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The Cataraft Chronicles The following is a chapter from my running journal of the six month effort to redesign the rowing frame on our Kingfisher catarafts. Here you will find an almost daily update of my current sea trials / shakedown / vacation trip to the Gulf Coast to try the new design in several different types of fishing water.
You can find the other chapters here: Cataraft Chronicles, Table of Contents
Note: This chapter is divided into four separate pages for faster loading because there are so many pictures. Click here to advance to Chapter 6, The Everglades, Part 2
Wednesday, March 24 and Thursday, March 25
I left Hobe Sound this afternoon headed south. A nice person I met several months ago on the internet, Patricia McCurdy, suggested I stop by in Homestead, Florida and she would point out some of the better south Florida fishing locations for me when I came through. Trish has fished the area for many years from her Action Craft flats skiff and is into light spinning tackle and fly fishing for the local game fish. After meeting near the Biscayne Bay recreation area, where she assured herself I wasn't a weirdo (or that I was at least a harmless one) I followed her to her home in Homestead.
Inside her cool spacious house she showed me around. In a hallway were two large display areas on the wall where Trish keeps mementos of her work. She is employed by U.S. Customs where each work day at 4:00 AM, she heads out on a boat into the waters off south Florida with other Customs and DEA agents to intercept drug smugglers. Covering the wall were awards and photos of many drug busts going down, many showing Trish with her 9 mm automatic strapped behind her back and examples of some pretty tricky places to hide drugs that were not quite clever enough. She also raises drug dogs who can smell the stuff amazingly well.
In the back yard kennel I met Gant and Pride who eyed me suspiciously. I think they instinctively know old hippies when they see one. Somewhat relieved, we left for a bite to eat.
Over dinner Trish pulled out a chart of the Everglades National Park area around the
northern end of Florida Bay near Flamingo and patiently marked several of her favorite
spots that were not too far from the ramp. Her next few days were scheduled for catching
bad guys so she wished me luck and after a final check of the map (the photo above came
out a little dark since the sun was going down) I drove the last of the 50 miles to
Flamingo in the dark.
Flamingo is the end of the road. No one is just passing through.
I awoke to the sounds of outboard motors pulling away from the ramp at Flamingo. It took me a while to get supplies at the store, gas up and fill my propane tank which was also low but by 9:30 I was backing the trailer into the water. Like the fishing holes inside the park you also have to share ramp facilities with the gaiters and the crocs.
I think these two were waiting for a kayak. Notice my sexy new 14 inch wheels and 3500 pound capacity axle?
Out on the bay, with the help of my hiking compass, I easily found the dozens of keys (sometimes pronounced Cays but I can't figure out when) that were marked on the chart. A few can be seen here.
The water here is not as clear as down in the south "Florida Keys" since northern Florida Bay is very well protected from gulf currents. Beneath the water of Florida Bay lie a few million years of Florida silt which is why the waters here are so rich - and also why they are not so clear.
I headed to one of the spots on Trish's map about 2-1/2 miles from the ramp. As I rounded the south side of Murray Key, I was happy to see that there was no one else in the area. I cut off the motor. Instead of silence, though, I heard a steady, almost continuous sound of fish on the surface. Like trout, there are rises like "splash", and rises like "kersploosh". Here there were plenty of both. I tried to locate each one but it was almost impossible to spot them. Any breeze here creates a three or four inch chop that immediately erases the telltale rings in the water that we typically depend on to locate trout in rivers. But after some practice I was able to start seeing the rises - those within casting range anyway. The water temperature gauge on the fathometer read 78 degrees. The air temp felt about five degrees warmer.
Since there were fish all over the place, I put on a saltwater streamer of some type, stood on the bow, and just let the breeze drift me over the extensive flat. The fathometer showed two feet of water beneath the lower deck.
Here, I'm holding the camera in my hand with the fisheye lens pointed toward me and Murray Key. As I drifted along, feeling like a kid in a candy store, I'd cast to every fish in range. I got a lot of practice casting that morning. As they say, the fishing was good but the catching wasn't so hot.
I tried the slow retrieve, the fast strip, the dead drift, slow strips, fast strips then slow again. I changed flies, I tried the other rod. I did every thing Flip Pallet did but after running upwind a few times and repeating the story, it was still no hits, no runs - not even a bump. This while fish were continuously slurping and thrashing the water all around me. It was maddening to say the least.
As I kept casting in vain I drifted over several rays in the 3 foot wingspan range and once a rather large shark swam by about 50 feet from the boat, sinister dorsals slicing the surface. Finally at 2:00 in the afternoon, with the frantic activity in the water subsiding, both mine and the fish, I returned to Flamingo for some research.
As the guide skiffs returned with their half day clients aboard I checked out their rods to see what was on the ends of their leaders. Interestingly, only about one in six rods on those boats were fly rods. I see these guys are into meat more than poetry.
It was soon apparent that almost all the rods, spinning and bait casting, were set up with lead headed jigs, white and red or white and yellow. OK, I needed to get down in the mud. All the flies I tried this morning were swimmers or drifters which seemed to make sense in the two feet of water I was fishing.
After some lunch in the van and a short nap, I headed back to sea at 4:30. This time I stayed on the front side of Murray Key which was about a half of a mile long. Again, I lined the boat up upwind and drifted over the flat with the slight breeze. This time I had a red and white, deer hair, epoxy headed streamer with a little Flashaboo that dove pretty fast when the line tension was momentarily released. It was either the second or third cast to a swirl when I connected. What a relief.
Over the next two hours, I caught and released several fish. None were huge but all were tough and put up a great fight. The best by far were the Jack Crevalles. These are blunt fish, almost as high as they are long. Along with the Jacks I caught several Spotted Sea Trout, a Snook, a Ladyfish and something I could not identify but possibly a small Snapper.
The next lesson I learned on this trip was that it is very difficult to take photos of yourself landing a fish on a flat. In trout rivers, I am usually wading near my personal fishing craft. Once the fish is netted, I hold him underwater while I get the camera ready, set it on the side of the boat, hold up the fish momentarily with a silly grin on my face, then wait a few seconds for the self timer to activate.
Here, wading is not possible as there are several feet of soft silt under the eel grass so any fish handling has to occur over the side of the boat - and these fish are very slippery. I tried several times to get pictures of the process but was not successful. I was stressing the fish as it was and I wanted to release them in good health. I left my trout net in the trailer and it was too small for the fish I really wanted pictures of anyway. Using the short gaff I had along would not do either so I finally gave up on the pictures. This is the closest I came to a decent shot of a fish.
This Spotted Sea Trout was a bit over the 20 inch slot limit but I was not keeping fish anyway.
As the sun dipped toward the horizon that evening the sea put on quite a display for me. The number of large slurping sounds and splashes increased dramatically. Just before dusk a huge Tarpon, about 4 feet long, exploded out of the water only about a hundred feet from the boat, trying to get at several Mullet that were also airborne at the moment I looked up. The shallow water rose as the Tarpon continued the chase submerged, the splash waves finally rocking the boat as they passed
Needless to say, I returned to the harbor that evening very satisfied. As a bonus, the sunset was equally as spectacular as the Tarpon attack. I slowed to an idle for a picture. Here's the view that evening of the southern tip of the continental US, looking west from about 1 mile south-southwest of the Flamingo Harbor entrance.
Later that evening I sat in the bar and enjoyed a glass of wine and some great coconut fried shrimp. There were several impressive mounts on the wall. The guests here were all quite friendly, many from Europe and Asia, and I met several of them. When I told them about my adventure and the Cataraft Chronicles, some were pleased to hear that they could show up on the internet too.
Here Tim Rooney, a businessman from Wisconsin poses with the six foot Tarpon that hangs on
the wall in the Flamingo Lodge bar. The scientific name for Tarpon is Megalops, which I
think is most appropriate.
Here clockwise are Sika, Charles, Eloise and Isabel Carey of London. The Carey's own a family business that specializes in importing olive oil to England from Italy but I learned that some California growers are getting the knack of making good oil as well. The girls had the most delightful accents.
Charles had his Hardy 8 weight fly rod along and was scheduled to go on a half day
guided trip on Saturday. I offered to take him out the following evening on the River King
to get his casting arm limbered up. I drifted off to sleep that night with the attacking
Tarpon doing reruns across the furrows of my brain.
Click here to go to Chapter 6, The Everglades, Part 2
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