Beginning in July 2020, I became a regular contributor to Wisconsin Outdoor News (WON) in "From The Little Cabin In The Woods" column.
This article was published in the WON October 1, 2021 issue. This is the last in a three-part series I wrote about our trip to Key West. The first article about lobster hunting is also up on this site, as is one about snorkeling at Looe Key.
As I sit on the porch at the Little Cabin, there is a bit of fall in the air. The bucks are beginning to rut, a bear has moved onto the property, and I am anxious to tell fall stories. However, I think I need to finish the last of the Key West adventure series. Those of you who have been following this, know that Shannon, Dan, and I went lobster hunting and snorkeling in Key West in July. As we planned the trip, I decided to book a guide to take us fishing. Shannon and Dan were all in.
I serve on the national board of directors of Ducks Unlimited. Both the CEO, Adam Putnam, and the chief operating officer, Nick Wiley, are recent transplants from Florida to Memphis, TN. Nick, served as director of Florida’s equivalent of our DNR for 14 years. Adam served Florida in the US Congress. Surely, one of them would have a contact. They did! A few short text message strings later, we were booked with Captain Desi Perez and No Doubt charters for a half -day of fishing.
We met Captain Desi at his center console fishing boat, the last morning of our trip. We left the planning up to him. I just told him we wanted lots of action. We did not care what species we caught. The mangrove snapper were in the middle of their spawning season, so we headed to a place where Desi expected to find snapper action.
You may recall that Dan caught one mangrove snapper when we visited the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, FL in February. It was the only fish we caught that day. Keeping it was out of the question, as recent red tides had affected populations, prompting the refuge to implement a catch and release policy for snapper of any kind. The situation in the Keys is much different. There is a five fish per person creel limit. According to the regulations, 10 inches is the minimum size.
I was surprised when we pulled up to a reef in open water, where there were several other charters fishing. I somehow got the idea that “mangrove snapper” defined the expected habitat. Apparently, these fish are fairly adaptive and can be found in a wide variety of aquatic situations.
Captain Desi was quiet on the way out. I have hunted and fished with many guides through the years. I have learned that sometimes there is a “warming up” period where guide and client take stock of each other to get a feel for how the day will go. Once we arrived at our fishing spot, Captain Desi swung into action. Awkwardness evaporated with a common goal.
The first order of business was to put out a block of frozen chum. This looked a lot like cross between a mineral block and ground chuck. It was in a net bag. Desi took one out of the cooler and tied it onto the stern of his boat, on the port side, where we would be fishing. The block began to disintegrate in the warm water. A plume of small bits of whatever is in the block drifted away from the boat. Immediately, clouds of small yellowtail snapper began working the chum. Their canary yellow markings sparkled in the warm morning sun.
Desi rigged up two spinning rods with chunks of ballyhoo for bait. Ballyhoo are long, narrow, silver fish with a dark pointed snouts. Dan and I were off and fishing. There was a learning curve. The idea was to let out your line until it hit bottom, or until a fish took the bait. The speed of the line coming off the spool was your clue. When the speed increased, you flipped the bail closed and set the hook. I had a little trouble getting the hang of this maneuver, as I had never used a reel before that needed to have the bail closed manually. Dan seemed to master this part easily. His issue was taking too much time to land the fish.
“Man, you gotta get that fish out of the water, before something else eats it,” Desi warned.
Absolutely on cue, Dan pulled a snapper head out of the water, blood dripping from the ragged place where its body should have been.
“Wow, what did that?” Dan asked incredulously.
“Barracuda,” Desi declared, just as one flashed through the yellowtails that were working on the chum.
We all reeled faster after that.
We caught fish hand over fist. Desi tossed the small ones back. We ran through a lot of bait Desi, fixed that by getting out a net, casting it out and hauling in a large number of ballyhoo. This maneuver was AWESOME. The way the net unfurled as he cast it, looked like some graceful ballet move. He put the newly acquired bait in his live well.
“That makes five for me,” I said at some point.
“Mama, you are at your limit,” Desi announced.
Shannon took over for me and before too long, we were all at our limits.
It was mid-morning. Shannon had remarked that we had not seen a single bottle-nosed dolphin on the Key West trip.
“Let’s take the scenic route home, “ Desi suggested. “Maybe we will see one.”
This was fine with me. I like a boat ride even more than fishing. We saw some wonderful scenery as we worked our way through backwater mangroves and islands. We did not see a dolphin, but we did see a large sea turtle.
I perched up on the captain’s seat next to Desi for the trip in, so we could talk. Desi is a Cuban American. His ancestors made the perilous 90-mile crossing from Cuba in one or another of the flotilla that landed in Key West in the last century. He is a fourth generation Conch, the term used to refer to the locals in Key West. He is the third Desi Perez. We got to meet Desi Jr. at the dock. He had grandsons, Desi IV and Domenic, in tow. Grandpa Desi was charming and affable. He helped Captain Desi clean our fish as he shared more family stories.
This was not an intense, high stakes fishing excursion. There were no trophy sailfish to battle. It was, however, exactly what we hoped for. We had asked to go where we would catch lots of fish. The weather was great, the fishing was fast and furious, the No Doubt Charter was well executed, and Captain Desi did his best to make sure we had a safe and enjoyable trip. The sailfish outing may come another day.
We had the catch shipped home. I am looking forward to another one of Dan’s fabulous fish fries in the near future, when I will get to enjoy the first mangrove snapper I have eaten.
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