Gone Fishin'

All right, I admit, I'm not much of a fisherman. But, am I really that bad or just unlucky? Well, I'll tell you how the day went then you can decide.

It was not a particularly early morning. No getting up before the break of day to get the gear loaded so that we could be on the lake as the sun rises, listening to the sounds of the loon break the misty silence of the woods.

Nothing like that. After all, this was no fishing trip in the woods. The kids and I were going to fish off the Florida Keys in a Party Boat. All right!

I was up at 7. Made tea and breakfast then work the kids up. I also put together some sandwiches, grabbed some apples and Florida oranges and the kids added some drinks and snacks. We grabbed some sunscreen and we were all set. By 8:20 we out the door for the half-hour drive through the keys to Islamorado.

Islamorado is a “village of islands” that comprises

the five keys: Tea Table Key, Lower and Upper Matecumbe Key, Windley Key, and Plantation Key. Our destination was Bud n’ Mary’s Fishing Marina. One of the few places along the road where the land is wide enough to contain more than just beaches and the highway itself. At Bud n’ Mary’s we paid our fee and joined the other 15 or so guests that would be spending the day on the Miss Islamorado, our Party Fishing Boat.

Now a “Party Fishing Boat”, does not mean that there is a party going on. It’s not a boat filled with bikini-clad women, toned and tanned men with six-pack abs (except for me), and waiter’s serving cocktails with those little umbrellas. This isn’t Miami Vice, much to my chagrin. No, “Party Fishing Boat” simply means that you will be on a boat, fishing, with a large party of people. The vast majority of these people will be men in their 50’s and 60’s who take their fishing very seriously. I had the only two kids aboard - a fact that will appear in Natasha’s Blog with glowing and positive commentary.

There are about 15 people on the main deck in this picture. We sailed with about 20 but the owners claim that up to 49 people can fish off this boat. Can't imagine where they all stand.

There was, however, another family on this particular voyage of Miss Islamorado. A couple from Wisconsin, travelling with their college-aged son and his girlfriend took the bench next to ours on the boat. The boat was a 65’ fishing boat with benches along the sides, a cabin in the middle and a second story from which the captain navigates. There were a lot of fishing rods on board as well as a number of tubs: tubs filled with bait, tubs filled with chum (more on that later), and empty tubs for the catch.

The crew consisted of a captain and two mates. I would put the captain at being in his early 30’s. He was quiet and serious, almost to the point of being surly. He told me that he was originally from Indiana and that he came to the Florida Keys to fish some twelve years ago and never left. The two mates were the entertainers, constantly moving around the boat and bantering back and forth. Both in their twenties, they had a multitude of tasks, from setting out the rods, helping get bait on and fish off, to setting and weighing the anchor, and swabbing the deck. One of the two was particularly talkative. At one point he discussed US politics with Natasha and me. The State of the Union was on the night before so this lead to the discussion. SPOILER ALERT - According to Chatty Mate, Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States. Also, and this was shocking and insightful, there is really no point in voting (Chatty Mate doesn’t bother) as the elections are rigged and the outcome pre-determined. Who knew?

The boat set sail at 9:30 for the hour-long trek out to the first fishing spot, a reef in the Atlantic about 4 miles off the Keys. It was a cool, overcast, and breezy day with a constant threat of rain. Being born and bred in Florida and having lived a good part of his life in the Keys, Chatty Mate was knowledgeable about the weather. He informed us that this was as cold as it gets in the Keys. It was a frigid +18oC or the equivalent of a nice summer day in Calgary. After learning that we were from Calgary, Chatty Mate has all sorts of questions for us about the weather and snow. Actually, he had those questions after we clarified that we were from Western Canada. The words “Calgary, Alberta” were met with a smile, a blank look, and the reply “I have no idea where that is”. Chatty Mate had never seen snow in person. What a life!

Chatty Mate with a Shark that one of the real Fishermen caught.

We arrived at our first stop and the fishing began. Hurrah! The ocean was alive with fish below us. We could see a variety of fish and we were also joined by some seabirds. There were two styles of fishing available to us: bottom fishing from the side of the boat or surface fishing off the back. With space being limited along the rail at the stern, we were asked to take turns at the back. I decided to begin by bottom fishing with the kids for awhile. First thing was to set the bait, which was a bucket full of cut up fish and squid, each piece being about 1-2 inches long. I thought that the kids might be a bit too squeamish to bait their own hooks but both kids grabbed chunks of bait and got down to it. Isaac was the first to drop his line but he let the weight freefall uncontrolled and almost got the reel all tangled up. We were able to fix things and I showed him how to control the speed with his thumb. After that he was an expert. Natasha learned from Isaac’s attempt and got everything right on the first go. By the time I got my line set a few minutes later, the fish was caught… by our Wisconsin neighbours. It was a Trigger fish. At least, that is what the crew called it. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of the various types of fish that were caught throughout the day - probably a couple dozen species were caught, with only half of those being varieties that are edible, the others were mostly tossed back into the sea but some were kept to be used for bait.

After a few minutes, Isaac reeled in his line to discover that his bait was gone. Natasha and I followed suit and found that our bait was gone as well. This set the tone for the next half-hour. We put on bait, dropped out lines, watched the Wisconsin family catch something, pulled in our lines, and put on new bait. After awhile, it felt that we were not fishing as much as simply feeding the fish. So, I decided to try my hand at the surface fishing off the back of the boat.

It was crowded, with half of the people on board vying for space along the stern rail. That is because the type of fish that one is likely to catch along the surface is more likely of the “keep and eat” variety. In comparison, while the Wisconsin family was catching quite a lot, probably more than 10 fish in the first hour, they had released all but one or two. The best fish to catch off the back of the boat was snapper.

I got my line set and placed a piece of shrimp on the hook. The crew was helping by putting a “chum ball” around the shrimp then tossing the lot - hook, shrimp, and chum ball - into the ocean.

A word about Chum. For you landlubbers and non-fisher types (says the city-boy from Calgary), Chum is any type of scraps that is used to attract fish. The chum ball looked like a mixture of fish food, some sort of meal, and oats. The crew would grab a handful out of a large tub and pack it around the shrimp like a snowball. There were also chum bags full of frozen fish guts and tails that the crew hung of the back of the boat. As a result, there was a constant wake of little pieces of fish disgustingness floating behind the boat, as the frozen chum slowly melted, and dozens of fish trailing the waters looking for a free meal.

My first attempt at surface fishing was a failure. The theory is that you are supposed to slowly let the line out as the hook and chum ball float away from the boat. The chum falls apart in the water, attracting fish and exposing the “piece de résistance” - the delicious piece of shrimp at the centre. Unable to resist this tasty morsel, a fish is supposed to launch themselves on the shrimp, swallowing it and the hook then running for their lives as they realize, all too late, that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that they have been caught in a trap. The fisherman will then see and feel the line moving rapidly as the fish takes off and will then reel in supper!

That is the theory. Here is the reality. I let too much line out and it got tangled with my neighbours. When I tried to reel in the hook, it created a mess and one of the mates had to cut my line to set things right. On my second attempt, I did not get tangled with my neighbours but still managed to lose the end of my line and needed another hook. By the third attempt, I had gotten the hang of letting out the line and reeling back in without getting snared and was back to just feeding the fish. I did manage to get a bit and hook a fish on about my 8th attempt. Then I had the opportunity to learn a new fishing phrase - “to be bottom rocked”. As in, “Blake, you let that fish bottom rock you.” This means that the hooked fish swims to the bottom and get the line snared on some rocks so that the line snaps. Time to go back to bottom fishing with the kids.

Back at the side of the boat, the kids had continued to feed the fish at the bottom of the reef. I think that the Wisconsin family was feeling some pity for us and they gave us a tip - try to get the bait more solidly on the hook by folding it and feeding it through the hook three or four times. It seems that these Atlantic ocean fish are real smart. If they can they will just grab the end of the bait and yank it off the hook. By getting the hook really embedded in there, the fish are more likely to swallow the whole hook. Good tip and it almost immediately paid off with both Isaac and I getting bites and making our first catch of the day. Well, I got a bite. Isaac somehow manage to hook a fish through its side but he still pulled it in. Mine was a keeper - don’t recall what type. Isaac’s was a Trigger fish and was released back into the ocean. Trigger fish are thin and oval shaped with small mouths containing small but very pointy-looking teeth. Isaac was already enjoying himself and in a very good mood but he became downright ecstatic with his first catch. Natasha was looking less enthusiastic and was getting disgusted by the fish and squid guts that would ooze out each time we put a chunk of bait on the hook.

Natasha’s mood took a turn for the worst when the captain decided to move us to a new fishing spot and a wave splashed up over the rail getting her rather wet. She was already cold, now she was cold and wet. As such, I was very happy when Tashy finally caught a fish at this new location. As it turns out, it was our biggest catch and one of the larger fish caught by anyone aboard Miss Islamorada that day. As a bonus, it was a “keep and eat” species, a Lane Snapper. However, that was the hilight of the day for Natasha, as she did not fish much afterwards and stayed inside the cabin for most of the final few hours. It did not help that she was hungry and did not want to eat. Why not, you ask? Well, I can’t blame her. You see, there was not clean water and no soap on board. If one wanted to wash some of the fish and squid guts off their hands, we were informed by the crew that we could use the “live well”. This is a tub that contained the still living fish that had been caught. For some reason, Tashy did not feel inclined to wash off the fish guts from her hands in a tub full of fish then grab a sandwich or an apple and start chowing down.

Isaac and I were still having fun even though we were not catching anything. In fact, during out last couple of stops - each stop lasted about an hour - very few fish were caught and even the Wisconsin family was not catching much. They were still catching something but only one fish about every 15-20 minutes instead of every few minutes.

Around 3:30, the boat set off for shore and we were back at the marina just about 4pm. On the way back, we heard from a couple of people how the fishing was really poor this time around. Blame it on the cool weather. One person even showed us a picture of the catch they he had taken part in on that very same boat a year earlier. About 150 yellow-tail snapper. Not sure if the picture was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t. But it does raise the question - am I not very good at fishing or do I just have rotten luck?

Onshore, the captain offered to fillet the fish for anyone who wanted it. We had only two keepers between us (most people had 4-6 fish each) but the Wisconsin family told us that we could have their fish as they had not planned on keeping it and did not have anything to carry it in. Most of what Wisconsin had caught had ended up back in the ocean but we ended up with 6 fish that we asked the captain to fillet. Enough for a meal or two. Six fish might seem like a fair amount of fish but consider that each one was about a foot long (Tashy’s might have been more like 16 inches), with the tail being three inches and the head being three inches. This leaves a thin fillet about 4-6 inches in length. Two fillets per fish for a total of 12. A single meal would require 2-3 fillets. I heard that many of the local restaurants will actually prepare your freshly caught fish for you so I think that we will try that out tomorrow. Tonight, I’m cooking the cod that I bought at the grocery store a couple of days ago and we’re going to settle in to watch Labyrinth as a sort of tribute to David Bowie, who passed away earlier this week.