Fourteen teams that braved last Saturday’s bumpy sea conditions to compete in Reef Environmental Education Foundation’s fifth winter lionfish derby in the Upper Keys managed to whack an impressive …
Get Crackin’ — Here Comes Stone Crab Season!
11 Oct 20169:34 AM
October is National Seafood Month, and Floridians and visitors just can’t observe the occasion properly without sampling the Sunshine State’s signature delicacy– the stone crab claw.
Stone crab season opens Oct. 15 through May 15 statewide, but most of the harvest occurs in the Gulf of Mexico from the Keys north to the Panhandle. Licensed commercial trappers can take as many claws as they want as long as each measures 2 3/4 inches or more. Recreational divers and trappers are limited to one gallon of claws per person or two gallons per boat, whichever is less. Crabs must be released alive to regenerate new claws which can take about 18 months.
Stone crab lovers may enjoy a bountiful feast this fall–like last season–or not. The 2015-16 season was the best in years with fishermen landing around three million pounds of claws worth $33 million. That’s way better than in 2013-14 (1.98 million pounds) and 2014-15 (2.2 million pounds). But it’s no predictor for 2016-17, according to research scientist Ryan Gandy at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.
Gandy said last season’s opening saw a “good pulse of crabs go through, a lot of really big crabs around and a good number throughout the fishing season.” But he doesn’t expect the same this year based on pre-season surveys of the crabbing grounds.
“We’re not seeing the volume of crabs as last year. We’re seeing the normal volume,” Gandy said. “We don’t know how good of a season it will be, but it won’t be the same as last year.”
Gandy said the first six weeks of the harvest season will be a good indicator for the remainder.
About 60 percent of Florida’s stone crab landings come in the Keys, Everglades City, and Naples. One of Florida’s largest stone crab purveyors– Keys Fisheries in Marathon–will celebrate the season with its sixth annual Stone Crab Eating Contest Oct. 22. Prizes will be awarded to the contestants who consume 25 stone crab claws in the fastest time. Under the rules, you have to crack your own crabs, and throwing up is not allowed. Proceeds benefit the Marathon Recreation Center. To register, go to www.KeysFisheries.com or call 305-743-4353.
You can celebrate Seafood Month and stone crabs even sooner at the 47th Cedar Key Seafood Festival Oct. 15-16, hosted by the Cedar Key Lions Club. The region has made a strong recovery from Hurricane Hermine and was untouched by Matthew, so festival organizers are eager to showcase a rich array of fish, shrimp and crabs both on-site and at local restaurants. The event also features a parade, music and some 200 arts and crafts booths. Admission is free.
Check often at www.guyharveyoutpost.com for more Seafood Month updates.
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![](mailto:?subject=Sword Fights in the Cayman Islands&body=About 12 years ago, Cayman Islands businessman Clarence Flowers-- an avid sport angler-- chartered Miami Beach captain Bouncer Smith for a South Florida swordfishing excursion. Smith shared his tactics and techniques with his customer and they caught a fish. Flowers told the captain about the nascent recreational swordfishery in his Caribbean home waters: a 600-pounder had actually beached itself in Grand Cayman Island's North Sound and recreational anglers were taking some hefty ones on hook-and-line. That fateful conversation led to the inaugural Cayman Swordfish Challenge in 2005.
The 11th Challenge just wrapped up last weekend with local angler Thom Guyton taking top honors for boating four swords--including the tournament's largest, a 108.2-pounder--and releasing one off Cayman Brac.
The contest also serves as an on-water laboratory for scientists seeking to learn as much as possible about this unsung, but robust recreational fishery.
"Better than ours-- especially the night fishing," Smith, a 50-year-veteran charter captain, said of Cayman Islands swordfishing. "The daytime I would say is on a par with here--maybe slightly better."
Fisheries scientist Travis Moore of Pompano Beach-based Gray FishTag Research was on the water for the two-day contest and implanted a 54-incher with a satellite tag before releasing it. The tag, anchored in the dorsal fin, will detach after a year and beam minute-to-minute data about the fish's movements to a satellite which downloads the data to Moore's computer. It is the ninth satellite tag to be implanted in Cayman Island swords by Moore and colleagues since 2011.
"What we're doing is to help develop this fishery for the Cayman Islands," Moore said. "The Cayman government may decide to use this data to regulate foreign fleets coming into their waters."
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SwordTag2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4666" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SwordTag2.jpg" alt="" width="1440" height="960" /></a>
Right now, both Moore and Smith say, there 's really no directed commercial fishery for swords in the Cayman Islands; the effort is primarily recreational with a few fish kept to eat or sold to local restaurants. But as word of the bounty gets out, the powerful and tasty billfish potentially could face heavy exploitation and would require careful management. The islands' record is a 392-pounder caught in 2012.
Moore says preliminary satellite tracking data shows the Cayman Islands serve as a "rest stop" for the tasty pelagics that hang out here roughly from November through May, then head north as waters warm.
"They're feeding in a perpendicular pattern to the Cayman Trench before going north," he said.
Recreational anglers target them in ways similar to their South Florida counterparts: deep-dropping squid, small tunas, bonitos or belly strips in 1,600 to 1,800 feet of water in daytime and either drifting or slow-trolling baits with planers 100 to 300 feet deep at night. Smith says all three of the Cayman Islands-- Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman--are basically sea mounts surrounded by very deep waters where upwellings concentrate bait, and therefore swords could be found just about anywhere.
"You can fish so close to the islands that you can read the license plates on the cars," he said.
Moore relishes the opportunity to enjoy the sport and collect important information at the same time.
"The fishing there is really off the charts," he said. "Amazing." https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/sword-fights-in-the-cayman-islands/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Back to School at the International Game Fish Association&body=With the start of Autumn the<a href="http://igfa.org/Educate/School-of-Sportfishing.aspx"> IGFA School of Sportfishing </a>starts back up just in time for the "Happy Bait" migration. The Fundamentals of Sportfishing starts the seminar series Tuesday, October 7, 2014 7p-10p.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/class-pic_tony_funds2.jpg"><img class="wp-image-2259 size-full" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/class-pic_tony_funds2.jpg" alt="Class-pic_tony_funds(2)" width="500" height="237" /></a>Capt. Tony Digulian
Noted Captain Tony DiGulian will cover a lot of ground, from: knots and terminal tackle to bait rigging and presentation. He takes a scientific approach to fishing and engages the audience as they learn. Tony has fished from the US to the Caribbean to the Middle East. This seminar will be hands on; so students will learn by doing. Billfish Conservation is an integral part of Tony's fishing efforts.
Check out the IGFA's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC3j3Heacws">circle hook ballyhoo video</a> with Captain DiGulian.
Classes will run every other Tuesday night until mid-December. For more information on the <a href="http://igfa.org/Educate/School-of-Sportfishing.aspx">IGFA School of Sportfishing</a>.
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![](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>.
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