The definition of sweetness… a photo essay on the Pine Island Angler blog.  Nice, nice, nice.  Check out the blog for all the goodness.

Here’s a quick photo essay from my third trip back to the Keys this year. I fished with two of my buddies Capt. Mike Bartlett of Key West and Capt. Rob Kramarz from Cudjoe Key. Both are great guides and will show you an excellent time on the water.

via The Pine Island Angler: More Key West Bonefishing, August 2010.

A sample... go to the blog and check it out.

More mining from Youtube found this recent post from the Keys of Florida.

I have not fished a Nautilus Reel… yet… but on my next trip to some warm and beautiful bit of salty water, I just might borrow one of Kristen’s reels and give it a go.  I already have one of his reels on my phone.

You have a Norwegian background?

Norwegian born, in Oslo.

So, what’s your strategy for not getting skin cancer being a Norwegian in Miami?

I use Buffs.  I was hating them, thinking people looked like fools wearing them and then I wore one and it’s the most amazing product ever. No other product comes close to it.  There are a bunch of other guys that make similar products, but they don’t work as well.

You see fishing guides smoking through them, drinking through them, it’s pretty crazy.  I’ll tell you something, when you are out there on the flats, I always used to wear long sleeves, cotton, because the soak up a little sweat and they keep you cool, and even when I wear technical stuff, I wear a cotton shirt under it just to get a little cool on it because it gets really hot here in the summer when there’s no wind.  But when you wear a Buff you don’t get a hang-over, you get a hang-over from the sun just because you are dehydrated, just like when you drink.

Nice

Tell me a little bit about Nautilus Reels.  What makes you guys unique or special, what’s the value proposition?

Right now, it is the lightness of the reel.  We hit it big with the CCF line, which, today in my book is a heavy reel, but we still sell a pile of them.  That’s an 8.7 ounce 8 wt. reel and when it was first launched was one of the lighter big game reels out there. Now, we’ve got the NV line, which is just way lighter, it’s higher dollar, but not as high dollar as some of the reels out there.

Another advantage we have is we are young guys, we are always out there looking for the new stuff; components, materials, cutting tools, software – you name it. Also, it’s our attention to detail: it is not all about functionality: Looks matter a lot, so does ease of assembly and manufacturing time. It is all a balance that affects your costs, so every time we run a part, we make changes to it, every time. Most of them are not visible to the end user, it is all to get better efficiencies in the factory and in the end, to make a better product without impacting the guy who bought one last year and wants to buy a replacement spool.  It’s going to fit.

The new NV, the NV-G series are really large arbor. For the NV 11-12, an 8.5 ounce 12 weight reel, which is about half the weight of the next comparable 12 wt. reel (ours or anyone else’s), we make the G-9 spool.  It has a huge arbor. We used to call it the Über-Arbors. You can put an 8, 9 or 10 wt. line on it and you’ve got 8.2 ounce 8 wt. reel that picks up line like the devil. A 4.5” 8 wt. reel… it’s a lot of fun

You’ve got to be out there making new products. When we got into this, we looked around and folks were changing their products every 5, 6, 7 years and the changes were  cosmetic. We made it a point to bring in a new model every year. People change their cars every 3-4 years, yet keep an outdated reel for 15!  People are still fishing cork. Cork was invented generations ago.  The main reason we use it in our CCF reel ( it’s cork and carbon fiber, that’s what the CCF stands for) is for marketing purposes. Carbon fiber is way superior to cork, but the whole big game crowd was so into cork because it is “so forgiving, compressible, has memory…” so we said, OK, let’s include cork so the big game guys can see that and say, “Hey, it’s got cork, it’s gotta be OK.”

Kristen with a bone.

Joe said he uses the featherweight.

That’s our little trout reel, and we built it big.  The featherweight soon will have a stronger drag and we’ll put cork in there so people will be satisfied, but it is a 4.5 ounce little reel, but that’s what Joe uses all the time.  You don’t need more.

I saw your Traveler’s Program (where you lend reels to folks to bring on their next trip).  That sounds awesome.  Are people taking advantage of that?

They are, but I’ll tell you it’s frustrating.  They borrow the reel, and then they don’t send it back for three months and then they don’t send a picture.  You tell them, “Guys, can you send a picture of the fish?”  They say, “No, we didn’t catch any.”  Just tell me a story, tell me about the guy that fell over the case of beer. Tell me anything. You end up with no stories half the time.

That does suck.  I’d think there would be so many people that would jump at it.

It’s an awesome program and it is non-threatening to the dealer because there is only one of each (reel model/weight).  Each gets engraved with every destination.  I’ll tell you, the 10/11 traveler is gone.  The 8/9 traveler is gone. They just never returned them.  They get charged, but they just don’t return them sometimes.  We need to find a way to get this to work better.  It’s frustrating to the guys that want the reels and can’t get them.  It’s frustrating to us. We need to put a GPS tracker on those things to get them back.

How much do you fish for bones?  Biscayne Bay is right there.

I probably get a couple days a month.  When I bonefish, I fish in Key Biscayne. Most of my bonefishing I did in Los Roques.  I lived in Venezuela for four years.  I had some buddies that fished and had little planes and we’d go out there on weekends and fish for two or three days.  You go out there on your own and you’ll catch three fish on a weekend, and you go back when you have a little more money and you hire a guide and you catch 15 fish in a morning.

Do you have a most memorable bonefish?

I invented a patentable way to tie a fly that works well in certain applications.  I tie a lot with big rabbit strips.  I was fishing with some of the guys from Kauffmans down here and we were casting… the way you tie this fly, it’s tied on the weed guard, and what was happening was I was using too light a weedguard and the fish would suck in the rabbit and the hook would stay outside its mouth.  We had two different fish eat this fly four times and they’d pick it up, the angler would come tight and clear the line and then the fly would just come out.  It happened again and again.  The guy said “This fly sucks, can we change it?”  I picked up the fly, put the hook right through the rabbit strip and I said “Cast again.”  Sure enough, he stuck the fish on the first cast. That concept didn’t work, but it was a very memorable experience.

Another FL bonefish

What rod do you pair with your Nautilus reel?

I use whatever the newest Nautilus reel is.  Right now, I’m fishing the G9’s. That’s the one I like best.  For rods, I’ll use pretty much anything US Made.  I use a lot of different rods.  On my last trip, I used a Scott S4S in a 9 weight.

I saw you actually have a section on your website called “pipeline.”  Is there anything coming down the pipeline you are particularly excited about?

The Featherweight’s are changing to a spool that looks like the G spool.  The G spool, when it has line on it, the backing sits higher than it looks like it should sit, so it looks like it floats. It promotes backing drying faster, but they also look really good.

Do you  have any parting thoughts?

Here’s my message… take a buddy fishing.  That’s the best thing you can do.  Every day we lose kids and adults from this sport.  When I go out fishing, I don’t take the hard core guy, I take the guy that doesn’t get out, the guy who hasn’t done this before.  The guy finds a new hobby he loves, the guide gets a new client, everyone wins.  There are so many guys that just do offshore fishing, but the flats fishing, its full contact… you are there in 12 inches of water and there’s a 200 pound shark that comes up and noses the propeller.  You can’t beat that.  I take my kid out, he’s 9, I’ve been taking him out since he was 1 ½ and he’ll spend the whole day on a flats boat soaking a crab and he just loves it.  It doesn’t have to be fly fishing.  Just take someone out there.

Thanks Kristen!

Dude… that’s amazing.  Now, he wasn’t fly fishing, which does add some difficulty to things, but still, an amazing few days of fishing.

…while Durney has had a few grand slam days throughout the years, he did something this time that was nothing shy of amazing.

In three days, Durney recorded 12 grand slams. He was one bonefish shy of 13.

via Virginia Beach man gets 12 grand slams in 3 days | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com.

That's some permit alright.

I assumed the fish had been killed, but that turns out not to be the case.  Here is what the journalist (Lee Tolliver) had to say:

he actually caught them at just about the same time.  they had three rods out with baits and they all got taken at the same time

he fought one while the other two sat in the rod holders and when the first was brought in, he jumped on the second and third….the captain held the others in the water until he had all three for the picture

quick snap of the camera and back in the drink they went

Well… nice. I do wonder how well a fish is going to swim away if it is knackered enough to sit on your lap for a photo op… but maybe that’s just my inexperience talking.

When it comes to Biscayne Bay and bonefish a guy who will probably come up in conversation is Joe Gonzalez.  Joe has been a guide for a long time, he knows the water, he knows the fish and he’s tagged more bonefish than I will ever catch. Joe and I recently connected via the phone  for an interview.

Bonefish release with Captain Joe

What makes the fishing in Biscayne Bay unique and what’s your favorite thing about the fishery?

What makes Biscayne Bay fishing unique, unlike the mid keys or lower keys, our flats on the north end of the bay are not as large, not as big and you can jump from flat to flat with ease until you find fish, unlike most Keys flats and banks that are massive.  We also have a very strong winter time bonefishery here, even when the temps drop below the mid-60’s.  You can still find fish, usually in large schools and have a banner day with northerly winds of up to 20 mph.  We have a gargonian type bottom, lots of sea fans and basket sponges and gargonian sponges and for some reason the fish like to hang out in those areas at that time of year.  You find a lot of fish, but you break them off.

Biscayne Bay, being at Miami’s doorstep with three million people, you would think the ecosystem would be in a deplorable state, but actually it is a pristine environment with a healthy fishery and plenty of food stores for the fish.

Biscayne Bay is known for two things… big bonefish and tough bonefish.  Does Biscayne Bay deserve that reputation?

Yes, Biscayne Bay is not an easy fishery.  Many think of calm, slick water and sunny days to be the best conditions. But ask most guides and they would usually prefer some wind and low light conditions. I myself love fishing in strong winds. The fish drop their guard and eat flies well. They move better and feed hard.

If you look at the world record books, out of 187 world records, 127 of them were caught in the US, most of the world record fish were caught in the Florida Keys and Biscayne Bay area.  A lot more people fish the Keys than Biscayne Bay, but 10 world record fish have been caught in Biscayne Bay.

Not small... not small at all (nice tag too).

Most people go down to the Keys, Islamorada, to fish.  Most of the time, people don’t think of Biscayne Bay or Miami.  You usually get people when they are coming down on business and you get them on either end of the business trip.  That’s how the start to learn about the fishery, for the most part.

What is the state of the fishery?

It seems like with the cold blast we had in January the fishery suffered a bit. We found that most of the affected areas were the back country parts of both Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay.  The exterior parts of both Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay didn’t suffer as much as far as bonefish depletion.  I fished hard for two weeks after the blast and the fishing was really good.  It was somewhat of a relief to me and to others that there are still plenty of fish around.  The press got a hold of some of the bonefish stories and exaggerated.  Most of our outside fish ran offshore, probably to the Hawks Channel area and or deeper areas to take refuge when the surf temps dropped below 60.

So yes, the fishery is not as strong as it used to be, but we’ll always be talking about how it used to be.

Another nice bonefish.

You’ve been involved in bonefish tagging for the University of Miami with over 1,300 fish tagged.  What have you learned about bonefish through that work?

It has helped understand their growth rates and movements.  Working with Dr. Jerry Alt and Mike Larkin from the University of Miami Bonefish Research Program, we do an annual bonefish census and it gives us the number of bonefish.  We learned that they live up to 20 years by taking the odilith and counting the rings, much like counting the rings of a tree. The oldest fish ever documented was about 20, according to Mike Larkin. 70% of the recaptures are within 2 miles.  The tagging program gives us an idea about the number of fish, but it is more useful in letting us know about the movements of the fish.

Mike Larkin putting in an acoustic tag.

I have also helped with acoustic telemetry, which is putting transmitters into bonefish and setting up receiver fences and every time a fish comes by it records which fish has come by.  We have learned that maybe

I don’t know if you are aware, there is a bonefish I tagged on February 11^th, I believe, 6-7 years ago… the fish was at large 10 months and it was recaptured January 31^st and it was recaptured in the middle bight of Andros.

I’m very familiar with that fish.  I didn’t know that was you!

Everybody thought that Florida bonefish were only found in Florida and that the Bahamas fish were only in the Bahamas and the Mexican fish were only in Mexico. They thought all these fish were different, separate bodies of fish. With that one fish being found down in Andros (and Kenny Knutson our of Islamorada tagged a fish 2-3 years after my fish and it was also found over there in the middle bights of Andros), so there may be a genetic link between Florida bonefish and Bahamas bonefish with that fish making a trans-Atlantic crossing… it was the longest recorded migration at 187 miles, but it was a trans-Atlantic crossing, the fish had to cross the Gulf Stream.  The closest point to where this fish was tagged is Bimini, which is 48-50 miles across the ocean and once the fish is in Bimini it is up on the Bahamian Bank.

I was invited by Venezuela, through the University of Miami, to fish in Los Roques and introduce the same tagging program we have here in Florida.  The asked me to go, I packed and went.  The fishery down there, the different camps and lodges and guides, it isn’t a happy place… folks don’t get along.  I was able to go down there as kind of an ambassador.  I speak the lingo, I speak Spanish fluently and I was able to go down there and make some peace between these guys and help everyone get on the same page and help everyone realize that by tagging bonefish, it is making the whole business down there a little bit more environmentally friendly.  They were very receptive and with me being a guide they were able to relate to me. I was on their same level.  It was a real good experience.  The main guy that pioneered the bonefishing down there is a guy named Alex Gonzalez.  People either like him or hate him.  They’ve started a tagging program and they are starting to be able to estimate numbers, get growth rates, and do what we’ve done here.  It was great being down there.

When I went down there I thought it was going to be easy.  I’ll tell you what… it was hard to get the fish to eat.  When I was on my own… now, I know how to strip, I know how to feed a fish… I thought, but I’d try it and they’d spook and I’d work with one of the guides and they knew how to read their fish better than I did because they were their fish. It was crazy.  It’s like starting all over again.  It showed me that there are things you know from being on the water that are special and unique to each place.

Nice FL bone with a dark, dark back.

The more you are on the water, the more odd and unique things you get a chance to see.  What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen out there?

One of the weirdest things I’ve seen is bonefish being prayed on by porpoise. I’ve seen propose corralling bonefish up on the flats and it’s not a pretty sight.  It’s interesting, because it is nature taking its course.  It is the only time I’ve seen bonefish coming out of the water and not bibbling, as they do in the Bahamas (kind of a rolling thing that bonefish sometimes do).  When a pod of porpoise were chasing a school of bonefish and I saw a couple of bonefish go airborne trying to escape.

Bibbling, I’ve seen that down in Los Roques too.  Bonefish sometimes, when they come off a flat and they are in a deep channel, they’ll do what they call in the Bahamas “bibbling,” kind of a rolling on the surface.

Another thing, they say that bonefish are really spooky and guides and anglers get upset when boats run close by and spook fish.  Believe it or not, there are flats that have a lot of boat traffic, especially on the weekends, but the fish have evolved to get used to the noise… believe it or not, I’ve caught fish on flats despite having boats up on the flats because the wakes from the boats loosed the bottom and it makes it easier for the bones to find shrimp, crabs and crustaceans   I’ll tell my anglers to look for the muds in the muds.  I’ll be on the edges of the channels and the boats will come by and create a lot mud, but the fish are in the mud making mud.  You are in fresh mud looking for new puffs of mud. It’s kind of weird telling my anglers to look for mud inside mud, but when you find it, it’s a gimme.

One really weird thing… and this was real… I was out with a friend of mine off of Key Largo in the early 90’s and I saw a bonefish with its head out of the water. It looked like it was walking on its tail.  We approached it slowly, thinking it was dying or dead, but when we popped up next to it, it swam away… and no, I wasn’t high or drunk. Never, ever have I seen a fish doing that.

What’s your most memorable bonefish?

My most memorable bonefish… I was fishing with a guy named Mike Swerdlow, who’s been doing it forever with some of the best guides in the Keys since the 70’s. Mike’s the kind of guy that, when fishing together would screw me up a bit because he wouldn’t let me get close to the fish so he could make a 70-90 foot cast and usually that isn’t a high percentage shot with most of my clients, but Mike is different. He wants the hero shot, at 100 feet, and what’s funny, is that he can make it. We were fishing an area in Biscayne Bay called Feathervit Bank in the early 90’s when there was a fair number of big fish in that area and we spotted a single fish, up on the bank, tailing.  We had been fishing deeper water for mudding fish so he had on a relatively large epoxy fly that was popular back then and was too heavy to throw at tailing fish, but he asked me pole up to that fish and give him a try. It was a small window of opportunity and we didn’t want to lose it. So, I went ahead and polled up to the fish, but I told Mike the fly was inappropriate, but he insisted on not changing the fly that would have been far better in 2.5 feet of water as opposed to 12 inches. He made the cast with that big epoxy fly and put it about a foot from the fish with a big plop and the fish jumps on the fly, runs 100 yards west on the bank with the line making a bonefish rooster tail all the way. I wish I could have videoed that fish.  It is still vivid in my mind.  It is moments like these that we live for, dream about and spend countless amounts of monies and time for that feeling.

The tailing fish…. One solo fish… back out of the water fish… that’s the highest, the pinnacle… and to do it with the wrong fly on a long cast… it was that scenario… never in a million years would I think the guy was going to catch the fish… and to have it happen and it was probably an 11-12 pound bonefish.

What’s your favorite rod/reel?

I’ve been using the Nautilus Featherweight.  I love those reels.

As far as rods, I’ve been using the S4S in an 8 wt. with a matching Nautilus reel.

A Nautilus from Sam Root at Salty Shores

Thanks for the great interview Joe. Great stuff.

Additional thanks to Sam Root of Salty Shores for some of these pics.

A little article about the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association (the website touts a 2007 event, meaning they spend more time on the water than at the computer).

About five years ago the Upper Keys had a hatch where the number of guides almost doubled to over 300 that work between Key Largo and Islamorada during the prime tarpon fishing months of May and June. While the numbers of fishing guides in the area have soared, the quality of the guides have dropped, Burke said.

“There’s still only a limited number of guides who do this business well,” he said. “That’s why it’s good to hire a guide that is a member of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association when you come down to Islamorada. The fishing is great every month of the year, but only about 25 percent of the guides are seasoned, knowledgeable and going to provide the quality fishing experience that will create lasting memories.”

via Keys guides protect their own – ESPN.

This is the description from Vimeo:

This video was shot in June 2009 by Gabriel Bendersk, a talented and able filmmaker from Argentina. Scott Olson, Patagonia Fly Fishers was fishing with his friend, Martin Carranza, a tremendous guide and also owner of some fishing lodges in Patagonia, Argentina and also Northern Argentina. The tremendous power of a bonefish relative to it’s size can only be described as Martin said: “This is formula one!” The music used is symphonic from a Ralph Vaughn Williams symphony. Scott edited and uploaded the video to Vimeo.

Tournaments are a new thing for me to even think about.  I tend to think “Bass Master” instead of fly fishing.  It seems in the salt, tournaments are much more accepted and embraced.

(Jun. 29, 2010 – Islamorada, Florida Keys)… “Right now fishing is off the charts and if it stays this way our tournament promises to be one of the most outstanding competitions of the year,” said Sandy Moret about the Florida Keys Outfitters/IGFA Inshore World Championship in July.

via FishingWorld.com – News Center.

The tournament is July 13-15. For more information, contact Sandy Moret at 305-664-5423, or via e-mail at sandy@floridakeysoutfitters.com.

(you can see Sandy talk about some bonefishing flies here)

Friend and new Florida resident Derek Rust caught a few bones from the beach yesterday along the East Coast of Florida.

Derek's beach bonefish

That wasn’t his only fish of the morning… so Derek is doing his part to dispel the notion of the impossible Florida bonefish.

Saw a story this morning on Moldy Chum about the (FL) Bonefish Census.

I wonder if they sent armies of old guys out to the flats where no bonefish were counted to ask why they had not returned their census… might have something to do with the higher numbers.