Weekend Wrap Up

*As you saw by my last post, Captain Mel Berman died. He will be missed among the Tampa Bay fishing community.

*Bought a new Buff at Bill Jacksons on Saturday. It's really cool, but was informed by the folks who work there in the fishing department that all the bonefish in the keys are dead from the cold. I haven't been able to verify this, so if anyone is in the Keys, could you please let us know? Are you able to confirm or deny that this is true?

Lacy ate half of my mom's Suprbowl cake when nobody was looking. Does she look like she'd do that? It was on a lazy Susan type of thing that kept rotating as she licked...sorry mom....but it was funny and the other half of the cake tasted really good!

My Favorite Florida Keys Posts

For those of you who haven't been there, I'd like to share the fly fishers paradise known as the Florida Keys.

Here are some of my favorite posts about my experiences there.

If you've never been there and want to go - Check this out

Long Key Part One

Long Key Part Two

Long Key Part Three

Chad and the Barracuda

Any Takers for Florida Keys Trip?

Ok...I have this crazy idea.

As was mentioned a few posts back, Julie and I booked a trip to Long Key State Park in the Florida Keys for April 11th-16th 2010. This is prime time for bonefish in the Keys and quite possibly one of the best bonefish flats in the US. Plus the campsites are right on the water and literally steps away from your tent door....plus, it's probably the most inexpensive place to stay in the Keys, as it were, if that interests you. You can camp there for the entire 6 days for under $200.00.

Anyway, back to my crazy idea.

I think it would be cool to get folks together and do this on an annual basis. Bonefishing in the Keys with my favorite bloggers and readers....

If anyone is interested is going, book your campsite now....they go fast and the best time to book a trip there is as far in advance as you can. If you need us to, we can pick you up at Key West Airport.

We'll be in campsite 2. Let me know if you're going to be there.

The "Gear" Guy

I'm sure that we're acquainted with a "Gear" guy....you know the type - the guy with all of the new gear/bag/stripping basket/rod/reel/hat/high tech clothing....and he isn't afraid to talk about it.

What I find funny about the Gear Guy is, none of his gear help him get on fish any better than me or you. It's not as if the gear is a fish attractor....because, as my friend Scott likes to say, "The fish haven't read "In Fisherman" yet this month".

That's me in the photo, and I'm pretty geared up because we were quite a ways from the car and we were walking a fairly long stretch of beach.

I can remember being Gear Guy. When I used to bass fish, I'd always drag out 3 HUGE tackle boxes, and 4 rods just to hit a golf course pond. I can distinctly remember being out fished by my buddy one day, me with all of my gear and he with a Wal-Mart spinning rig and a few bags of plastic worms.

I usually don't carry all that much gear with me when I fish unless it's "expedition" style fishing....or I'm REALLY far from home. 90 percent of my gear isn't name brand gear and most of it isn't fishing gear at all, rather other gear "converted" into fly fishing gear. I'm not trashing anyone outfitted head to toe, I'm just saying that it doesn't work for me. I'm not going to list everything I take, I'm just mentioning the fact that I'm a minimalist of sorts.

Ken Morrow can be a gear guy too, but he uses everything....(just kidding Ken)

Take for instance, the gear guy at Long Key State Park. There were several of them sighted on this particular trip, but the guy I'm speaking of was a Gear God on a scale of gear-guy-ness. This guy looked like he just walked out of a fly shop that day, knocked off all the price tags, and started fishing....new wading shoes not even sandy yet. I was wading back to the campsite as the tide was almost gone, tired, spent and thirsty....my two 32 oz Nalgenes empty, I see this guy walking along the shore, and says to me "I can't see anything to cast at" to which I responded "you just have to wade and blind cast", opened up my fly box and gave him a few hot pink Sweet Ernies I had tied that morning...and he just sort of wandered off down the beach. It was necessary to blind cast because the 30 mph wind made it so. I couldn't see anything and I was getting hit.

Just like "softball guy", People of Wal-Mart and the always popular "boat guy", Gear Guy will always make me chuckle a bit.....

Long Key Part 3

Day 3 Started out with Mama and i getting up early to see the sun rise, eat a nice camping breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon, then we loaded up the fishing gear and headed out for Marathon. There was a bait store there that i wanted Mama to see. It's called Captain Hooks located right at Vaca Cut in Marathon.

Several years ago, i had spent a week in Marathon on a fishing trip with my buddy Chad. All we did was launch the boat at first light and come back in at dark, fishing the whole time. We had located a rolling pod of tarpon at Vaca Cut. We would cast our big Mirrolures at them and they would follow them all the way back to the boat without taking. Was an awesome site to behold.

One thing about Captain Hooks that i always loved was the outdoor pond stocked with tarpon, snook, bonefish and grouper. This time, they had about a half a dozen 30 lb tarpon, a large red grouper and a HUGE snook that looked to be even bigger than the tarpon. We got several shots of these magnificent fish the went into the bait shop to get some squid. We checked out the fishing spot under the bridge at Vaca Cut but forgot that we had bought ice for the cooler so decided to take the ice back to the cooler then go fishing.

After dropping off the ice to the cooler, we went back to "the hole". My idea was to use squid to catch some smaller fish for bait, then put the bait on the big game rod and get something bigger. i was having a heck of a time catching a smaller fish as they kept stealing the bait but after a while, i caught a hand sized pinfish, put it on the big game rig and just waited. Mama was at the other end of the hole using squid to try to catch something too. She had waded out to the flat but wasn't having any luck there either. After waiting 45 minutes for the big hit and using an assortment of DOA shrimp, Mirrolures and spoons, we decided to pack it in, free the pinfish and get the snorkeling gear out.

The weather was hot and the clear water looked so refreshing and inviting. Mama's mask strap broke so as i sat at the waters edge, waiting for her to fix it, i noticed some brightly colored tropical looking fish flitting about around my swim fins. i had an uneasy feeling about swimming in the same hole we had just had live bleeding bait and squid in. As we drifted around the middle of the hole, i could feel cold water upwelling. There wasn't a single fish of any kind to be found. It had occurred to me that the hole could possibly be a freshwater spring and it might be brackish. A lot of fish are picky about the salinity level in the water they're swimming in, so that might explain why there was no fish in the hole. i did see several nice sized mangrove snapper along the outer edge of the hole where the limestone met the edge of the flat. As i was exploring the reef edge, Mama had swam out onto the flat. Later she described to me a fish that she had been face to face with, looking at each other. It was a 20 inch redfish.
i kept getting the uneasy feeling and Quint's USS Indianapolis speech from the movie Jaws kept replaying in my head....

"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945."

....i was very uneasy about swimming in this hole that we had just been fishing in with live bait....so i decided that i had better get out while i still had all of my limbs left....something about the area plus the number of bull sharks in our waters....i don't know. But i do know that it's a wise thing to follow my gut instinct.


We packed up and went back to the campsite, had lunch and waded out on the flat with our snorkeling gear. Was very serene just drifting around the flat.....savoring the different little ecosystems that we don't get to see everyday.

Mama decided to lay down and take a nap and i wanted to take a shower and relax a bit. When i got back to the campsite, i put some charcoal in the fire ring and started a fire. We had fixed a nice fire the night before and, due to the wind feeding the small vent in the back of the fire ring, found it quite easy to have a hot fire. We had brats and potato salad and yams, as well as a few Hurricane Reefs, walked the beach, took some photos and just enjoyed the scenery. We found a dead bonnet head shark that got trapped in the shallows at low tide as well as some really nice pieces of driftwood that i wished that i had seen earlier to take photos of my gear on ( i get artsy fartsy with the camera when i'm not fishing)


Watched "Running With Scissors" on the laptop after the sun went down, watched the stars and contemplated how sad we would be tomorrow when we'd have to pack up and leave.....the wind had died down and found it easy to drift off to sleep....

Was awakened at around 2 am by what felt like rain....looked up and didn't see any stars.....UH OH! "Mama? IT'S STARTING TO RAIN AGAIN!" Mama...."ok". Around 3:30, Mama woke me up to tell me it was raining.....couldn't find my headlamp....running around trying to frantically put everything in the Jeep.....only to stop raining right when we got everything put away (you'd think that we'd know to do this ahead of time by now huh?)


Got up at sunrise and started packing up the gear. Mama told me to go fishing one more time and she'd take care of the campsite but i couldn't let THAT happen.


Check out around 9:30, drove up to the 1935 Hurricane Memorial in Islamorada,(a post on this coming soon) had breakfast at a mom and pops place, hit a few souvenir shops and headed home. Stopped at the Bass Pro Shops near Naples (spent 2 hours in there) and arrived home around 7pm.


Was a great trip and i'd recommend it to anyone who likes camping and fishing. It's my favorite spot we've been to so far but if there was one thing i'd change about it, it would be the traffic on US 1 in such close proximity to the campsite.....

Long Key Part 2

Since i crapped out on loading up my photos last night, i'll have to post with no pics right now and add them later.....The Rays were on and Garza pitched a perfect game up to the 7th inning....take that Baston fan....eh? (what's with this "Red Sox Nation" crap? Where was...."The Nation" when ya'all were stinking the joint up for 80 plus years between World Series victories?)

i'm an early riser and since we usually go to bed early when we're camping, we usually get up early too. This time was no different. i didn't really sleep too well due to the wind shaking the tent all night and the traffic on US 1 rushing by so, i got up with the first sign of the graying sky that proceeds the rising sun....told Mama that the sun was getting ready to come up and she groggily replied "uh...ok...." Fired up the backpacking stove and got some coffee going. For some reason French Press coffee tastes so good when we're camping....not sure why....but Mama got up in time to get her cup and her camera and start shooting the beautiful sunrise. There were some darker clouds in the distance and we could see rain. Mama said "look at those rain clouds Papa" and i replied "weather report said no chance of rain". Sure enough, withing 10 minutes, it started sprinkling and of course we didn't have the rainfly on the tent so we started scrambling around trying to get things stowed and the rainfly on (which was hard due to the gale force winds). And of course as soon as we get everything stowed, it stopped raining....

Mama fixed a nice camping breakfast which was an egg and cheese sandwich on health nut bread....mmmmmmm..... and orange juice.

We grabbed our flyrods and headed out to the flat at our campsite. The tide was coming in but wasn't expected to be high until around 1:00 so it was the perfect time for bonefish. Water clarity was excellent but spotting fish was going to be next to impossible with the whipped up water surface. We were rigged up for bonefish with 10 lb tippets and natural color Crazy Charlies. i decided to switch to a Sweet Ernie (http://www.flyfishinsalt.com/techniques/fly-tying-bench/the-sweet-ernie-1000070702.html) in hot pink/crystal sparkle chenille on a #4 Mustad that i had tied up right before we left on Sunday....only had time to tie one but i had my vice and materials with me. Decided to blind cast with the wind to my back so at least my forward cast would get to where it was supposed to....i figured i'd take 3 or 4 casts in a fan sort of pattern and then move up the flat about a full casts worth and start over. Current wasn't really a factor. There were some nice grassy patches as well as some sand holes and muddy sections with marl.

So we were working parallel to the beach with Mama out about 20 yards further than me and sure enough, i got a take on my 3rd cast.....was a lot of slack on that cast due to the wind and waves so it took off at light speed about 20 feet before i knew he was on it. and spit it before i could get the hook in it....had to be a bonefish though because of how fast it moved. Surprised that it didn't run into Mama on the way out. Tore the fly up by destroying the tail....

Hit myself in the back with with flies all day long and Mama actually impaled herself in the side with one.

After a few hours of no real action (a polite way of saying we caught bugger all) we went across the street and started fishing the flat next to "the hole". i was still using the flyrod but Mama had switched to the spinning gear and shrimp. She wasn't getting anything but bait robbers and i wasn't having any action either so we moved to "the hole" and weren't having any luck there too.
We went back to the campsite around lunchtime and found that the wind was taking a toll on the tent in a very bad way. It's a dome style tent and the way it works is to fasten the long floppy poles to a series of short metal posts at the base of the tent. These are held together by a metal ring. Well, the metal ring looked more like a fish hook, the posts were missing as was the stake to hold it down....more rain sprinkles, Mama rigged it up with some rope and i tied it to the wood fencing surrounding the campsite to secure it. Mama piled some rocks at the base of the poles for good measure. It was a major screw up on my part because i wanted the big window on the tent facing the water and in doing so, had pointed the part without windows at the wind, so it was really taking a beating.....if we had pointed the window at the wind, it might have made it easier on the tent. (here we go with the physics again.....) So between the rope, Mama's rig job, and the rocks, we were hoping the tent would hold up.....sort of like an episode of Star Trek..."Scotty!.....i need....you to keep......the ship togetheraslong as.....you CAN Bones, Spock come with me....."

We ate more rotisserie chicken and tortillas and split a Hurricane Reef. Mama took a nap and i tied a few flies.....

Will the tent and weather hold up? Will our hero's catch something that swims?

Tune in next time........

Long Key Part 1

These are some photos of our camping/fishing trip to Long Key State Park. i added the photos first as i wouldn't have access to them while at work. They post in ascending order for some reason so you have to look from the bottom up starting with the photo of me driving.

We met a few minor challenges leaving early like we planned as Mama and i both attended the REO Speedwagon/Night Ranger gig at the Hall on Saturday night.....she had to work the show and i tagged along because who doesn't like those 2 bands in a retro/revisit the childhood sort of way.
We arrived back home at around 10:00 pm only to find that the doggies had broken into the garage where our camping gear was stowed and proceeded to chew up our air mattress and a sleeping bag as well as 2 pillows....there was stuffing all over the back deck so as you can imagine, i was less than happy with the doggies.

We had to go to Wally World first to replace the destroyed gear and didn't really get on the road until around 10:30....checked in at the park right around 4:30 (It's no big deal though because check in time at State Parks is 3:00)

The first thing that i noticed upon reaching the Keys was that the wind seemed to be blowing from the north east at a pretty hard clip. (not good for fly fishing....or tent camping for that matter) Conditions weren't any better by the time we arrived at our site with a constant 25 mph gale. Mama and i set up the campsite (our site was right on the water....high tide line was about 3 feet away from the tent) in fairly quick order in spite of the wind, had lunch, and put on our swimming gear to wade around the flats right next to our campsite. High tide was at noon so i decided to rig up for barracuda since every time i've been to the Keys, they seem to be around in good numbers....even though the water was clear, there was no way to spot fish due to the roiling, windswept seas. As we were walking out, i spotted a bonefish about 15 yards away however, he was hightailing it off the flat. Casting into the wind was impossible but i found that the backcast would hang behind me and the wind would help carry the forward cast to where it needed to go. Got a few nice welts trying to cast ACROSS the wind....but it was doable.....Talked to a few fly geeks who were all geared out with $1,200 worth of fly gear and the clothes and hats....but were just walking up and down the shore complaining that they couldn't see any fish.....

We drove a mile down the road to this spot that i had found on Google maps. Was a nice, deep hole right next to the shore. Waded the flat out to the hole. Was a bit more protected from the wind here but still couldn't spot any fish which was odd....Mama got a hit on a Rootbeer Epoxy Charlie but lost it due to her using a frayed leader....i won't mention the other faux pas committed by Mama but i'd like to recommend a few knot tying websites that i think she might be able to make use of. After this, Mama was content to watch the sun sink lower into the sky and take photos while i trudged around, casting at shadows and untangling my leader from time to time, using a chartreuse big eye bulky deceiver that i had made for the 'cuda


After we returned and ate dinner (rotisserie chicken and salad stuff rolled up on a tortilla and potato salad), the sun had fallen to the other side of the island, bathing our site in an shadow skewn reddish glow. We were afraid to have a campfire due to the windy conditions. Mama had picked up a six pack of Hurricane Reef raspberry wheat ale in Tavernier. We aren't big drinkers but appreciate a good beer. This stuff was AWESOME.....wheaty without being too fruity, yet not too hoppy. We relaxed, watched the stars come out, the tide come in, and went to bed after a nice hot shower.

i'm an early riser so Mama asked me to wake her up when i got up so she could see the sunrise.....

Here are some scenes from part 2.....

Hungry Bonefish ravaging the early morning flats and Mama comes face to face with a Redfish.