Our Private Island (Florida Bay) 04/19-20/08

I’m sorry to do this but I have only one honey hole, from the pics maybe someone will figure it out since I’m not going to “black out” any landmarks…but I’m not going to say where this is as it is my one and only secret spot, I hope that’s ok. The remoteness of this spot protects it, the shallow water around this spot also helps keep even the skinniest of flats boats from getting anywhere near this remote key…its also a very long paddle from Flamingo, but the redfish make it worth the trip. We set out around 11:30 from Flamingo and set straight out for our objective, it took well into the afternoon to reach and we traveled at about an average speed of 5 knots (Pat kept tabs on his GPS), the conditions were beautiful with a very minimal chop.

We landed and made dinner, explored for a little while and then me and rick headed out for some fishing on the surrounding flats. We were catching little Jacks and Ladyfish like crazy and both rick and I lost pair of snook on the jump. I managed a Red and some nice shots of the sunset and we headed back in…had to drag the boats across mud for about 200yds…tide snuck out on us.

The full moon makes for crazy tides, we could walk out for hundreds of yards on the exposed flats, I messed around with the exposures while we waited for the tide roll back in and flood these flats again and bring in the big reds that hang around out there...they came after midnight.

We stopped taking pictures as they all looked about the same: 24-34’’ fat and feisty. We fished till they stopped biting at around 3 or 4am, I have no idea how many we caught, it was a great night of fishing, they were hitting anything we threw out there (DOA Cal was the favorite though – white), lost a few to sharks and the memorable lost fish was a 40’’ plus snook that jumped off less than a few feet from shore.

I slept till about 08:30 and then we had breakfast, broke camp, and paddled out of the flats with the tide, fished for a bit with a ton of little jacks biting but nothing else, we made it home in record time as it was glass on the bay.