Related Articles

No Related Info

Tags

• Where to Fish
• When to Fish
• How to Fish
• What to Use
• What to Wear
• Tactics for Summer
• Cleaning & Cooking
• Inshore
• Offshore
• Flats
• Tactics for Saltwater

Hill has me change rigs again, and I luck into a blue runner (No. 7). Yet another change gets me a smashing hit from a barracuda, but I can’t stick the hooks. Still, I’m up to seven species.

Back on shore I grab lunch and return to Robbie’s, where I paddle one of their kayaks out to a mangrove creek on the Gulf side of the key. I’ve been instructed to go past the second bend, tie off to a branch, drop a chum bag, and toss a lightly weighted live shrimp into the slick.

The creek is narrow and shady with a deceptively quick current, but I’m comfortable in this setup because I fish Barnegat Bay from a kayak back home in New Jersey. That’s also why the feel of a fly landing on my inner thigh as I sit spread-eagled in the ’yak doesn’t seem out of place. I am concentrating on the fishing and try to shake the fly off without taking my eyes from my line. When it doesn’t move and I look down to see not a fly but a silver dollar–size crab disappearing up my shorts leg, I nearly capsize.

I quickly remove the crab, the creek eventually settles back down, and the orange-finned schoolmasters and gray (mangrove) snappers smack the shrimp. That brings my species count up to nine; my phantom-itch count in bed that night reaches about 3,000.

Days 3 and 4: Too Many Snook

When I was 15 years old, I was fascinated by the book A Journey to Matecumbe by Robert Lewis Taylor. In it the young Davey Burnie travels by dugout canoe through the Everglades on his way to the Florida Keys, sleeping on island hummocks and eating stew made from alligators that were captured by Seminoles.

What backcountry guide Jim Willcox and I are looking at, however, is nothing so mundane as a gator. It is an American crocodile, a 12-footer resting in the dappled shade of the mangroves out here where the Everglades meet Florida Bay. This is one of about a thousand crocodiles that inhabit the southern tip of Florida, and Willcox has beached the bow of his 18-foot Action Craft flats boat on the island so we can get a better look at it.

American crocs are a threatened species, downgraded from the endangered list last year. Right now, though, I’m the species that feels unsafe. The croc is 30 feet away.

“That’s a big one,” says Willcox. “But even big ones are fast.” I shift my weight from starboard to port to make sure that the hull isn’t stuck fast in the marl.

We’ve motored about an hour from Bud N’ Mary’s Marina in Islamorada through Florida Bay to get to this maze of islands, shoals, broad expanses of water, and snakelike creeks. Willcox, 52, seems to know every inch of it.

The day before, Willcox and I had fished a number of patch reefs—isolated coral outcroppings within a mile or two of shore—and added eight species to the list. Willcox wanted to fish the backcountry today so I could reach my halfway point.

And we’ve done well. So far today I’ve caught sea catfish (No. 18), jack crevalle (No. 19), spotted seatrout (No. 21), snook (No. 22) and, in a model of fishing efficiency, a 100-pound bull shark (No. 23) that ate a ladyfish (No. 20). I also jumped and lost a tarpon, but my self-imposed IGFA tournament rules dictate that a fish isn’t considered caught unless I bring it close enough for me to touch the leader.