New to fishing? Now is the best time to learn
If you ever wanted to get a child, a partner or a friend into fishing, now is the time to head to the nearest Everglades canal.
“Right now’s just a good time to go fishing, and it will be through May,” said captain Alan Zaremba, explaining that low water levels in Everglades marshes have forced a variety of fish species to move into the canals that criss-cross the Everglades in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
“It’s a great time to take kids out and show them how to catch fish on artificial lures. You want to keep them busy and having tugs. That’s what hooks fishermen for life.”
The low water levels make for outstanding fishing for native species like largemouth bass, bluegills, crappie (known locally as speckled perch) and warmouths, as well as exotic species including peacock bass, oscars, Mayan cichlids and jaguar guapotes.
Zaremba, of Hollywood, said that one of the best places to launch a boat is at Broward County’s recently upgraded Everglades Holiday Park at the end of Griffin Road and U.S. Highway 27. He said the L-67A Canal, which runs south from the park all the way to Tamiami Trail, is full of fish, as is the Tamiami canal.
The canal along the west side of U.S. Highway 27 north of Interstate 75, which has several boat ramps, has provided Zaremba’s customers with 100-fish days. The canals along Alligator Alley also have been productive.
Access is available at boat ramps at the Miami Canal rest area, plus two ramps east of there and two ramps west of the area.
Although many anglers and fishing guides believe live bait such as shiners or nightcrawlers is the best way to catch fish, Zaremba (www.worldwidesports fishing.com) said his customers catch everything in the canals using lures.
“Jerkbaits will always do very well,” said Zaremba. “Sometimes they love topwater plugs like Torpedoes and Pop-Rs. Largemouths will eat more plastic worms and stick worms. If you want to catch a lot of panfish like bluegills, warmouths and Mayans, Beetle-Spins will tear them up.
“It’s also a good time to catch fish on a fly rod. I’ve been throwing poppers, but you can throw (weighted flies such as) Deceivers and Clouser minnows. All of that works right now, it depends on what you want to catch. Woolly buggers will catch a variety of fish: warmouth, crappie, peacocks, jaguar guapotes.”
When fishing a jerkbait such as a Bagley Minnow B or floating Rapala, Zaremba said to initially twitch the lure on the surface two or three times so it acts as a topwater bait. If you don’t get a bite, retrieve the lure under the surface with a series of rapid jerks, which triggers peacock bass as well as largemouths. A stop-and-go series of jerks will get more bites from oscars and Mayans.
He also said to adjust your retrieve based on what the fish prefer. Sometimes they like it twitched and sometimes they like it moving below the surface.
“You’ve just got to pay attention to what’s in front of you,” Zaremba said.
Do that and you will be hooked, along with your favorite new fishing buddy.
LOCAL SWORDFISH TRAVELS
Swordfish caught this time of year off South Florida apparently like to travel to Canada for the summer according to recently revealed data provided by two tagged fish.
Last May, two boats competing in the inaugural Gray Fishtag Research Swordquest tournament each caught a swordfish, placed a satellite tag in their fish’s dorsal fin, revived the fish and released it.
This past Wednesday, the data from the tags was presented to anglers at RJ Boyle Studio in Lighthouse Point by biologist Eric Orbesen of the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Research Center in Key Biscayne.
An 80-inch, estimated 240-pound fish caught May 1 by Chris Koulouvaris on Mine’s Bigger collected data for 242 days before the tag was released on Dec. 29 and floated to the surface, where the information was uploaded to a satellite. That fish swam up the Atlantic coast, hung around a no-fishing protected area by Nova Scotia, then swam straight south to Grand Cayman, where the tag was jettisoned.
Barron Libasci, fishing on Forever Dusky with captain Bouncer Smith, tagged a 72-inch, 125pound swordfish that swam more than 2,600 miles in 186 days before being caught in the North Atlantic Ocean by a Spanish long-line boat in November.
The boat returned the expensive satellite tag, which will allow Orbesen to retrieve all the data off the tag — more than five million depth and temperature readings.
Tags that float to the surface can send only a fraction of the data they collect. In addition, by returning the used tag to the tag manufacturer, a new one will cost only $2,000 instead of $4,000.