Florida Sportsman is the complete fishing magazine for Florida and the Tropics. Devoted to fishing, boating, and outdoor activities in the Sunshine State, Florida Sportsman is the authoritative source for Florida's most active fishermen.
Landing nets are catching on in salt water, and I think that’s a good thing. Writing about Florida Keys snapper in this issue, Capt. Joe Suroviec advises using a net to prevent breaking the light fluorocarbon leaders favored for snapper fishing. At the other end of Florida, another “Joe,” Capt. Joe Richard—our Big Bend Field Editor—recommends a net for husky, fall-run Spanish mackerel. I agree with both Joe’s. In my experience, a landing net not only reduces the likelihood of boatside escape, but maximizes the return on table fish. Gaff wounds tear up fillets (yeah, except for your perfect head shots). I carry two gaffs on my boat—a 2-inch hook and a homemade 12/0 cherry picker—but I’ve pretty well converted to nets for anything shy of 20 or 30 pounds.…
Without exception, if you’re an angler, the one thing we should all agree on is that the abundance of baitfish matters. You may be an artificial-only plug caster. Maybe an exclusive fly angler. Or possibly a hardcore bottom fishermen, or one of the few remaining troll-till-you-drop guys. Whatever your pleasure, if you fish, you need to be concerned about our proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” the forage fish. Scaled sardines or pilchards, Atlantic thread herring or greenies, pinfish and mullet, our bait species represent the first vertebrate link in marine food webs. Declines in their abundance should be used as an early warning system pointing toward an unhealthy ecosystem. Forage fish feed predominantly on small plant and animal matter and, in turn, transfer this energy to higher trophic levels…
As I made my way into the Highland Park Fish Camp tackle store, I stepped over a sleeping blonde Labrador and then stopped to watch three boys fishing for bass. An older couple sat in chairs, next to the pond, also watching the boys fish. It wasn’t Mayberry, but it could have been. The rust was real, not faux patina. The fish and game mounts inside the store stood unapologetically. A skin mount of an impressive diamondback rattlesnake was framed and led you into the side of the store filled with white-tailed deer, ducks, a bobcat and largemouth bass. The largest bass, from a customer in 1977, had tipped the scales at 15.4 pounds. Big bass are hard to come by these days, Bryn Adams told me while pointing out…
COSTA SCHOOLIE Any parent knows that getting kids in sunglasses can be a challenge. Helps to have styles and sizes that fit. Costa recently went to work on this and introduced a collection of eyewear to put the polarizing advantages in front of our young crew members. In the new small-size Schoolie series, 580P lens colors of blue mirror, gray, green mirror and rose are available in the matte black frame, while blue mirror is available in the matte Tiger Shark frame. Schoolie and the similarly-sized surf/skate lifestyle frame, Street Heat, are now available at www.costadelmar.com and select retailers nationwide starting at $130. MARQUESA MARINE SMALL DIAMETER SERIES A small-diameter pushpole is great for all-day comfort in the hand, but sometimes stiffness and durability are compromised. Marquesa Marine looks to…
WHY BRIDLE-RIG YOUR LIVE BAIT? A couple of reasons stand out. One, placing the hook outside the bait maximizes exposure of the point and gap. There’s no tissue in the way to interrupt the penetration of the hook in a game-fish’s jaw at the strike. This is especially desirable when using circle hooks. Secondly, the commonly available rigging needles and elastic bands are of comparatively small diameter in proportion to the typical hook. Drawing a rigging band through a baitfish causes less injury, resulting in a bait with greater swimming strength and stamina. The bridle setup also contributes to fewer instances of secondary hookpoint penetration in the baitfish, an annoying occurrence when a hook slides through a bait and re-enters it, burying the business end and leading to huge declines…
ANYONE WHO SPENDS any time at all on the Florida coast will encounter barnacles—those ubiquitous, sharp-edged little critters that soon cover any sort of firm surface which spends time underwater. Stepping barefoot on a barnacle-covered surface can produce some painful, fairly deep cuts, and fiberglass gelcoat boat hulls can be severely damaged with repeated and long-term contact with barnacle encrusted surfaces. And of course, the thing that makes anglers cuss barnacles the most is their ability to slice fishing line very efficiently. A hooked fish that gets a line across a barnacle covered dock piling is soon a free fish. But there just might be more to barnacles than being trouble for anglers. WHAT ARE THEY? Of the more than 1,400 species of barnacles found in the world’s waterways, the…
