This year we were without Dr. T. Todd Jones. He was busy defending his thesis and preparing for his move to Hawaii for a new job with NOAA National Marine Fisheries. So Capt. Stev-O, Dupe and Myself loaded up and headed down to the lower Keys. Weather was perfect, light winds, clear skies and good tides. We started off the first days evening sesh at what’s come to be an old reliable bonefish flat. Fairly quickly I had a bonefish hooked up, was just a little one but got the trip going. We saw a few more but with the sun setting and the tide dropping fast it was time to push the boat to deep water and head back. When we arrived back at our trailer, our neighbors, a Cuban family were cooking up a mess of Mango snapper. Before we could get our steaks on the grill, the Grandmother had brought us 3 fried mango snaps. They cooked them whole, scaled, gutted, salted and fried. They were actually very good, although looked very shady. A few minutes later one of the daughters brought over some shrimp alfredo linguine. We matched that up with our steaks and we were stuffed. The next morning we anchored up on a bridge to fish for snapper, grouper, or tarpon. We caught nothing. As the sun got higher we moved back to north to the islands that have been so productive. First we pushed into the Bahama flat, it took a little bit but with the tidal push came the bones. We had some sweet shots and caught a couple before it shut down. We then moved around the island and pushed into the point, and held position in the current. It was ON! Bonefish after bonefish moved through, and we hooked up several. We had 3 nice permit move down the line but were unable to get the bait in from of them, and they spooked off like rockets. I couldn’t believe how many fish we saw just by poling back and forth on the point, was amazing. I believe we finished our day here, it was way too productive to leave. On the way back in we hit our snapper/grouper spot and put a few lane snappers in the box for dinner. They turned out very good. That night we did some shark fishing with no luck whatsoever, so we polished off the rum. We fished the same spots with a couple nice bones caught on the final day, the weather again was picture perfect. This year we really got the best of this area, no complaints! Looking forward to Labor Day back at sweetwater, if we pull it off….SB
