Tasting The Salt Life Part 4: Why Don't You Just Tie Up To Our Boat?

 

Fisher folk are some strange people and they've got their own unspoken rules, and they abide by these rules to varying degrees. One pretty strong rule is that you don't fish close to somebody else that is catching fish...although there seems to be quite a bit of disagreement about what the proper distance is. Thus, when encountering a boat full of guys with beer and one guy with a big fish on you might hear, "Why Don't You Just Tie Up To Our Boat?" For those new to English, this is not a question that needs an answer, it needs you go to far away from those guys. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would mean the same thing if we were fishing in Japan.

It is a pretty common occurrence that fish are biting in one spot, yet fifty feet away, you'd get nothing but envious of the guys catching the fish. This was probably one of the big pushes for giant engines on small boats, so the guys could be the 'first one on the spot' in the morning.

On this particular day, our last full day of fishing, we found ourselves out at the Boca pass, which is some kind of natural wonder all by itself. If it is not the deepest natural pass in the USA, it must be close. For comparison, the water in the harbor is around 10 feet deep in average. If you were in a boat on the east coast, you might drive out 30 miles from Cape Canaveral before you hit 50 feet of water. Generally, the water near the coast on the Gulf side of Florida is shallow as well, but the depth of Boca Grande pass is 80 feet. What happens there is during tarpon season, you can find giant boats catching giant 150lb fish mere feet from shore. So, fishing is a big deal there, and those big fish and big boats mean big money to be made. A toll bridge and really fancy homes are there on Boca as well as some fiercely competitive fishing guides.

We pulled up in the pass on a non-tarpon day and few boats were out. Dusty was determined to pull up a huge Goliath grouper from the old Phosphate docks, but that was not to happen today. By the way, back when I was young they called them "Jewfish". I have no idea why, but I have a pretty good idea of why they changed the name...once again, I didn't get the memo, but when I first saw a video of a guy landing a Goliath grouper, I went, "Oh, I know what that is!". Back in my day, I didn't think anyone could catch those things, they could break any pole and any line.

While Dusty was trying to find some bait big enough to interest the grouper, I saw something WAY better. Three old spanish guys were up on the beach on the island, wading with yellow bait buckets towards some rocks where there was some serious splashing happening. Suddenly, one rod bent double and you could hear his line singing all the way to our boat. There other guys cast in the same general direction and it was snook time! Minutes later, the first guy was cradling one of the largest snook I've seen, and slowly swimming him back into the water.

Dusty was already heading in their direction, wondering just how close could we get without getting yelled at. We decided that what was right was about 100 yards away, and we sat there casting good live bait...for nada. We sat with our shoulders drooped while they caught fish after fish...until the first guide boat came flying in with 6 people on board and anchored about 10 feet from the wading guys. I thought that wasn't very polite and then the second guide boat came in with 6 more guys and suddenly nobody was catching fish. I did hear some words being exchanged between the wading guys and the boat captains. I could not make out the conversation...but I'm pretty sure I knew what they were talking about...