Front lines to tight lines – Islamorada fishing trip is soldier’s dream come true
Nick and Meaghan Drummond, the winners of my “Tell me why to win” Facebook promotion I ran back in May were in town last week celebrating their anniversary and collecting their 1/2 day Islamorada fishing trip grand prize. Nick is a infantryman currently stationed in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. He recently returned back to Ft. Bragg from a nine month deployment in Afghanistan and prior to that he spent a year in Iraq. So needless to say he is out there on the frontlines fighting for our country and I was so proud to have this brave young man out fishing on my boat.
Nick’s wife Meaghan is the one who entered the contest with an entry I simply couldn’t refuse. She indicated it would be a dream come true if her husband could go fishing in Islamorada after returning from his year long deployment in Afghanistan. Both Nick and Meaghan confirmed the trip was indeed a come true and they couldn’t believe how many different kinds of fish they caught especially the blacktip and hammerhead sharks. Here are some pictures from the great time we had in the Islamorada backcountry catching sharks, ladyfish, trout, and snapper.
Four reasons why tarpon fishing will be best the next few days
Evening tarpon fishing in Islamorada is in full stride right now and promises to get even better over the next few days. The reason evening tarpon fishing is going to be so good is due to four different factors all aligning to make for perfect tarpon fishing conditions.
For starters, we are getting into late April which historically marks a large number of tarpon that have migrated into the area. The second factor comes from the medium high winds from an easterly quadrant. The third reason is that we have a waning moon and the current speeds are lessening making it a little easier for our giant friends to feed. The final and most important variable is that Islamorada has falling tides for the next few evenings which will be sucking all the mullet, crabs and shrimp out of Florida Bay and into the major channels where the tarpon are waiting to eat them.
As proof positive, Dr. Steve Hartung, from Williamsport, PA (home of the Little League World Series) and his 17-year-old son Quinn, were my anglers this evening and they caught four tarpon on their first tarpon trip ever. All of them were large fish, over 80 lbs.
Facebook Status – Fishing in the Florida Keys
rsilk@keysnews.com
A recent fishing trip giveaway promotion turned into a lot more for Islamorada backcountry Capt. Ted Wilson. Wilson began his promotion on Feb. 22 with the goal of driving people to the new Facebook page for his Secret Spot Charter Company. He offered a half-day backcountry trip, valued at $375, for the contestant who provided the best reason why he wanted to go fishing.His wife Shirley, who administered the contest, said she expected just a smattering of entrants, especially considering the Secret Spot page only had about 20 followers. Instead some five dozen people, most unknown to the Wilsons, entered the competition.
Many expressed a deep love for the Florida Keys. Others talked about family traditions. Still others opened up with personal travails that they said would best be assuaged some simple searching for gamefish in Florida Bay.
“The people just engaged with the page more than we expected,” Shirley said. “The way they just poured their hearts out was really inspiring.” Several of the responses were similar in theme to the one offered by Anne Lewis on March 27, five days before the April 1 end of the contest.
“My husband has been wanting me to go fishing with him for the last few years,” she wrote. “I keep telling him that I would if he would take me flats fishing in the Keys. I love him and I love the Keys. We have not been down there together … yet. This would make a great vacation for the both of us.” Several others dwelt upon the long winters they had just endured.
“Because it is snowing like !@#$@$#@$ outside — total whiteout and I am on the edge of going into the dark side!!” wrote contestant Elizabeth Bonness. “Get me out of here!!!!”
While some wrote about the frigid north, others provided deeply personal reasons for wanting to win the trip. Tony Ashburn, for example, wrote that he wants to take his grandson fishing in the Florida Keys.
“His father passed away and it is now my responsibility to fill the void,” Ashburn wrote on March 3.
Alfonzo Smith wrote of his desire to shore up rocky relations with his father.
“The reason I would to go fishing in the Keys is so that I can take my dad who has been the most influential person in my life,” he wrote. “My dad started fishing with me when I was only four years old. Since then we haven’t been fishing in awhile and I am now 37 years old.”
A woman from the Panhandle wrote of how last year’s Gulf oil spill had devastatedher and her husband financially.
“Stress is about to kill ushere and with no work coming in it makes our lives more stressed,” wrote Pamela King Patten. But the winner, which the Wilsons announced last Friday, was Megan Drummond, the wife of a soldier who just returned from Afghanistan.
Her husband Nick, she wrote, is a fishing “maniac” and they are coming to the Keys in July
to celebrate their anniversary.
“This is our first trip to Islamorada, and it would be such a memorable one if he got to spend the day fishing with you. So please pick Nick, it will be a memory he will cherish forever!” Drummond wrote.
Wilson said all those gut wrenching responses taught him a valuable lesson about his own life.
“It’s amazing how many people just poured their hearts out about coming to the Keys,” he said. “It kind of reminded you, we’re pretty lucky to do what we do, and where we do it.”
Fish out of water — My best tarpon fishing tale yet
Now for the rest of the story, please keep in mind the creek we were fishing was carved through the mangroves by mother nature herself and spanned about 50-feet across. In typical tarpon fashion, the fish took off like a freight train and began jumping wildly. Before we knew it, the massive fish was making a bee line for the tree line and suddenly launched itself deep into the dry tangled web of mangroves. We could tell the fishing line had parted from the fish but the show was far from over.
Catch, Click and Release – Safe handling tips for tarpon fishing photo ops
I recently received a great question from a new angler of mine regarding why Islamorada fishing guides are usually the one holding the tarpon in the photos. I thought it was such a great question that I decided to share my answer in case other people were curious too. My answer involves several reasons why Islamorada fishing guides take hold during tarpon photo ops.
First, in order to get the fish in the position to even take a picture usually is the result of some serious tarpon wrestling. The wrestle involves me getting extremely wet, slimy, often throwing out my back and nearly breaking my arms. During the wrestle, I have many safety concerns including my angler, myself, the fish and the my equipment. The reaction of the fish can be very unpredictable and I need to have the person who caught the fish holding the rod on the ready in case the fish gets loose which happens a lot. Additionally, he or she is usually pretty exhausted after a long fight and the handling of the fish is hard work they want no part of under the circumstances.
Interestingly, most veteran guides don’t even attempt to get the “along the boatside” picture. They merely wrap their hand in the leader and “pop off” the tarpon. In fact, the best and most experienced Florida Keys fishing guide I know has a razor knife on the end of a broom stick to “release” tarpon. For him, touching the tarpon for a photo isn’t even an option.
Finally the main reason I like to be the one holding the tarpon is simply for the safety of the fish. On the rare occasion that I’ve let my angler don the gloves and wrangle the tarpon for the picture he usually gets excited and mishandles the fish, much to the detriment of the tarpon. Even if the angler manages not to manhandle the fish for the picture they inevitably lose hold of the fish at some point boatside when it struggles and the tired, over-photographed fish spirals downward toward the bottom, unrevived and primed for shark attack. While it may seem egotistical that I’m in every tarpon photo you’ve seen taken from my boat, the real reason is that nearly every time I turn over the reigns to my tired anglers to handle their fish it never turns out well either for the fish or the photographer.
Now with all this said, I don’t want to appear that I am completely against my anglers getting a photo holding their tarpon by themselves. So when we are lucky enough to get to that point, by all means, I will do what I can to coach the angler for a great photo-op as long as the situation stays safe for everyone involved with my priority being the well-being of the fish.
Roll tarpon roll
When on an Islamorada backcountry fishing charter the excitement elevates as soon as you begin spotting rolling tarpon. Have you ever wondered why tarpon roll? Tarpon have a special air bladder, similar to lungs of air-breathing animals. They roll in order to gulp air and then swallow and expel the used air through their air bladder. Their sponge-like air bladder transfers oxygen from the gulps of air they swallow, and release the carbon dioxide. With each release of air they simultaneously take in a fresh gulp of air. The rolling effect creates excellent opportunities for sight-fishing anglers to spot the majestic silvery fish. Even when tarpon aren’t actively rolling, they can still be spotted by their air bubbles on the surface of the calm backcountry waters. Their ability to breath air give tarpon an advantage over other large fish by allowing them to feed in shallow, low oxygen backcountry waters.
Federal efforts aim to protect tarpon
Tarpon fishing has a long tradition not only in the Florida Keys, but across the southern coastal states. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt grappled with them in Aransas Pass, Texas in the 1930s. Decades later, President George H.W. Bush fought them off Islamorada, a place that has served as an epic battleground for tarpon fishing. Sports greats like Ted Williams and Andy Mill, and novelists like Thomas McGuane and Jim Harrison, have called on the Keys to face off with tarpon.
University of Miami marine biology professor Jerry Ault and conservation group Bonefish & Tarpon Trust want to ensure that the challenge continues for generations. They have begun work on a federal legislative proposal — the Tarpon Conservation Act — to bring greater protection and more money toward research of the species. They are looking for sponsors both in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. They hope to have something filed within the next year, said Aaron Adams, director of operations and research for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. The proposal requests that international agreements on tarpon fishing be established — as the fish’s range is from Central America to Virginia — and that the government set aside $2 million for five years for research, Ault said. International agreements, similar to compacts signed for migrating birds, would offer protection for tarpon outside of the United States, where Ault and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust are worried about the mortality rates and overfishing.
Generally, tarpon fishing is seen as catch-and-release sport, but there are places like Mexico where the fish are taken to shore and weighed during tournaments. Ault said he saw 6 tons of tarpon, some weighing more than 200 pounds, killed in a threeday tournament in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Those same schools of tarpon migrate to Texas and Louisiana from Mexico, he said.
There also are places in Louisiana where people spear tarpon for sport, Adams said. Other concerns include the impacts of pollution and development on spawning areas. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have seriously impacted the tarpon fishery and migration patterns. Many tarpon, some from Florida, travel to that area of Gulf of Mexico to feed on medheaden, shrimp and crabs that come out of the Mississippi Delta.
“Making them a catch-andrelease fish does not mean they are totally protected, and they are not catch-andrelease everywhere,” Adams said. Ault and Adams have earned international recognition for their research on game fish like tarpon, permit and bonefish. The two have
conducted research throughout the Caribbean and Central America. Ault has written
several studies that have shown the economic value of such fish, and documented their migration patterns. The two are actively involved in several game fish tagging programs, and Adams was in Belize last Friday attaching satellite tags to tarpon for tracking purposes.
The tagging programs have shown that tarpon routinely travel between Mexico, the
United States and Cuba. Ault and Adams are working to obtain more information to find out if schools travel from as far as Central America to the United States.Tarpon and other types of
sport fishing generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Florida, and subsidize economies of the Keys and other coastal areas. In the Everglades alone, recreational fishing is a $173 million a year business, Ault said. “These fisheries are big business and create a lot of
jobs,” he said.
tohara@keysnews.com
Best time to go tarpon fishing in the Florida Keys revealed
Captain Ted Wilson releasing a tarpon
This leads to the famous question that I get asked over and over again. “When is the best time to come to the Keys to fish for tarpon?” This question has been a hot topic for the Spring Break families that have been the lion’s share of my anglers the last few weeks. They have heard rumors of tarpon being around and for good reason entertain the idea of catching one. Everyone seems to have been briefed that it’s “still a little early” for tarpon, but that still doesn’t stop them from dreaming about catching one on this trip. When the reality of the fisheries inconsistency is experienced, that’s when they pop “the question”.
So, when is the best time to catch a tarpon in the Florida Keys? Let’s start by saying the best time to fish is when you can make time to go do it. The best time to fish for large migratory tarpon in the Florida Keys is when the water temperatures reach and stay above seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. That can be as early as mid-March, but usually equates to late March to as late as early April. May is all safe as well as most of June. By the end of June most of the migratory fish have moved on leaving resident stragglers for us to play with all summer. There you have it. April through June is the best time to come down to the Florida Keys to catch a tarpon.
It’s tarpon time in Islamorada
Just when we were starting to get used to having tarpon back in the neighborhood again things were suddenly turned upside down by a late season cool front last week. But now with rising water temperatures occurring all week the tarpon are starting to move back into their early season locales. Stewart Sarnac from Jacksonville and wife Angie went two for three tarpon in the 90 to 100 lb range deep into the Islamorada backcountry. Strangely the only bites came on pin fish even though they had a variety of baits to choose from. Whatever their tastes, always exciting to see them back in town and ready to eat.Islamorada fishing guide gets back to blogging
Islamorada Fishing Guide Captain Ted Wilson
After taking a break of writing my blog during the winter months, I’m back and ready to share my insights as an Islamorada fishing guide. I was fortunate to have a fantastic winter season and there was nothing “off-season” about it. We had a few short runs of cold weather but over all it was very enjoyable and productive time in the Islamorada backcountry.
I love talking about what I do and look forward to sharing my passion and knowledge for fishing with anyone interested in learning the who, what, where, when and how of fishing in the Florida Keys. Some of what I write about I hope you will be able to use outside of the Keys in your own favorite fishing spots.
I also should let you know that I changed my blog url. I used to write at blog.islamoradaguidesclub.com and you can still see my previous Islamorada fishing reports and articles there which you may enjoy if researching information about Islamorada fishing. but now will be writing on my own domain: blog.captaintedwilson.com. So invite you to bookmark this new site or subscribe to my feed.
And as always I’m always interested in your questions and comments and will answer them to the best of abilities. Send me your questions here or comment on my facebook page.
Let the 2011 Florida Keys fishing season begin!
Captain Ted
www.captaintedwilson.com
