just one part of the massive Florida water problem — local point-source pollution throughout Florida is worsening rapidly.

Florida’s sewage infrastructure is ancient (as old as 80 years) and simply inadequate in places, where development is off the chain and natural habitat loss is shocking. Aside from age, performance of sewers is inhibited by Florida’s heavy rain, and of course, tropical storms. The regular rainfall and common deluges basically guarantee major spills. Sewage lift stations without generators shut down. Untreated sewage backs up and overflows, usually through simple manhole covers. It all ends up in our favorite waterways where we swim, fish and boat. Many expect rising sea level to exacerbate this problem.

Heavy and repeated nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) loading from septic leeching and large-scale sewage system spills fuel the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that cloud both fresh and coastal salt waters, shutting out sunlight that is vital to seagrass health. And all of Florida’s marine fish and other organisms depend on seagrass, and to a lesser extent, oysters and other shellfish. Not to mention sky-rocketing fecal bacteria levels that make people ill, and often prompt no-contact health warnings on the water.

Perfect examples of nutrient hotspots on the Atlantic coast include the upper St. John’s River, the entire 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon, the St. Lucie estuary, Lake Worth Lagoon, and Broward and Dade county’s heavily urbanized waterways. On the Gulf coast, the west central region accounted for over half of all spills from 2009 to 2020. Southwest Florida accounted for over 15 percent. In contrast, the Space Coast on the Atlantic side accounted for 25 percent of all sewage spills. Not surprisingly, the heaviest population density regions fared the worst.

Sewage spills get the most media attention, and are more shocking to see than the continuous polluting inflows of stormwater. Florida’s copious annual rainfall used to seep into the ground surface and into Florida’s “honeycomb” aquifer. Now, rooftops, streets, parking lots and other impervious, developed surfaces prevent much of this. There is instead a quick shunting of this rainfall, and the pollutants it picks up, directly into lakes, rivers and coastal bays, in most cases, without any degree of treatment.

Everglades Restoration Sputters Along

Long before Florida saw today’s rampant development and sprawl, early settlers envisioned making a “worthless swamp” a money-making landscape. They blindly drained the wetlands of South Florida which was ruinous for the natural water flow that once trickled over land and in the porous ground year-round from today’s Orlando region to Florida Bay in Everglades National Park. Three major roadblocks interrupted the natural flow of the River of Grass:

• 1) Herbert Hoover Dike (which today is essentially a hardened dam)
• 2 and 3) Alligator Alley and Tamiami Trail cross-state highways that intersect the southern Everglades

The highways greatly impede the wet season bounty of fresh water which naturally spilled over the southern rim of the Lake Okeechobee. In time, the lands were drained by canals to accommodate corporate agricultural operations, mainly sugar growing and some row crops which needed drier fields in summer and fall, and ample irrigation during winter drought.

In the 1950s, the agriculture industry grew with dairy farms, cattle ranches and citrus groves. Unfiltered and unmonitored, nutrient runoff from these farms caused eutrophication of Lake Okeechobee. Increased phosphorus levels fed cyanobacterial blooms, also known as blue-green algae, on Lake Okeechobee. The harmful blooms and sediments flowed unimpeded to outlet valves such as the St. Lucie River to the Atlantic and the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. Florida basically destroyed three estuaries, and the dependent coastal economies, to support an agriculture industry that belongs elsewhere. (Note: Florida sugar is subsidized.)

The big hope in 2000 was the signing of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) by the Clinton administration, a complex suite of 65 water projects designed to right the Everglades ship, to basically restore the natural hydrology of the vast wetland. It was to take 20 years, with costs shared by the federal government and the State of Florida.

CERP is in year 24 with less than 10 percent of the work completed. A vast reservoir and stormwater treatment area (STA) is finally under construction south of Lake Okeechobee. It will supposedly take 20 percent of the polluted water from Lake Okeechobee that currently trashes the coastal rivers. Its size was shrunk by over 70 percent during land-acquisition negotiations — the state of Florida failed to find enough willing landowners to sell for the project footprint. The water-holding area might be completed and operational by 2035 if there’s enough money allocated in each budget year.

Take Real Action

Too many Floridians are not especially enamored with the outdoors, and too many seasonal visitors seem to accept the declining natural resources because, well, at least it’s not snowing outside. All anglers and outdoorsmen should engage with those who are paid by state and federal taxes to fix this mess.

Too few realize they can speak their displeasure directly to Florida’s branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state’s handful of water management districts (St. Johns, Southwest and South Florida), the governor, senators and representatives, county commissioners, mayors — all of them. You can even take part with public comment on those monthly water district meetings. Hate to say it, but anglers are too often missing from the discourse. Same goes for the recreational fishing tackle companies, boat-makers and tourism businesses who stand to lose their shirts if this continues.

Responsibility Starts at Home

In the case of point-source pollution, you can change a few things you might be doing at home. Do you fertilize your yard and landscape? Consider stopping altogether, or at the least, choose low-nutrient products. Slow release, too. And never apply fertilizer, herbicides and fungicides during the wet season. It all ends up in the storm drains and public waterways. Floridians are increasingly eliminating turf grass, replacing it with native ground covers and plants. It’s a great move to make.

Don’t blow turf grass clippings onto streets where they end up washing into storm with the next heavy rain. They decompose and add phosphorus to lakes and streams, plus cause algal blooms in summer.

If you live where there’s sewage infrastructure, and you still have a septic tank, consider hooking up to sewer. There are cost help programs in some municipalities and communities. Conversion to sewage is finally gaining traction. Be part of the solution. At the least, keep your septic system in good working order.

Speaking of flushing, please never dispose of outdated or extra pharmaceuticals that your doctor prescribed. Researchers are finding massive amounts of human drugs in our fish and other wildlife. Some of the compounds do enter the waterways through human urine, but flushing old pills can and should be stopped.

About the Author: Mike Conner is a lifelong Florida fisherman, specializing in fly and light tackle angling. He has worked as a guide in South Florida, as a staff editor at magazines such as Florida Sportsman and Shallow Water Angler, and as executive director of the Indian Riverkeeper.

The post How Florida’s Water Woes Affect Anglers appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

For decades, the cobia migration along the Florida Panhandle in the spring brought Chris Wagner, of Fort Walton Beach, the most incredible fishing of his life. “Up in the tower of our Hatteras, the wind at our backs, the sun in my eyes, spotting those fish, that’s what I loved,” he said. “When I saw one, it was like an electrical shock went through my body.”

Wagner, a retired HVAC contractor, had those spring days for more than 30 years. He started fishing for cobia in 1989, and he got his own boat in ’90. “All through the ‘90s we had double-digit sightings, days when we saw 60 to 70 fish,” Wagner told me recently. “From ’97 through the early 2000s we’d get 100-pounders, routinely.”

Tournaments grew big, big cash and big crowds. Wagner and his team took first place in many of them. Some they won repeatedly. Now it’s all gone. The cobia are not dependable. And the big tournaments stopped. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “Last year we went out a few times. Some days we didn’t even see a fish. We kept one cobia all season.”

Anglers started seeing a slowdown in cobia numbers about 10 years ago, in 2013 and ’14.

“To me,” Wagner says, “it boils down to one thing: overfishing. I’m as guilty as anybody, too. It’s not one person’s fault. I got to the point where I felt like whatever needs to be done to bring them back should be done. Regulations can help. I still wish that they would go for a Gulf-wide closure on cobia,” he says. “Any regulation changes have to be Gulf-wide.”

Cobia Regulations Reconsidered

“We first heard about a potential problem in 2016 or 2017,” says Emily Muehlstein, Public Information Officer for the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. “Commenters from the Panhandle region of Florida and from Texas expressed concern about cobia’s decline. Simultaneously folks in Louisiana and South Florida indicated that the stock was doing fine.

“Then we received a surge in comments expressing concern for cobia starting in 2018 when we were working on Framework Amendment 7, which increased the Gulf cobia size limit to 36 inches fork length,” Muehlstein said.

In 2022, the Gulf Council reduced the annual catch limit for cobia of 4,500,000 pounds down to 2,600,000 for 2023—a sizeable reduction. The Council also reduced the bag and vessel limit to one cobia per person, two per vessel. The next Gulf-wide stock assessment is scheduled for 2025. In the interim, Muehlstein said, the Council has embarked on efforts to learn more from fishing communities about how the fisheries for cobia and other coastal migratory pelagics have changed in recent years in hopes of informing proactive management decisions.

Where Did the Cobia Go?

If the biggest cobia in the Gulf were fished out of the stock, the species would need time and protection to recover. Other factors, however, might also be at play. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 is sometimes cited, the suggestion being that its pollutants destroyed cobia’s spawn. Changing sea surface temperatures might also have a role.

Anglers like Wagner who observe their regional waters over decades point out another possible factor—cyclical shifts in migration patterns of pelagic and coastal pelagic species. Wagner, and other anglers on the Gulf and the Atlantic coasts, say that while Panhandle cobia have declined, catches along certain Atlantic coast locations have increased.

“In the last 5 to 10 years, they’ve actually crushed them up in North Carolina,” Wagner says. “We know that Gulf cobia go up the East Coast. Some of the fish that we’ve tagged along the Panhandle have shown up in the Chesapeake Bay.”

A Cobia Mystery

Read Hendon is Oceanic and Coastal Pelagics Branch Chief at the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center. For years, Hendon conducted tagging studies on cobia with Jim Franks at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi. Among other insights, their work suggested that there might be a more western route of seasonal migration for cobia in the Gulf and that some cobia overwintered around deep oil rigs in the north-central Gulf, but he has not seen studies that confirm a shift in migration patterns.

“Based on the most recent stock assessment and lack of any direct research into distributional shifts or changes in migratory patterns,” Hendon says, “the absence is more of a mystery from a scientific perspective at this time.”

Chris Wagner said the idea that they’re still in the Gulf has occurred to him. “If we found out that they were down deeper, out farther, and still going by the Panhandle, I could live with that. But if the cobia returned and I got to catch them with my grandkids, that would make me happy.”

The post What Happened to Florida’s Panhandle Cobia? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Admittedly, Capt. Brandon Storin first considered it an annoyance, but he soon realized that he had dialed in a cool Florida Keys fishery that goes largely unnoticed.

“During the time when we catch bridge tarpon in spring, sometimes we’d run into some bycatch of cubera snapper,” Storin said. “I think they’re chummed up because of all the people tarpon fishing; there’s a lot of scent in the water. It’s mostly just the scent of the baits. Some people chum for tarpon (with cut bait), but I don’t because it brings too many unwanted species like nurse sharks.”

Considered the most brutal of the snapper clan, the hard-fighting cubera is a straight-up string stretcher. As Storin notes, these aren’t the giant spawners that anglers catch at night over deep-water reefs with legal-size lobster as bait, but the 15- to 20-pounders common at Keys bridges will still give you all the fight you want.

How to Target Cubera Snapper in the Florida Keys

If you’re game to actually target these cuberas near the bridges, Storin offers a few tips.

When: April-May is prime time, but the small to midsize cuberas hang around the bridges throughout much of the year. Colder weather will slow the bite when big winds muddy the water; during these conditions don’t waste your time.

Storin said he’s caught cuberas on incoming and outgoing water, but the fish seem most aggressive at the change of the tide. The fish can feed much easier during slower water compared to when the tide is screaming — ideal conditions are when that heavy bridge current slacks up and starts moving again.

“They’re definitely more nocturnal, so the night action is great, but also, the first and last hour of the day can be good,” Storin said. “If you’re fishing for them during the day, I’d bet that you wouldn’t run into many of them during the full moon.”

Where: Storin does most of his tarpon guiding around Islamorada’s Channel 2 and Channel 5 bridges, and the Long Key area. Most of Florida Keys’ major bridges will attract cuberas.

How: Based on his tarpon fishing thefts, Storin can attest that cubera snapper like a big deboned mullet on a fish-finder rig or pinfish drifted near pilings. If he’s targeting cubera specifically, Storin would fish a smaller deboned mullet or a live pinfish on the bottom.

“I’d definitely fish the baits close to the pilings and close to the bottom,” Storin said. “You’ll want to make an upcurrent presentation so the scent will come down to where the cuberas are.”

Tackle: A 7-foot medium-heavy spinning rod with a 6500 series reel carrying 65-pound braid will handle most bridge cuberas, along with the abundant mutton snapper. Storin uses 60-pound fluorocarbon leader for tarpon, but he’ll drop to 40 for the wary snapper.

Cubers Snapper Fishing Tips

Land-Based: For anglers perched on Keys fishing platforms like the popular pedestrian-friendly Channel 2 and Channel 5 structures, a chum bag and a jumbo live shrimp can make big things happen.

What to Expect: Storin says bait size will determine how long an angler should wait to set the hook. A hefty meal might require a little chomping, but these fish are super aggressive, so they’ll snatch up a smaller offering and try to yank the rod out of your hand.

“If you feel them picking it up and turning the bait in their mouth, give them a few seconds,” Storin said, “but once they get a good bite, they’ll run hard. If you feel them batting at it, open the bail open to let them get it. I use the Owner Mutu circle hooks, so once they get the bait, I just let them come tight. Then you just have to (tighten) the drag and handle that run.”

The post Florida Keys Bridge Monsters appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

New regulations for snook fishing in Florida, effective January 1, 2024, establish nine snook management zones around the state along with seasons and slot limits for each zone. The new zones, like those established by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) for redfish in 2022, allow for a more regionalized and responsive approach to managing snook fishing in Florida’s waters, FWC officials say.

“These regions and regulations are part of our holistic management approach for Florida’s most popular inshore fisheries,” said Emily Abellera, FWC’s Public Information Specialist. “Through this approach, seven metrics are used to evaluate the snook fishery by region, which adds a holistic perspective to management decisions and allows our fisheries managers to be more responsive to regional concerns.”

Those considerations for management of snook include fishing pressure, relative abundance, habitat, stakeholder feedback, spawning potential ratio, air temperature, and harmful algal blooms in local waters. Assessments of these factors will be registered in the annual review of the fishery, which is available for each zone on the FWC’s website.

These localized annual reviews contain vital information about snook in each management zone in a brief, condensed, and graphic format. If an angler wants to know more about a local region’s fishery — possibly their home waters — these reviews are a terrific place to learn. They’re also available for redfish.

The FWC’s approach reflects the increasingly important role of habitat quality in fisheries management in contrast to the overwhelming importance of population assessments that dominated management policy in past years.

“It’s good to see FWC is managing snook through specific regions,” said Giles Murphy, owner of Stuart Angler Bait and Tackle in Martin County. His local waters of the southern Indian River Lagoon are known to produce some of Florida’s biggest snook. “In our area, the seagrass is extremely vital in our ecosystem, and it’s been dying off for 20 years. Now it’s completely gone. The redfish and seatrout fishing has suffered because of it. The snook can adapt and live through it, but that might not last forever with development increasing faster every year,” Murphy said.

The new zones will provide geographic boundaries for any urgent regulation changes caused by local conditions. In 2018, snook and redfish were declared catch-and-release only along parts of the west coast due to red tide. Extreme cold weather has also caused emergency closures to snook seasons in parts of Florida in the past.

Years ago, Ron Taylor, the snook researcher who helped guide the FWC’s snook management for decades, told me that management aimed to produce consistent numbers of all size classes of snook including slot-sized fish for anglers to keep and over-slot, trophy fish that anglers can brag about.

“Those goals haven’t changed,” Abellera, of the FWC, assured me recently. “What’s new with the holistic regional management approach is that we are judging whether our regulations are meeting those goals using more metrics, and we’re evaluating our success on a smaller scale that better reflects the anglers’ experiences,” she said.

At this time, the main change to last year’s regulations in the new management zones affect two areas on the Gulf Coast.

“For the Charlotte Harbor and Southwest snook management regions, the summer closure now includes the month of September,” said Abellera. “This is one month longer than the other Gulf Coast management regions. Extending the summer season closure provides additional protection for snook during a portion of their spawning period that overlaps with the typical occurrence of red tide in these regions.”

Snook season opens Feb. 1 in the three east coast zones (Southeast, Indian River Lagoon and Northeast) and snook season opens March 1 in the rest of Florida’s zones. Slot and catch limits remain the same. The slot limit is currently 28 to 33 inches across the state, except for the three east coast zones that have a limit of 32 inches. Check the FWC website to see descriptions of the nine zones.

The post New Florida Snook Zones in Effect appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Three years ago, when my wife and I bought a condo a long baseball throw from the white sand of the Florida Panhandle, I knew as much about surf fishing as a grandmother from Appalachia. I had done it a few times in my fishing career, but always as a tag-along with others who had more experience. They did the hard work of finding areas that provided a good chance for success.

To the neophyte, the surf is the surf. It’s just endless miles of waves crashing on an indistinct shoreline, and the fish could be absolutely anywhere. Anglers with little or no experience might tote a rod to the water’s edge and walk the shoreline, making more casts than a desperate guy at a singles’ bar, just hoping for the best.

But my experience with other methods of fishing told me that wouldn’t be the most efficient technique. Ironically, what helped develop my strategy for effective surf-fishing was drift-fishing in water with the salt content of a glass of milk. Multiple times every year, whenever South Louisiana goes a couple weeks without any measurable rainfall, I tag along with Independence resident Joe Lavigne, 74, who skulls a thin-metal flat boat down a local river. 

A lifetime of experience has taught Lavigne where fish hold in moving water, and on every trip, he calls his shot multiple times, accurately predicting which casts will produce bites from pugnacious spotted bass. I may never be as skilled as him, but still, I’ve learned a lot in two decades of fishing with Lavigne. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying fishy areas — where troughs are immediately adjacent to shallow water.

Figuring the same axiom had to hold true in the surf, I set out early in the morning after the first night at our new condo, intent on reading the water to determine where the anomalies existed. I imagined I’d return with a stringer of fish slung across my back, and hail my wife with a hearty “Good Morning,” just as she was taking her first sip of coffee.

But as Mike Tyson famously quipped, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. What socked me in the jaw that morning was the fact that, in the low light, I couldn’t tell where the bars were. An experienced surf angler could have probably seen subtle differences in how the waves were breaking, but to me, they looked entirely random.

So I just walked the beach making casts, and lucked into one undersized redfish. No one likes failure when fishing, but I absolutely despise it. It gnaws at me and lives at the forefront of my mind until I’m able to turn myself from a zero to a hero. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to wait long for that to happen.

To me, the beach is just a cool place to stand while you’re fishing, but my wife would spend all day every day there if she could. So in the interest of marital harmony, I hauled some beach chairs and an umbrella to the sand under a high midday sun, intent to put the misery of my early morning failure behind me.

And that’s when I found what I had been looking for. The wind was light and blowing offshore, which allowed any sediment in the water to settle out, and the tide had fallen since my early morning venture. Combined with both those factors, the early afternoon sun pierced the veil between me and nirvana, illuminating a boomerang-shaped sandbar 200 yards east that kissed the edge of the beach. I walked over, and through my polarized lenses, could clearly see a deep trough adjacent to the bar.

I wanted to sprint back to the condo, grab my rod and spend the rest of the day fishing, but then I remembered that whole marital harmony thing, and besides, I figured the fishing would be better in the morning on the rising tide.

I made a note of the exact location of the bar, and then I returned the next morning.

Throwing a shrimp-colored soft-plastic paddle tail on a 1/4-ounce jighead, I caught a flounder on literally my first cast, and then proceeded to catch nine more. The season was closed in Florida, so stuffed flounder would not be one of the first meals at our new condo, but I couldn’t have cared less. The validation of figuring something out in a new fishing environment meant far more than any feast. 

Since then, I’ve used that exact strategy to have consistent success in the surf. Whenever we visit our condo, my first afternoon is spent walking the beach, searching for bars that have a perpendicular element, relative to the shoreline.

When I find them, I’m confident they will produce fish in the morning. In the fall, it’s flounder. In the winter, it’s redfish. In the spring, it’s speckled trout. And in the summer, it could be any of the above. I still wouldn’t consider myself a surf-fishing expert, but man, it’s been a fun journey trying to get to that level.

The post Find Fish in the Surf appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.