Saltwater

My recollections of past story assignments often begin with visual scenic images, but my recent trip with Captain Kyle Messier on the Crystal River seems to have changed that pattern. The spinning Lazy Susan wheel of memories is now made up of diverse game fish — lots of them. The main reason for this magical shift is that I'd never fished a Florida coastal city where fresh water springs and the nearby brackish rivers and salty bays teamed up to create such a huge ability to house so many different finny fighters.

I'd have thought I'd grown used to the "before-trip" night of anticipation and excited imaginings for a new angling destination, guide, whatever — but I had not. And so, the wee hours before my trip to Whitewater Bay (with Don Eichin and guided by Captain Bob LeMay) were ruptured by adrenal wakeups and the inevitable "counting-down" glances at the alarm clock. Over so many years, the launch ramp at Flamingo meant out front poling shallow waters for redfish and snook. This time, we'd be going in the other direction — north — to new waters for me.

Cantey Smith of Mount Pleasant joined up with some friends to go bottom fishing offshore and reeled in a fish that ties a South Carolina state record. Smith is in his 50s and has fished all over North America and in several foreign countries but it took an Aug. 3 trip out of his home port to tame the 48.5-pound gag grouper and reel in the fish of a lifetime.

By Tom Keer for Take Me Fishing

Dropper rigs are standard operating procedures for trout bums, but they are relatively uncommon in the salt. That fact always surprises me, particularly because there are so many different types of bait in the water at all times. That point was illustrated last fall when a pod of big bluefish and striped bass pushed nine different types of bait on shore. Using a dropper rig helps anglers find what bait the fish want so they can get on with the catching.

Anglers new to snook fishing should realize that the "linesider" is a tropical species, more often found in the mangrove estuaries of central and northern South America. Over thousands of years, snook have migrated to Florida as their northernmost region, although few snook exist in north Florida compared to the central and southern part of the Sunshine State.  

It seemed like ages since I'd been to Bud N' Mary's.

Though permit on the flats can be found outside the United States in such places as Roatan, Cuba, parts of the Bahamas, the Caribbean coast of Mexico's Quintana Roo province and certainly Belize, the stretch of Florida's shallows from Miami to Key West to the Marquesas invariably has the largest size permit on the planet. I've called this magic portion of Florida the Permit Coast.  The Sunshine State is the only place to catch permit on the flats in the USA.  

As Captain Ken Collette and I made our way westward across the state, we were stoked to get to Sanibel Island. We'd made plans to fish with Captain Mike Smith for snook.