Nine expert hunters share their secrets for outsmarting the spookiest late-season honkers
How wary are late-season geese? “I’ve seen them flare from a field full of live birds because a nearby clump of cornstalks looked too much like a hunter’s blind,” says Hard Core Decoys pro staffer Matt Ward. Avery pro Laurence Mauck adds that a single honk too many from you can send an otherwise committed flock sliding out of range. So how do you score on honkers this goosey? Here are the pros’ top tricks.
1. Scout the hunters
Scouting birds is critical now, and you want to mimic exactly what you’re seeing. But Mauck also scouts his competition. “These geese catch on to what other guys are doing fast,” he says. If they’re running big spreads of full bodies, he’ll try a smaller spread of silhouettes. If they’re all blowing short-reed calls, he’ll bust out a flute.
2. Don’t shoot
If you fire into a big flock, you’ll educate 50 birds to kill a few, says Mauck. “We shoot only at the smaller groups. If a big flock lands in the decoys, we’ll let them get comfortable, then we’ll let the dog out to push them off gently. Or we may ask the farmer to drive into the field.” And once you get your geese, get out quick. “All the birds that come to your field later will have no idea what happened earlier.”
3. Quit the field
“I watch guys struggle to kill birds in the fields now, so I hunt water a lot,” says Ward. After the morning feed, geese break up and head to water to loaf. “I’ll set up on a sandbar with two dozen full-body feeders, four dozen floaters, and a bunch of sleepers. Geese need grit as much as food and water, so look for spots with exposed sand or gravel, and set up right there.”
4. Back off
Late-season geese tend to be call-shy, so tone it down. “When I’m hunting water, where sound really carries, I like a lower-toned call like the Toxic ADM, and I stick to mostly soft clucks and moans,” says Ward.
If Mauck knows he’s in the right place, he may not call at all. “Otherwise, I use mostly ground clucks, light moans, and growls—and only when the geese aren’t facing me.”
5. Mix it up
Don’t keep hunting the same spots with the same spread, says Mauck. “Borrow some decoys, swap blinds with some buddies, or leave the blinds at home and hunker down in a ditch or natural vegetation. Do what you have to do to mix it up, because it makes a huge difference.”
– Brian Grossenbacher
6. Rest your spots
A field will burn out in just a few days now if you don’t rest it, says Mauck. “You have to let geese get back into those spots and get comfortable before you hunt there again.”
7. Sound lonely.
With so much hunting pressure, geese get separated from their flocks, and breeding pairs get split up. “A long, drawn-out, lonesome honk will pull these birds in,” says Ward. “You want to sound like another bird that wants company.”
8. Move the blinds
It’s typical to position layout blinds side by side on the upwind edge of the spread, and then surround them with decoys. But that creates a pattern that late-season geese quickly come to recognize from above, according to Mauck. “Pull your layout blinds out of the spread, or split them up, so they don’t make that pattern.”
9. Push the pocket
Most goose hunters put the shooting pocket right in front of themselves. But in the late season, Mauck will set up crosswind and push the pocket to the downwind side. “This way, if geese flare at the last second or after you shoot,” Mauck explains, “they will use the wind to gain altitude, and instead of showing you their tails, they’ll cross broadside right in front of you.”
Written by Dave Hurteau for Field & Stream and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.
Served with a side of charred cabbage, this riff on a classic spring dish is a gobbler game-changer
This turkey isn’t technically “corned,” or preserved, but a three-day steep in a pickling-spice-infused brine gives it the unmistakable tang of corned beef, that springtime staple. The ultra-gentle poaching technique—cooking the meat at less than a simmer—yields lush, juicy turkey breast, with just a blush of pink at the center. With a crispy, smoky finish, the charred vegetable amps up the springtime feel. Adapted from a recipe by the Sicilian-born chef Christian Puglisi, this slightly crazy method of cookery treats cabbage like a steak, producing a seared, flavorful edge and a tender center. Carrots with parsley or roasted potatoes would nicely round out this dish.
Ingredients | Serves 4
For the Corned Turkey
1 boneless, skinned wild turkey breast half (2 to 31⁄2 lb.)
1 cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
3 cloves
3 bay leaves, torn into pieces
2 Tbsp. mustard seeds
2 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1 Tbsp. celery seeds
1 Tbsp. fennel seeds
1 Tbsp. juniper berries, crushed
1 Tbsp. black peppercorns
1 Tbsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. dried thyme
1⁄2 cup salt
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
4 garlic cloves, smashed
1 slice fresh ginger, about the size of a quarter
For the Vinaigrette
1 Tbsp. whole-grain mustard
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar, divided
1⁄2 small shallot, minced
1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1⁄8 tsp. liquid smoke
For the Cabbage
1⁄2 head of cabbage
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Steps to Make Corned Wild Turkey Breast
Seasoned Soak Brine the turkey in a bowl or sealable bag for three days. Christina Holmes
Make the pickling spice: Combine the cinnamon stick, cloves, bay leaves, mustard seeds, coriander, celery, fennel, juniper, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and thyme in a small bowl, and use your fingers or a fork to mix the spices evenly.
Make the brine: Bring 4 cups water to a boil in a medium pot. Add the 1⁄2 cup salt, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, and 2 tablespoons of the pickling spice. (You’ll have some left over.) Stir until the salt and sugar dissolve, then allow the mixture to cool fully. Once it’s cooled, place the turkey breast and the brine in a sealable plastic bag. (The bones can puncture a bag, so double-bagging—or keeping the bag inside a bowl—is recommended.) Brine the turkey in the refrigerator for three to four days, turning the bag daily.
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Remove the turkey from the brine and rinse thoroughly under cold running water, brushing off most of the spice mix. Slide the turkey into the pot, and turn the heat to its lowest setting. You want the meat to cook at less than a simmer, just a very gentle poach. Cover and check the meat with an instant-read thermometer after 45 minutes. When the thermometer reads 150 degrees at the thickest part, transfer the breast to a cutting board.
While the turkey is poaching, make the vinaigrette: Whisk together the mustard, 1 tablespoon of the vinegar, and the shallot in a small bowl. Whisking all the while, drizzle the olive oil into the bowl until the mixture is smooth and emulsified. Stir in the liquid smoke, season with salt and pepper, and set aside.
Char the cabbage: Set a cast-iron skillet over high heat. Add the oil, and then add the cabbage half, cut-side down. Sear the cabbage, without disturbing it, for about 13 minutes. (If you have a vent hood, turn it on; the cabbage will smoke.)
You’re looking for a profoundly blackened surface, so don’t worry about burning it. Turn the cabbage over and reduce the heat to medium-low. After a few minutes, add the butter. Once it’s melted, use a spoon to baste the blackened side of the cabbage with it, tilting the pan to get as much butter as possible. Cook this way, basting every few minutes or so, for a total of 15 to 20 minutes, or until there’s little resistance when you pierce the cabbage with a knife or skewer. Turn off the heat. Baste the cabbage with any butter remaining in the pan, then sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of vinegar over the top. Salt and pepper generously.
To serve, slice the corned turkey breast and fan the slices on four plates. Divide the cabbage into four wedges, and lightly drizzle the vinaigrette over the cabbage and the turkey breast. Serves 4
Written by Jonathon Miles for Field & Stream and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.
Thanks to a burgeoning conservation ethic, many saltwater anglers choose to release their catches. Others do so because of fishery-management rules, or because it’s required in tournament regulations. As a result, anglers release many, many saltwater fish every year. But just how many?
In my home state of Georgia, anglers released more than 1 million red drum during 2018, according to the Marine Recreational Information Program. For the entire United States, that number climbs to 18 million redfish released. The MRIP estimate for the number of released fish of all species during 2018 is an astounding 605 million.
While we optimistically believe that most of these fish survive, the reality is much more complicated.
Multiple factors, often combined, determine the fate of a released fish, such as how the fish was caught and handled, the fish’s environment, and ecological conditions—including predation. These interactions are unique to each species and situation.
Given the importance of the angler in this complex interaction, biologists and regulators have expended much effort to develop guidelines for catch-and-release fishing. These angling best practices, when used, markedly increase post-release survival. For many years, these methods remained simple and were based on common sense, such as handling a fish with wet hands.
Today, after hundreds of studies evaluating the effects of everything from hook type to handling devices, these best practices have evolved. The studies validate the benefits of some well-known techniques yet reveal that some methods and behaviors are more harmful than once believed.
The Point of the Matter
Hooking injury is considered a primary cause of post-release mortality. Ideally, a fish should be hooked in or around the immediate area of the mouth—lip, tongue, jaw hinge—or just inside the oral cavity. Most lures with single or treble hooks achieve that outcome. However, treble hooks also can injure a fish’s eye or result in foul-hooking.
Popular Science
Conventional J hooks, when used with natural or synthetic scented baits, can be swallowed deeply into the throat or digestive tract. Pulling on a hook lodged in such a location can cause injury to the heart, liver, gill arch, kidneys, stomach and intestines. Attempts to remove the hook only increase the severity of such injuries.
Research backs up the long-standing belief that removing hooks that are not easily accessible in the mouth region should be avoided. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in its guidance for fishermen, references an agency study that showed four of 12 deep-hooked snook died when anglers removed embedded hooks, compared with zero mortality when leaders were cut and hooks left intact. Fish can dislodge, expel or simply render a hook inert, especially if it’s made of a material such as bronze, which degrades quickly from the combined effects of salt water and the fish’s body chemistry.
Happily, the number of deep-hooked fish has declined dramatically in recent years due to the revival of an ancient hook design. When rigged and used properly, circle hooks penetrate the lip or jaw-hinge area, causing minimal anatomical damage yet producing a strong connection point. Furthermore, studies show that inline circle hooks—those having the point aligned with the shaft—prove most effective at reducing deep-hooking.
In a 2007 South Carolina Department of Natural Resources study, researchers compared the performance of a J hook, an offset circle hook and an inline circle hook used on subadult red drum. Inline circle hooks attached in the jaw, tongue or inside of the mouth area in 90 percent of the fish. Offset circle hooks resulted in mouth- or jaw-hooking 80 percent of fish, and J hooks, 60 percent. Inline circles also generated the lowest rate of subadult mortality: 2 percent. Researchers found similar results with adult red drum, where the circle hook performed better than the J hook.
Despite these conservation benefits, circle hooks don’t work in every angling situation. When J hooks are needed, anglers should opt to use the smallest size—in length, width and wire diameter—to minimize fish injury. They should also consider barbless versions because removing a barbed J hook usually takes longer, thereby increasing handling time.
Time Matters
Fish lead active lives chasing prey and escaping predators. At the same time, they must adapt to varying extremes in their environment. Every species has its physiological tolerances, but those tolerances have limits.
Once a hooked fish starts resisting, a stress response begins that can interfere with normal respiration and alter the fish’s body chemistry. The longer the duration of the stress response, the more likely there will be long-term or permanent negative effects.
Popular Science
A 2010 Florida study compared several stress-indicator blood-chemistry parameters in subadult and adult tarpon caught on hook-and-line gear with that of tarpon resting at a holding facility. Experimental treatments included holding the hooked fish vertically versus horizontally, and exposing them to ambient air for 60 seconds compared with leaving them in the water. In this study, the duration of time between hooking and landing had more effect than handling time and method on stress-indicator levels.
A fight of even short duration can exhaust a fish, impairing its ability to evade predators and carry on with life as usual. Research has shown that a significant source of postrelease mortality in tarpon and bonefish is shark predation. The time needed to recover full function varies from species to species and can be greatly influenced by factors such as water temperature.
Holding a lethargic fish in the water with its head into the current can help accelerate its recovery. Once the fish resists, release it.
The take-home message: Choose tackle that allows you to bring the fish to hand in the least amount time yet provides for the enjoyment of successfully angling the fish. When I target adult red drum, I plan to have them to the boat in five minutes or less. If you choose to use light tackle for large fish, do so with the recognition that you’re consciously increasing the chances that the fish will perish.
Landing Gear
Once anglers subdue fish, they have a responsibility to release them in the most expedient manner. Some species can be more sensitive to the effects of handling than others.
In contrast to the 2010 study on tarpon, mentioned above, a 2016 Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences study showed that removing white marlin from the water and exposing them to air had a more pronounced effect than fight duration on postrelease survival for that species. Research also has revealed that warm air can quickly dry delicate gill filaments, causing them to become nonfunctional.
Popular Science
If you choose to bring a fish into the boat before release, preferred options include the use of hands to lip grippers to landing nets—never gaffs. Wet, gloved hands or a handheld wet towel can effectively control small- to medium-size fish such as seatrout and bonefish but can be inadequate for larger, more vigorous animals. When using hands, always keep the fish in a horizontal position supporting its weight, and avoid any contact with the gills and eyes, which can be easily damaged.
Lip grippers, such as the BogaGrip, have steadily grown in popularity, but their design often tempts anglers to support the entire weight of the fish vertically. Research has shown that doing so can cause debilitating injury to mouth parts, internal organs and skeletal structure, especially for larger fish. When using grippers, support the fish’s weight with a hand under its abdomen.
A 2009 Australian study of barramundi (20 to 40 inches in length) handled with lip grippers provides some perspective. Researchers lifted 10 fish vertically without any additional support—all the fishes’ weight was supported by the mouth parts. Eleven were lifted in a horizontal position with a hand supporting the belly of the fish. Lifting fish using grippers without support increased the severity of mouth injury and altered the alignment of vertebrae, which did not return to normal for three weeks.
Landing nets, used frequently for small- to medium-size species, offer many advantages such as reducing fight time, controlling fish movement to allow for hook removal and preventing the fish from being dropped. Yet landing nets also can potentially harm fish by removing the protective mucus layer, dislodging scales and damaging fins.
Recognizing this, most net manufacturers offer a knotless rubber model, some with the further modification of a flat bottom to prevent fish from rolling in the net and damaging fins. Another study of barramundi in 2008 showed that a landing net of this design resulted in significantly less fin damage and abrasions when compared with a traditional knotted net.
Pressure Drop
Many species most prized by saltwater anglers live near the ocean bottom, sometimes in extreme depths. Granted, we usually pursue them as table fare, so catch-and-release is not typically the targeted outcome. But in today’s world of restrictions on size, quantity and season, releasing reef fish has become part of our new reality—as are the challenges of ensuring postrelease survival for an animal pulled up from 20 fathoms.
Species such as snappers and groupers have air bladders, which allow them to make fine-scale adjustments in their buoyancy. However, when we rapidly pull these fish from the seafloor to the surface, an uncontrolled expansion of their air bladders can cause barotrauma.
Popular Science
Most anglers know the symptoms: bulging eyes, stomach protruding from the mouth, a distended abdomen, and lack of equilibrium when returned to the water. When released, these fish can’t submerge, which makes them easy pickings for predators. In addition, prolonged barotrauma causes irreversible anatomical damage and extended physiological stress, often leading to death.
For many years, anglers have been advised to treat barotrauma in a fish by venting—puncturing its air bladder with a hollow needle. However, venting causes injury, creating additional stress and an opportunity for infection. If you choose to vent, be sure to do it properly. There’s no doubt venting beats simply discarding a fish with severe barotrauma, but there’s a better way.
Popular Science
Several devices on the market now allow anglers to lower the fish to depth, allowing it to recompress, alleviating the effects of barotrauma (visible and nonvisible). Additionally, these devices return fish to an environment of optimal conditions while hopefully bypassing some of those hungry predators. Collectively known as descending devices, these products have proved to increase postrelease survival in bottomfish.
In a 2015 Gulf of Mexico study, red snapper returned to the seafloor with a descending device fared better than fish that were vented or untreated. Survival rates for descended fish rose during summer, when sea-surface temperatures exceeded those at the seafloor. Research has also shown the benefits of descending devices for Pacific rockfish, reef fish in Australia and even walleye in freshwater lakes.
Descending devices hold such great promise for improving bottomfish survival that the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council has requested the National Marine Fisheries Service make a rule requiring anyone who possesses or is fishing for snapper-grouper species have such a device on board. If approved by the Secretary of Commerce, this requirement will go into effect sometime in 2020.
Choice or Law?
Fishery management and catch-and-release fishing succeed only when a high percentage of released fish survive. Thanks to years of study and on-water experiences, we now have angling best practices that, when followed, maximize survival chances. The quandary becomes whether to mandate the use of some or all of these angling best practices or to rely solely on voluntary compliance. Not surprisingly, angler opinion is divided.
Government entities, conservation groups and the marine industry invest vast sums of money and effort in promoting angling best practices. In some jurisdictions and fisheries, these government entities mandate the use of some types of tackle and gear or disallow certain activities.
For example, circle hooks must be used for billfish, sharks, reef fish, and striped bass in some areas and situations. Federal regulations prohibit marlin or sailfish from being removed from the water, if the fish won’t be kept. Florida law also forbids anglers from removing tarpon over 40 inches from the water.
Whether by choice or legal mandate, anglers have the responsibility to use best practices and to advocate their use to others. This might mean changing behaviors and postponing the catch of the next fish for the benefit of the one in hand. After all, a fish that survives after release is a potential future catch. And we are always looking forward to that next catch.
Tagging Tales
Determining the postrelease survival of fish caught on hook-and-line gear can be daunting. The study methods themselves—taking blood samples, marking, handling, confinement—can mask or amplify the effects of the catch.
Ideally, the fish should suffer the least amount of additional stress and be released into the same environment from which it was caught as quickly as possible. Oh, and yes, the scientist must be able to determine if the fish remains alive or dies during a minimum of 24 hours—and, ideally, for weeks, if not months.
This was once thought impossible, but not anymore, thanks to technological advances in batteries, microcircuitry and satellite communications. Acoustic telemetry and pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) have revolutionized scientists’ ability to document the fate of hook-caught-and-released fish.
In a 2015 North Carolina study, researchers used externally attached acoustic tags to document the fate of scamp, snowy grouper and speckled hind caught from depths of 200 feet and treated with a descending device. Previous knowledge suggested that any fish brought up from those depths perished. However, this study reported a 50 percent survival rate after 14 days, showing that recompression can increase postrelease survival in deepwater species.
PSATs have been used in multiple studies of billfish and tunas, species that are notoriously difficult to study with conventional methods. One such project using these tags on juvenile bluefin tuna revealed almost 100 percent postrelease survival, and concluded that the recreational catch-and-release troll fishery for school-size Atlantic bluefins does not represent a significant source of fishing mortality.
Best Practices
For more information about properly releasing fish, consult these resources:
myfwc.com (click on “saltwater fishing,” then “fish handling”)
About the Author
Capt. Spud Woodward retired in 2018 after 34 years with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources serving in various positions from senior biologist to division director. He is the vice chairman for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and a member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
Written by Capt. Spud Woodward/Sportfishing Mag for Popular Science and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.
Why a brewer of fine beers is fighting to keep our water sparkling, our trout frisky, and our brews crisp.
Way back when, about 11 years ago, long before quality craft beer in a can was much of a thing, Upslope co-founder Henry Wood was catching up with his old NOLS instructor colleague and pal Tom Reed—Trout Unlimited’s Angler Conservation Program Director—over a beer. Reed wanted to take the conservation group’s 1% For Rivers program national. And Wood was gearing up to do the same with their new Colorado born Craft Lager. If you’re envisioning some affirmative head-nodding you have the right idea. The gist of it? Buy a Craft Lager and one percent of the gross sales goes to the Trout Unlimited chapter in the state where you bought it. That’s “gross” not “net,” which translates to no small sum. Since just 2015, Upslope has donated $60,000 to the cause. “Beer and trout have a lot in common,” says Reed. “They both depend on clean water.”
Fishing and Craft Lager, A Great Pairing
What you drink matters. That’s true regardless of your passions, but if you’re into fly fishing, it’s especially relevant. Why wouldn’t you buy a beer that helps restore and protect rivers? Also, Craft Lager comes in cans, which are the perfect vessels for your vessel. Cans are lighter to ship, reducing the carbon footprint, and they’re easier to recycle than glass. There’s almost no waste: If Americans recycled every can, 96 percent of that aluminum would get repurposed. As for pairing, it doesn’t hurt that this crisp, straw-colored lager is sessionable. “It’s an easy drinking, 4.8 percent alcohol, American made all grain lager,” says Wood. “It’s tough to crush higher alcohol IPAs and steer a driftboat.”
The Upslope Crew Walks the Talk
Just as it’s hard to find a mountain biker or hiker that doesn’t see the value of spending an afternoon standing in a cold stream with a rod in hand, it’s hard to find an Upslope employee that isn’t willing to wade into river conservation work. “Beyond our donations to Trout Unlimited, we’ve physically done stream restoration as a company for years,” says Wood. “We coordinate with Rocky Mountain Anglers here in Boulder on Boulder Creek, and on South Boulder Creek in Eldorado Canyon State Park pulling out weeds and rebuilding banks. Our employees get two paid days off a year to donate their time to nonprofit work.”
The Smith River Thanks You
Like the Grand Canyon is to whitewater boaters, the Smith River in Central Montana is to fly fishers—one of the crown jewels. As such, it’s the only float in the nation that requires a permit—which you draw for much like choice elk habitat. To call that float “coveted” would be an understatement. But now a proposed hard rock copper mine on Sheep Creek near the put-in for the Smith is jeopardizing that storied waterway. With money that comes in part from Craft Lager sales, Trout Unlimited is paying lawyers to fight the Australian company pushing the mine and hiring an educator to travel the state singing the virtues of the Smith. “There’s a checkered history of hard rock mining in the state of Montana,” says Reed. “But even though Montana’s mining laws are friendly to international corporations we’ve given them a good fight. We don’t think that’s an appropriate place for a mine. And we aren’t alone. We have good grounds for a lawsuit. I’m hopeful that with continued support t we’ll win.”
Upslope’s Commitment Has Only Grown
Upslope is now one of only two certified B Corp breweries in Colorado, and one of only about 30 worldwide. What’s that mean for the average fly fisher in search of malted beverages? A lot actually. B Corp status depends on a commitment to three overarching promises to take care of employees, the community that the business touches, and the environment. Because Upslope has been committed to such goals since day one, it earned B Corp certification on the first bid. Now the challenge is to constantly improve to meet B Corp’s evermore exacting standards. Much of that challenge falls on Upslope Sustainability Coordinator Elizabeth Waters—who started out at the brewery in the tasting room as a bartender with an environmental degree. “Our biggest blind spot was our supply chain,” says Waters. “Unlike employee benefits and environmental initiatives, we didn’t have any set policy around how we source materials. Now we’re chipping away at it vigorously. It’s the little things that add up. And those little actionable initiatives get identified by our employees. Like when a hops supplier recently switched from non-recyclable paper bags lined with plastic to full paper. That simple move keeps tons of waste from the landfill. We hope to be 85 percent to our zero waste soon.”
The school is strung out for 300 yards, the dark mangroves of Cape Sable in the background, the water barely ruffled, broken by silver tails, heads, bellies, and entire bodies. There are dozens of fish, 100 or better, the closest within an easy cast of my Tarpon Toad. On the poling platform, my guide, Chris Wittman, shakes his head slowly, afraid to break the spell. “I hope you know how special this is,” he says softly. “You could fish a very long time and not see tarpon like this.”
The pain of missing four tarpon eats in a row, thanks to lifting the rod on the set, still stings. Now I lay out another cast to the silver kings, and let the line and fly sink. I focus on my hands and the fly reel because I don’t want to see the strike—I want to feel it. There is total silence on the boat. I tell myself I will not lift the rod tip. I will not set the hook until I feel the fish eat, turn, and run. I retrieve to the beat of a mantra in my head: strip-strike, strip-strike, strip-strike. Strike!
The tarpon leaps clear of the water the instant I feel its weight, and this time I don’t lift the rod. “Stick him!” Wittman yells. “Stick him!” I give a hard yank. The fly feels as if it’s buried in a fence, and then the tarpon skies again, shaking so violently, it flips 180 degrees. “Stick him again! Keep sticking him, Eddie!”
I stick him until he’s stuck for good, and then the leaping and the surging, the head shaking and hard charging back under the boat begins. The tarpon shows one more time—a sea-shattering 15-foot vault I meet with a deep bow to lend slack to the fly line—and the rest of the fight is a tug-of-war. It’s not a huge tarpon. It’s not even an overly large tarpon. But it is a tarpon, and when a beast like this comes to the boat with a fly in its jaw, its measure is in the angler’s heartbeat and breath rate, not inches or pounds.
Once I have broken my small-water habits, I jump three more tarpon in the next hour and fight another to the boat. The commotion finally puts the tarpon down for good, and I wipe sweat from my brow with a sleeve. My arms are quaking.
“Epic,” Wittman says. “That’s the only word that works.”
But he’s not talking to me. I catch him glancing at his pal and fellow guide, Daniel Andrews, standing at the console of the flats boat. They’re stoked for the fishing, and equally pumped that I finally figured out the tarpon strike. But what each has experienced is a bit of karmic payback. The last hour has been proof not only of what the beleaguered fisheries of South Florida still have to offer, but also that the last three years of their own personal sacrifice, fear, family upheaval, and hard work are paying off.
The water woes here have grown to be as much a part of the state’s lore and legend as swamp tours and spring-break shenanigans. Year after year, a horror show of environmental ills seems to plague what is arguably the most important fishing destination in the Lower 48. Toxic algal blooms blanket mile after mile of beach, shuttering tourism economies built largely on world-class fishing for tarpon, snook, redfish, bonefish, and snapper. News outlets around the world publish photographs of beaches mounded over with dead fish and marinas awash in a green, guacamole-like goop. Farther south, in Florida Bay and the famed Keys, saltwater flats, nearshore reefs, and mangrove shorelines are being starved of the fresh water they require. Hot, hypersaline water kills off the vast sea-grass beds that are the foundation of the food chain. Bonefish flee the flats. Tarpon vanish. Oyster beds rot.
The last three years have been particularly traumatic. Wave after wave of red tides, blue-green algae, and brown algae have suffocated the state’s famed Indian River estuary and Mosquito Lagoon on the Atlantic coast, the west-coast waters where the Caloosahatchee River spills into the Gulf of Mexico, and the massive Lake Okeechobee, whose waters used to feed the Everglades and Florida Bay. In 2017, a red-tide bloom that cropped up off the Gulf coast in October lasted until the early months of 2019. Then-governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for seven west-coast counties. A 26-foot-long whale shark floated belly up off the Sanibel beaches, its muscles, liver, intestines, and stomach contents tainted with the red-tide brevetoxin. More than 100 sea turtles and millions of fish washed ashore. For two weeks, the city of Sanibel spent $75,000 a day cleaning dead grouper, tarpon, and baitfish off the beach and out of canals.
Just three years ago, in 2016, Wittman and Andrews were guides working the waters of Fort Myers, Charlotte Harbor, and the Sanibel Island coast. When the red tides of 2016 hit, Andrews says, anglers for tarpon, redfish, and permit disappeared. Wittman figures they lost 80 percent of their bookings. Furious and more than a little desperate, the two captains started a Facebook page called Captains for Clean Water (CFCW) to organize charter captains. “To organize for what,” Wittman says, “we had no idea.” They held a kickoff event at the Fort Myers Bass Pro Shops, hoping that a few more guides might come to talk about what they might do. Three hundred people showed up.
CFCW’s growth and impact has been incredible. In its first year, CFCW raised $60,000. The next year, $600,000. Membership and supporters have grown to more than 30,000, and CFCW members didn’t stop at just writing checks. They showed up in legislators’ offices and packed public meetings. The group revived a long-dormant culture of people largely disconnected from the political process—but no more. “People see that we come from this grassroots, sunburned, hardcore, hard-boiled, hard-fighting group of fishing captains and people who love the water,” Wittman says, “and they think: Finally. Maybe this will work. Maybe this will help tip the balance.”
That’s the thread of the story I’ve picked up during more than 18 months of reporting on the state of Florida’s saltwater affairs. There’s a new governor with a decided sense of urgency about the region’s ecological calamities. There is new state and federal funding for massive projects to help alleviate South Florida’s water problems. There is still a pang of loss for parts of Florida that will never be regained, and an urgency that can border on panic over just how monstrous the water issues remain. But over the past few months, I’ve picked up a feeling that was entirely new.
Maybe things are changing.
Maybe.
. Field & Stream
How Did This Mess Happen?
For millennia, fresh water flowed into the Kissimmee River from as far north as Orlando, and then drained slowly south into the massive, shallow Lake Okeechobee. Clean water spilled over Okeechobee’s southern rim into large sloughs, such as Taylor Slough and Shark River, and innumerable small tidal creeks that trickled into Florida Bay. This is the famed “River of Grass” that delivered to Florida Bay a life-giving pulse of clean, fresh water each year. But this multifaceted ecosystem—fresh marsh and salt, brackish estuary, mangroves, saw grass, beds of sea grass, ribbons of reef—no longer functions naturally. The entire state has been replumbed with canals, reservoirs, channelized rivers, ditches, levees, dams, and pumps. Nowhere has this engineering had such a landscape-scale impact than in South Florida.
Hold one hand out with the palm up and the fingers together, and you have a rough scale model of some of the most iconic fishing grounds in the world and how they’ve come to be in such dire straits. In the shallow bowl of your palm lies Lake Okeechobee. The deep channels between each finger follow the rough course of Taylor Slough, Shark River, and all those myriad mangrove-lined waterways that dribbled critical water to the Everglades and the Florida Keys. But in 1915, an extension of U.S. Highway 94, dubbed the Tamiami Trail, was built straight across the state through pristine wilderness, gashing through what would become the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. The road follows the line across the base of each of your four fingers, and 2.5 million sticks of dynamite were used to blow open a canal beside the road, which is now a de facto dam on the River of Grass, choking off the fresh water that once flowed through the Everglades.
Lifelines—the wrinkles that spill off each side of your palm—tell more of the story: They trace a pair of man-made canals that opened up navigation all the way across Florida, connecting Lake Okeechobee with the Atlantic on the eastern coast and the Gulf of Mexico to the west. As Orlando and Miami grew, massive sugar farms, cattle farms, and housing developments covered thousands of acres of the drained and strangled Everglades. Much of the runoff from those altered acres finds its way to Lake Okeechobee, which is often choked with an inland algae bloom of putrid-green cyanobacteria that feeds off an overload of nutrients. The lake’s waters no longer flow down your fingers, cleaned by millions of acres of intact wetlands. Instead, during high-water periods, billions of gallons of toxic goo spew out of the lake through those two man-made canals in the folds of your palm—St. Lucie Canal and west through the Caloosahatchee River.
There are other issues South Florida suffers from, including a rising sea level and an insidious cycle of drought and storm. And that’s long been part of the problem: There are so many factors at play that it’s easier to place blame than to work toward solutions. But the bottom line is that, historically, even after Highway 94 was built, enough clean water flowed through South Florida to cover 2 million acres to a depth of 12 inches. Today, less than half of that water makes the trip, and what does is degraded.
Without its periodic pulse of fresh water, Florida Bay goes hypersaline. Sea grass dies in massive patches. Blue-green algae blooms, turning clear water into pea soup. That overwhelms the vast sponge beds that would otherwise filter the water and provide habitat for fish. The devastation flows south, toward the Florida Keys. Everywhere, the food chain collapses. It’s a lot for a bunch of pissed-off anglers to deal with. But they, and other activists, seem finally to be gaining traction.
Is This the Dawn of a New Era?
At a boat dock in Islamorada, Capt. Eddie Yarbrough sidles up to Dr. Steven E. Davis III, a wetlands ecologist for the Everglades Foundation. “Are we supposed to be happy with all the news from Tallahassee?” Yarbrough asks Davis. “Sure seems like a lot of folks are.”
Davis brightens. “I really think so,” he says. “We’re hoping this is a new era.”
For years, conservation groups like the Everglades Foundation, National Parks Conservation Association, National Audubon Society, and others have worked to turn the tide on Florida’s water crisis, and in the last year, significant steps have been made. Much of the hope is pinned on the state’s new governor, Ron DeSantis. In January 2019, during his first weeks in office, DeSantis announced $625 million in funding for Everglades restoration and signed an executive order to secure $2.5 billion over the next four years for water resources and Everglades work. Not long after, he asked for the resignations of the entire South Florida Water Management District Board, the supremely powerful commission that oversees water issues across most of South Florida and had been stacked with many supporters of the powerful sugar industry. He also named a chief science officer and created the Office of Coastal Protection and Resilience, and joined forces with two U.S. senators to ask the Trump administration to increase federal funding for South Florida water projects. In Washington, D.C., the President signed a bill sending $200 million to the Everglades. The money will accelerate progress on nearly 70 projects outlined in the state’s Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, including ongoing work to raise 6.5 miles of the Tamiami Trail to help reconnect the historic flow of water south.
“Our jaws dropped,” Davis says. “It was like an environmentalist’s dream list.”
And then there is the S.B. 10 reservoir. In 2018, after fighting over it for years, Florida legislators approved the construction of a 10,100-acre reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee—built in the heart of the sugar industry’s lands—that will capture and hold excess water, clean it via constructed wetlands, and send it south to the Everglades and Florida Bay. Last-minute negotiations cut the size of the Everglades Agricultural Area Storage Reservoir Project, along with its potential positive impacts, and completion is nearly a decade into the future—but even at a smaller size, the reservoir should reduce the cyanobacteria-laden discharges from Big O to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries by an estimated 55 percent.
In a morning loop around Florida Bay, Davis points out acres of dead turtle grass, clouded waters, and vast clear flats where new sea-grass beds are taking hold. These are the fragile, tenuous signs that Florida Bay has pulled itself off the floor one more time, after a massive die-off in 2014 and 2015 wiped out an estimated 62 square miles of sea grass. No one knows how many more body blows the bay can absorb. I mention to Davis that the entire ecosystem seems to exist on a knife edge—ecologically, politically, and temporally.
“You’re right,” Davis replies. “Because as exciting as all this is, it’s not what happens down here that is the most critical.” He jacks a thumb over his left shoulder, pointing toward the shore of mangroves and the mainland of Florida, toward Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. “What happens up there is what matters most.”
. Field & Stream
How Have the Gamefish Fared?
Thirty-five miles south of my tarpon glory at Cape Sable, I’m being fed a steady diet of humility, thanks to picky bonefish ghosting the edges of a broad flat west of Islamorada. I’ve been told that more record bonefish have come off this one flat than any other in the Florida Keys. I’ve also been told that these are probably the hardest to catch of any bonefish in the Sunshine State.
It’s small consolation that I’m being handicapped by our real purpose here: To catch and tag bonefish with acoustic tags that will allow scientists to track their movements. Time and again, I suck bonefish to within inches of my fly, pleading for an eat, while Dr. Ross Boucek, a fisheries biologist and Florida Keys Initiative manager for the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, and Matt Pourbaix, the trust’s development coordinator, work spinning reels. It takes at least a 20-inch bonefish to handle the acoustic tag, and when Pourbaix hooks a good fish, all other lines come out of the water. He fights the bone to the boat, then Boucek slips overboard into waist-deep water to spread out a floating surgical harness made of netting and pool-noodle sections. But as he lifts the fish onto the makeshift operating table, it spits the hook and slides out of the contraption. Gone. Boucek’s shoulders drop. When I lose a fish, all I’m out is a good memory and bragging rights. Boucek watches as a trove of scientific data slips away.
Despite the millions of dollars bonefish bring to Florida, these fish are better known to anglers than to scientists. Because there is no commercial fishery for the species, there’s less impetus to study their population. Fishing is almost always catch-and-release, so there are few regulatory constraints. The Bonefish & Tarpon Trust was formed in 1977 to help fill in these gaps of scientific knowledge, but Florida’s water woes have underscored the need for answers just as they are confounding the search for understanding.
“It’s one step forward and five steps back,” Boucek says, explaining that the water-quality issues have put a stop to an enormous amount of habitat and fisheries restoration work.
And the consequences hammer the fish in different ways. For bonefish, the troubles come when there’s too much water arriving at the wrong time. With South Florida’s altered hydrology, hot, hypersaline water pours down from Florida Bay toward the mangroves and flats of the Keys, displacing fish that typically stay within a very small home range unless they are spawning. “When you displace a fish,” Boucek says, “you reduce growth and you increase predation risk.” It’s a one-two punch that leads to lower reproduction.
For tarpon, it’s the massive pulses of fresh water—and the toxic loads they’ve carried in the last decades—that kill off the sea grass, which jump-starts the downward spiral in the health of the ecosystem. Scientists have tagged more than 100 Atlantic tarpon since May 2016, and those fished have registered more than 65,000 detections. Tarpon have shown massive latitude in their movements: One 55-pound male detected in the lower Keys in May 2018 wound up near Ocean City, Maryland, the next month. But these fish can also gather en masse—which puts them in peril. Boca Grande Pass is one such gathering place, and it is the epicenter, Boucek says, of the toxic freshwater releases that jet out of the Caloosahatchee during the Lake Okeechobee drawdowns.
For the moment, scientists are mostly trying to keep these fish from bottoming out while they deal with the water-quality issues.
“It can get depressing to think about these problems at such a huge scale,” Boucek says. “But that’s part of the benefit of such a wave of advocacy and support on behalf of water quality across Florida. It elevates the discussion at all levels, and it seems like these issues are on everyone’s mind now.”
He tells me about recent efforts to educate anglers about prop scars in the delicate sea-grass beds of the Keys flats, and studies on handling practices of saltwater fish and mortality. When word spread about a recent study of snook mortality tied to anglers holding the fish up by the lower jaw for photos, he began to see pushback on social media. “People are now firing off when they see pictures of these kinds of actions,” he says. “If we could replicate the social media movement with snook on tarpon and bonefish, it would be huge. When you begin to understand that there are things you can do in your own political sphere that really matter, and even things you can do in your own boat, that has to help.”
What Lies Ahead?
It seems more so now than in recent memory that there is hope for the future of Florida’s fisheries. Awareness has moved beyond Florida Bay and the Everglades, to a global community. Whether they live in Florida or play in Florida, anglers are beginning to understand that they have a role to play in solving the South Florida water crisis. And for the people who make their living with a boat and a rod, there’s much more at stake than a good day on the tarpon flats. There’s a national park, a World Heritage site, and an international biosphere reserve in their backyard. There are boat loans to pay and families to feed.
After our 90 minutes of tarpon bliss, after the school has vanished, Wittman, Andrews, and I don’t say much. We drift in the dead center of one of the most critical flows of water in all of South Florida, where the outfall from the Shark River slough wraps around the state’s peninsular tip, funneling fresh water into the vast estuary of Florida Bay. With all the tripletail and tarpon around the boat, I hadn’t given my surroundings much thought. But then it occurs to me that this could be the wildest, most remote, and longest stretch of saltwater shore I’ve ever seen in the Lower 48. I ask Wittman about that.
“So, from the boat ramp at Flamingo,” I say, “where we put in, and around Cape Sable, and all the way up the Gulf coast to Everglades City—that’s got to be, what, 50 or 60 miles? And in all of that, there’s…nothing?”
Wittman is uncharacteristically quiet, and whether he is staring at the water, the mangroves, or the sky, I can’t tell.
“No,” he says. “There’s everything.”
Written by T. Edward Nickens for Field & Stream and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.