KK and I planned our trip and a last minute sponsorship (thanks Mom and Dad) secured a back country trip for the two of us. After two short flights and 3 rental cars later, thanks Avis, we were on our way to lower Matacumbe key. Got to our apartment around 8:30 and settled in. I walked out the back door and found baby flying fish and pistol shrimp swimming around by our dock.
The next morning we went up to Robbies of Islamorada and hand fed some huge tarpon, it’s a tourist trap but you can hand feed the tarpon for around $5, so I loved it. From Robbies we headed south and found a place called pier64 where we rented a 2 person kayak for the week. The Kayak was one of the best things we had use of. It allowed us to reach many of the productive shallows, flats and mangroves. We started by catching barracuda and following a huge leopard ray in shallow water. There were sharks, box fish and huge barracuda all over the place and small fish that you couldn’t see but you could feel them biting everywhere you dropped a hook.
The second day we got shrimp and paddled back into the mangroves. We found mangrove snapper, pinfish, mullet, and big snook. We caught some pinfish and took them out to a big channel. Something big hit the pinfish and ran for a while but ultimately threw the hook. We headed back to our room and saw tarpon on the flats but couldn’t tempt them. When we got back to the room I was cleaning out the boat and threw a shrimp on a hook into the canal while I cleaned. It wasn’t in the water long when I noticed my rod doubled over. I set the hook and pulled up a big pin fish. After about 5 more I moved out to the main canal and dropped a whole live shrimp and got a heavier hit. After a few runs I pulled up a freyed piece of 15# fluorocarbon with no hook!! I retied a circle hook and got another hit almost instantly this time I got a look at the snook but got freyed off again. Third time was the charm. I landed a snook and noticed how rough its entire body is. Pretty much every time you hook or catch a snook you have to retie your hook because the line will be destroyed. I caught 5 snook in all and bought lobsters for dinner. The caretaker of the property was a commercial fisherman I asked him if we could eat the pinfish and he must have felt bad for us for trying to eat bait so he hooked us up with lobster tails and yellowtail snapper fillets. More than we could eat! Later that evening I got a call from the charter captain and he said regrettably that he was not able to do the charter because of a bad back. However he was able to get another captain, Dave Denkert, to take us on the trip.
7:00 am sharp we were at the dock where we met Capt. Denkert. His boat was a 18’hells bay guide with a 50hp 4 stroke mercury. It seemed like a small boat to make the size run we were making but then the water seldom gets choppy because there is no depth in the backcountry. We went the distance of Mystic River to Block Island to Montauk and back. We targeted Tarpon and had several good shots but couldn’t seal the deal. First fish of the day was a gaff-top-sail catfish Caught by the captain. Next Krystal fought the biggest fish of her life, a 6 foot 100# bullshark. She fought hard while the guide shouted words of encouragement. About 10 mins in, he finally got his teeth on the mono and broke off. Next we caught bunches of red fish and lady fish. The guide was a redfish tourney guy and was super enthusiastic about catching them. After about 30 we kept 2 and drifted toward some bigger reds, they were all shy. We drifted for tarpon out in a channel and after a while noticed too many sharks. A few were big. Moved to a clear water flat and took some casting shots at tarpon but the wind drift was too fast and we kept spooking fish. For the closer we moved on to a shallow flat and “booger fished” for bone fish. At first we caught puffers, a big box fish that pulled pretty hard, and sharks but we adjusted our presentation and both of us caught bones. My wife expressed interest in the sharks so the captain told us a good spot where we could “catch a bunch… if we wanted to!?” So no tarpon but I had never caught a bonefish before so I was really pleased. My wife loved the variety of species that we caught, and I was happy she came along. I also learned a great deal about how a customer learns from a guide and what they take away from the experience.
The next day we went to Key West and saw Hemmingways house and the Mel Fisher museum. We also had a nice lunch and then headed back over the bridges. A few keys outside Key West we passed over the Sugarloaf key and stopped at the sugarloaf lodge, a place where I stayed as a child. It was only like 3 days and I only fished from the dock but I remembered every detail of catching so many different fish there and the tackle shop where I bought my first rod still exists. It was pretty crazy to be back at that place 23 years later. Its amazing how many times I replayed those 3 days in my mind. The rooms where we stayed were no longer standing, wiped out in hurricane Wilma in 2007. But it brought up some strange and deep nostalgia about my roots in fishing.
Next day we went around the flats side with our kayak and caught a bunch of lemon sharks in shallow water. It was actually quite fun. The sharks were happy to hit almost anything we put in front of them and we burned the drag on an old cheap reel. It was fun. It was a little scary to see how many sharks came when we chummed. We only used like 3 fish for chum but every time I turned around I saw more and more sharks! I was glad we were not in the water. After we got tired of sharking we started to head home. As we were going Krystal noticed a big black cloud coming towards us. It looked pretty bad and we were still about a mile away from our dock. When we first noticed it the flags on shore were blowing to the north. As soon as the clouds came over head the flags luffed for about a minute and then snapped due south. The temp dropped 10 degrees and it began to rain. We paddled hard to avoid being blown out to the Atlantic. After about a half hour in the heavy wind and rain we made it to our home dock. I stood out under an umbrella and tried to fish the canal caught a few snappers but figured it for a lost day. We went to the bass pro shop and looked in the tank at the baby tarpon, snook and bone fish that they had there, and then headed back home. I began to fish the canal again. Around sunset I got a heavier hookset and played a fish up and down the canal. It jumped. Baby tarpon on! It made a run or too and then straightened the hook. I was in disbelief. I had noticed bigger rolls on the surface in the canal all week but thought they were mullet. I looked in my bait bucket 2 live shrimp left. I retied a stronger hook and then set to catching another tarpon. After about half an hour of dragging a half dead shrimp I had nothing to show. I decided to use my last viable shrimp. A bigger roll went up in casting distance. It seemed like I got the hit almost instantly. Two little jumps and a couple of runs later I had my first tarpon! I was thrilled. Took pics and made a clean release. Afterwards we made a trip up the road to a restaurant called Lazy Days where they cook your catch. We brought 5 lobster tails (thanks Jimmy) and the red fish we cought on our charter. They cooked it 3 different ways, blackened red fish, coconut fried lobster bites and “lazy style” lobster tails which I definitely recommend. We had way too much food, to eat it all, but did our best and took the rest home.
Next morning we woke up to news of the earthquake in Japan. What a tragedy, I knew then that the loss of life would be huge. I send prayers for the people of Japan and hope that they have a speedy recovery. KK and I went out on our Kayak for the last trip of the week and caught a puffer, a mangrove snapper and a barracuda. Perfect barracuda bookends to the week. We left Islamorada around 1:00pm and were home in Connecticut at 3:00am (long trip I would rather forget)
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