Roll Call! Thanksgiving in St Thomas

[BooRadley]

Ah Boo - I don't want to hijack the thread but you got me reminiscing about the 4 years I lived in the Keys. I worked 4 days a week and fished the other 3. Not a purist but I caught most of the flats fish on a fly (bones, tarpon, barracuda, jack, blacktips and a 55# cobia in 2' of water." Never a permit though. I have to say the most fun were "baby" tarpon in a mangrove cut off Sugarloaf Key. It was my go to spot when we got blown off the flats.
That was a long time ago and I haven't cast a fly in probably 20 years . I'm reduced to bluegill with my grandkids.

VT,
I never lived in the keys but I might have well have picked up a PO Box down there...

I lived in Clearwater and fished from the keys to Pensacola every hour not spent chasing girls or going to school after coming home from Viet Nam. I was almost always flat broke and I believed those years to be the best of my life. I knew it then and I still know it now... Great times... There were several times when the only food I had came in the form of the fish I caught... For one particularly bad stretch, I lived on yellowtail and pickle juice. For all of the successes I've had since, I'd still trade them in a heartbeat to go back to those days and do it all over again...

I agree baby Tarpon are the best... The bug guys are more a workout than anything else... My biggest tarpon was estimated at over 180 by length /girth caught outside of Crystal River.

Bones & permit are my favorites and I chased them around the world until my body said I needed to slow down. Cobia -- very tasty... Snook on fly is also great fun... can still be found just about anywhere down there but they are in great abundance down by Punta Gorda. Cuda are fun when you are hunting them but what a pain when you're Bone fishing... These days I spend most of my time fishing locally... from the Monomoy flats to the western sound where I live -- mostly stripers and blues until a trip catches my soul...

I'm still throwing flies around these days but I don't campaign as long or hard each day as I used to do on a regular basis. I sold my Hewes 18 Redfisher and picked up an old 18 whaler outrage. I've since restored her and used her to fish the shallows. I am doing a "hull up" restoration of my Bertram 31 -- a few more years till that's done...

Tight Lines,
Your Ol' Fishin' Pal Boo

 

[Kibitzer]

Since this thread has serendipitously gravitated to fishing stories, the impulse to join in is irresistible.

Many years ago (25+), my daughter Cindy was getting married in Miami. Day or two before the wedding, I was persuaded by other daughters and one son-in-law to go deep sea fishing, something I had never done.

I went armed with a cooler of cold beer (I shared) and my Sunday NY Times crossword and no intention of any form of exertion on a beastly hot and humid day.

The fishers gradually became catchers: a couple bonitas and one vicious 48" barracuda. I was finally persuaded to sit in the big chair and drop a line, using a bonita as bait.

After a spell, I hooked what was probably a '57 Chevy relic, but the excitement passed. It had now become that "Let's give it one last try" time. And then all hell broke loose.

I hooked something. Something very big, very live, and very determined to enjoy a life at sea. After an enormous amount of tugging (nobody looked at their watch so my effort was measured by releases of sweat and adrenaline, not minutes and seconds), I reeled in a 96" hammerhead shark.

We took the traditional photos ashore, I had that baby mounted (hangs in our TV room) and I claim the unofficial Guiness record for beginner's luck fishing.

I never went fishing before or since. The feeling I had when the crew hoisted this shark aboard was about like what Geno must have felt when Maya's LOI rolled off his fax machine.

And that, my friends, is my one and only fishing story, about The One That Didn't Get Away.