Florida Snappers by Ed Valitutto

Posted on January 17, 2020 by kelli

My wife and I arrived in Florida on January 3rd and although the weather has been warm, the winds have been fierce blowing 20 – 30 mph. When they dropped below 20, I decided to do a trip on a local party boat – The Blue Heron – an 85′ boat making two 4 hour trips each day for $50.

Since they drift over a reef, fishing is done on one side only. Our trip had 13 anglers – one more than the 12 minimum required. Despite the small number of anglers, tangles and snags were common. Fortunately, the mates and the captain immediately undid tangles, tied on weights and hooks, rebaited with a sardine and unhooked your catch. I’m not used to that kind of service!

Overall, the catch was decent with almost everyone taking home some fillets. Along with several shorts, I had the three keeper snappers in the photo. That’s a mangrove snapper on the bottom, a yellowtail in the middle and a vermillion snapper on top. Especially exciting was the appearance of several 8′ reef sharks swimming alongside the boat and taking their share of the catch!

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Fishing Facts

Of the fifty United States, thirty-eight have a striped-bass record. New Jersey has the largest striped-bass record—a 78-pound 8·ounce whopper that was caught in 1982. The state with the smallest striped-bass record is Iowa. That landlocked striper weighed only 9 pounds 4 ounces and was caught in 1983.

There’s something fishy about beer these days. Fish Tail Ale is popular as ever, and New Jersey’s Flying Fish Brewery is one of the state’s largest specialty breweries. There’s also Washington’s Wild Salmon Organic Pale Ale, Florida’s Land Shark beer, Delaware’s Dogfish Head beer, and two versions of Stingray beer—a lighter version from the Cayman Islands and a dark beer from Canada.

The triangle fly is probably the most unusual of saltwater flies. It’s one of the few, if not only, flies tied to a treble hook. It’s also barely a fly at all, because hardly any material is used. It is complete after tying the two straw pearl twinkle flashes and the tiny tuft of natural squirrel, leaving an entire hook fully exposed. Incredibly this barebacked treble fly is a knockout when it comes to sea trout.