By Hannah Sampson ALICE TOWN, Bimini — Sleepy is almost too caffeinated a word for the laid-back, sun-drenched Bahamian island just a 20-minute hop from Fort Lauderdale. Locals — they’ll …
A Call to Artists: the Bimini Bonefish Challenge Art Contest
18 Jan 20113:56 PM
A message from Vaughn Cochran, renowned artist, fly fishermen and conservationist:
We’re having a parade on February 25th to celebrate the inaugural Bimini Bonefish Challenge tournament. And what’s a parade without parade floats? We need some, and we need your help!
Design a float for Bimini Bonefish Parade that celebrates the 40th anniversary of the catching of the 16lb, 3oz world record monster bonefish in Bimini. For those of you who can’t join us in the actual parade in Bimini, we’re going to host a virtual parade on the Club’s website. The floats in our virtual parade will be judged by writers and editors from the fishing industry and the winner will receive a complimentary two night stay at the Club, and a full day of backcountry fishing.
You can use any media to create your float. Now you realize, we’re looking only for a photo of your float design because its only going to exist on our website! So dream big…dream in color….get fancy, or keep it simple. It doesn’t matter – except to the judges! Submit your entry on the Club’s website. As entries are received they will be displayed in an updated loop. Please submit your entry with a white background. The winner will be announced in Bimini at the conclusion of the parade and the award ceremony for the Bimini Bonefish Challenge. The deadline for entries is February 23rd. Now, go to your studio and unleash that artist in you….and remember, Vaughn and Guy are looking over your shoulder!
Pro team Member
Related Articles
Pro Team
Connect & Follow
Connect & Follow
General
Bon Appetit
Conservation Corner
Dive In
Got Photo
Get Hooked
Outdoor Adventure
SURF-UP
Travel Tips
, grunts, parrotfish, angelfish, and rock beauties, plus the stingrays. Visitors can book guided snorkeling tours daily, with all gear included.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/P1000085.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4847" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/P1000085.jpg" alt="" width="4608" height="3456" /></a>
For those who don't feel like getting wet, there are touch tanks holding horseshoe crabs, starfish, and other invertebrates, a live seahorse exhibit, educational talks, and tanks where you can observe a juvenile Goliath grouper and a weird-looking Atlantic guitarfish, and pay extra to feed nurse sharks and rays. I think a lot of the kids were startled at the loud sucking noise emitted by the sharks as they gulped the baits on the surface using the powerful pumps in their jaws.
After touring the aquarium, visitors can stroll across the parking lot and fly through the sky on seven ziplines and other treetop conveyances at the Castaway Canopy Adventure. Swinging through the full range of lines, sky bridges and towers takes up to about two hours-- all under the supervision of professional guides. Advanced bookings are recommended at <a href="http://www.OldCityZip.com">OldCityZip.com</a>.
For more information and reservations for the St. Augustine Aquarium, visit <a href="https://www.saaquarium.com/">www.saaquarium.com</a> or call 904-429-9777. To book a hotel room for your stay, check out Holiday Isle Oceanfront Resort on St. Augustine Beach, soon to re-open as a Guy Harvey Outpost. Call 1-800-513-5257.
https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/aquarium-gets-kids-interested-in-oceans/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Prime Time for an Inshore Super Grand Slam in Islamorada&body=From late summer into early autumn, the flats of the Florida Keys are prime territory for scoring an inshore super grand slam of bonefish, tarpon, permit and snook-- all caught in one day. And as if that's not enough, anglers and guides routinely pile on with sea trout, redfish, tripletail, and others.
"Everything is available fish species-wise," said noted South Florida light-tackle guide captain Andy Thompson. "The options are pretty endless. You can sight-fish on the flats. You can fish the island moats, the channels, spin fishing or fly rod."
Thompson, who runs a 17-foot Hells Bay Biscayne skiff, fishes the entire region from Biscayne Bay south to the Lower Keys, including Flamingo and Chokoloskee in Everglades National Park. He's especially fond of September-October because water and air temperatures grow cooler, tides are higher and the flats are not crowded with other guides and anglers.
"The permit fishing in September/October is really good," Thompson said. "With bigger tides, the back country banks behind Islamorada get a lot more water in the fall and that allows those fish to feed."
The best bait is a live crab (or a crab imitation if you insist on fly fishing) cast to fish feeding on the edges of channels and along narrow, rocky strip banks on the ocean side and bayside of the Keys where currents are strong. Permit also can be found around shallow wrecks and the U.S. 1 bridges.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Andytarpon.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-4218" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Andytarpon-1024x768.jpg" alt="Andytarpon" width="1024" height="768" /></a>
Continuing the inshore superfecta with tarpon may also be easier in fall than during the peak of the summer spawn. Thompson says plenty of juvenile tarpon can be found along the ocean side islands of the Upper Keys and in Florida Bay near Flamingo. In October, he often finds a resident population of 100-pounders that are "laid up" and easy to cast to with a live mullet or Deceiver-pattern fly. But some of the easiest fish to target are the ones following the fall mullet run all along the southwest Florida coast.
The seasonal bait frenzy also occurs on the ocean side of the Keys where huge schools of pilchards can be seen swirling and flashing. Just about anything can be found harassing these forage fish -- tarpon, sharks, snook, and jacks, among others. Snook are also plentiful on the crowns of the Florida Bay flats on an incoming tide, and often accompanied by redfish. Thompson goes after them using primarily pearl-colored soft plastic jerkbaits such as the D.O.A. C.A.L., but topwater plugs also can be effective if there's not too much floating grass.
Catching and releasing a bonefish is not as tough in Florida Bay as in recent years, according to Thompson. While their numbers are down considerably from the 1980s, Thompson says the torpedo-shaped silver speedsters are starting to recover.
"There's a lot of little fish in Florida Bay," he said. "The 2010 freeze put a hurtin' on them. But just this year, I started to see good numbers of them again around Rabbit Key and the Arsenicker Keys. There's a whole new class of fish showing up. It's encouraging."
The guide and his customers target them with live shrimp, small crabs, small skimmer jigs or shrimp-patterned flies.
To book a fishing trip with Thompson, go <a href="http://www.saltairoutfitters.com" target="_blank">HERE</a>. To book your stay at the Islander, a Guy Harvey Outpost in Islamorada, visit the <a href="http://www.guyharveyoutpost.com" target="_blank">Guy Harvey Outpost web site</a>.
<a href="http://www.guyharveyoutpost.com/dive-packages/"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-4200 size-full" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ad.jpg" alt="ad" width="737" height="301" /></a> https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/prime-time-for-an-inshore-super-grand-slam-in-islamorada/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Great Speck-ulation on Lake Okeechobee&body=<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/crappie.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2984 alignleft" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/crappie.jpg?w=300" alt="crappie" width="300" height="225" /></a>
By Sue Cocking, Guy Harvey Outpost staff writer
scocking@guyharveyoutpost.com
[Lakeport, FL.--] It won't be too long before scores of pontoon boats lit up like the Fourth of July and festooned with a porcupine-like array of telescoping fishing rods will crowd northern Lake Okeechobee most nights.
Late fall through early spring is considered the height of the black crappie, or speckled perch season on the Big O. But here's a news flash to all the snowbirds arriving on the first cold fronts aiming to catch a limit of specks: the fish have been here for months now. A couple savvy locals have been catching their limit of 25 less than a mile from the boat ramp at Harney Pond Canal in Lakeport.
"The biggest myth is that you can only catch them in winter," said captain Steve Daniel, a veteran guide and tournament champion. "This summer, I caught a lot of them on Rat-L-Traps and jerkbaits the same places I caught bass."
Daniel acknowledges it's a bit harder to catch specks during warm days than at night, especially if water levels are high. That's because the fish tend to stick to heavy cover under bright conditions and there are thousands of acres of vegetation -- bulrush, Kissimmee grass, hydrilla and lily pads-- where they hide.
At night, however, crappie can be lured away from their hideouts into open water by anglers lighting up their vessels and drawing hordes of minnows that the fish love to eat. With enough rods hanging off the boat, a pair of fishermen can bag a limit of 50 in just a couple of hours in hot spots such as the mouth of the Kissimmee River, Harney Pond Canal, the Rim Canal, and Fisheating Bay--especially near an area dubbed the "Monkey Box".
A nighttime fiesta requires a bucket full of Missouri minnows, available at just about any bait and tackle shop around the lake. Anglers thread them onto a small jig head of 1/8- to 1/16- ounces or on a light wire #4 hook weighted with a split shot. They arrange their 15-foot rods or cane poles in holders in the gunwales so that the tips are low to the surface. When the rod tip dips into the water, they know they have a bite. The rods don't have reels; fish are simply lifted into the boat.
"It's not rocket science," Daniel chuckled.
Day-specking with artificial lures requires a bit more finesse. Like black bass, crappie tend to follow a pattern, Daniel said, which means they'll stick to a particular kind of cover and a certain depth, rarely hugging the bottom. Anglers need to cover a lot of ground with their electric trolling motors, prospecting in holes in various stands of vegetation with long limber rods. It's a lot like flipping for bass, except there's no reel. A length of 20-to-30-pound monofilament matched to the water depth is simply tied to the eye catch of the rod and threaded through the guides.
For lures, Daniel recommends jigs-- small bucktails, tube jigs or twister tails. For clear water, he favors white; in dingy water, he chooses yellow, chartreuse, or even black (because it creates a shadow).
The reward will be a cooler full of tasty, but not very big fish. Daniel said two-pounders are not very common on the Big O; the state record for the species is three pounds, 13 1/4 ounces caught in Lake Talquin near Tallahassee in 1992.
But the good news from biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is that Lake O specks are getting bigger. The species took a big hit from Hurricane Wilma in 2005, but catch rates have been on the rise for the past eight years or so. Sampling conducted by biologists has shown larger, older fish each year. With last year's bountiful shad spawn, numbers and size could continue to increase.
Back to the most important part: eating. Most anglers fillet and fry their specks; the health-conscious use olive oil. Or you could just take them to Tin Fish in Okeechobee to have them cooked for you with a couple of sides. Fresh and delicious no matter what.
**********
` Sue Cocking chronicles the Guy Harvey Outpost travel and adventure experience in regular blog posts on GuyHarveyOutpostNews.com/. For 21 years, Cocking covered the full spectrum of outdoors adventure opportunities in South Florida and beyond for the Miami Herald, including fishing, diving, hunting, paddling, camping, sailing and powerboat racing. She is a certified scuba diver and holder of an IGFA women's world fly fishing record for a 29-pound permit.
********
Share your photos, videos and experiences with Guy Harvey Outpost by hash tagging #OutpostAttitude to all of your social media posts. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/great-speck-ulation-on-lake-okeechobee/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=GHRI, Georgia Aquarium Partner for Stingray Census Study in Grand Cayman&body=<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/stingray-census2c-gcm-0812-0631.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1378 " title="Stingray City Census" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/stingray-census2c-gcm-0812-0631.jpg" alt="" width="495" height="329" /></a>Alex Harvey, Louisa Gibson and Dr. Brad Wetherbee secure a large ray in a pool in the cockpit of Guy’s Scout boat while Georgia Aquarium's Tonya Clauss prepares to take blood from the ray’s tail.
The <a title="GHRI web site" href="http://www.nova.edu/ocean/ghri/" target="_blank">Guy Harvey Research Institute</a> just finished conducting the annual census of the stingray population at <a title="About Stingray City" href="http://www.caymanislands.ky/activities/attractions/stingraycity.aspx" target="_blank">Stingray City</a> in <a title="About Grand Cayman" href="http://www.caymanislands.ky/aboutcayman/grandcayman.aspx" target="_blank">Grand Cayman</a>. The GHRI team, led by <a title="Guy Harvey Inc. web site" href="http://www.guyharvey.com" target="_blank">Guy Harvey</a> and GHRI Director <a title="About Dr. Mahmood Shivji" href="http://www.nova.edu/ocean/overview/faculty-staff-profiles/mahmood_shivji.html" target="_blank">Dr. Mahmood Shivji</a>, <a title="About Dr. Brad Wetherbee" href="http://www.uri.edu/cels/bio/wetherbee/p/frames.html" target="_blank">Dr. Brad Wetherbee</a> of the <a title="U. of Rhode Island web site" href="http://ww2.uri.edu/" target="_blank">University of Rhode Island</a>, <a title="U. of Edinburgh web site" href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/home" target="_blank">Edinburgh University</a> student Louisa Gibson and Guy's adult children, Jessica and Alex Harvey. Assisting the GHRI this year were three special guests from the <a title="GA web site" href="http://www.georgiaaquarium.org" target="_blank">Georgia Aquarium</a> - veterinarians Tonya Clauss, Lisa Hoopes and Nicole Boucha, who were on hand to analyze blood samples to better assess the overall health of the rays. Thanks to all who participated - updates from the census will be available soon! https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/ghri-georgia-aquarium-partner-for-stingray-census-study-in-grand-cayman/){kind=link}
TRAVEL DESK : 800.513.5257
Connect & Follow