If you are an avid sport fisherman like me, who every year looks to top his previous year’s fishing adventure, I can tell you this year was the flat our best ever and I have serious doubts about how it can be topped in the future!
Let me start out by saying that these trips each year are always gifts to me from my fishing buddies who enjoy fishing at least as much as I do. Well, the particular trip I am referring to is my fishing gift this year in Miami.
If you are a true sport fisherman, Miami has to be one of your top destinations. The city features fresh water sport fishing in the flats of Biscayne Bay, where you can catch a variety of fish including: tarpon, snook, redfish, and even sharks. These waterways attract the top sport fisherman each year and records are often set. They use skiff boats that have flat bottoms to allow you to skim over the shallow water. I am familiar with skiff fishing, having done it in Tennessee and Louisiana many times before. It is definitely a good time and when I heard we were headed to Miami, I began preparing my special rods and lures to catch me a boatload of tarpons and redfish. Tarpon fishing is my favorite!
However, my buddies had other plans. See South Florida is also home to a warm fast moving current teeming with salt water sport fish and deep sea species that are prized and good for eating too. These fish swim in the Gulf Stream, an intense, warm ocean current in the western North Atlantic Ocean that moves north along the coast of Florida and then turns eastward off of North Carolina, flowing northeast across the Atlantic. The Gulf Stream harbors any number of the world’s most sought after deep sea fish including: tuna, grouper, cobia, kingfish, amberjack, snapper, and mahi-mahi. Sport fish include: marlin, sailfish, and giant tuna.
The Gulf Stream sits two miles off the coast of Miami and is only accessible by boat and this means you either have a boat or you rent a charter, which is was what we did. There are fishing charters that can hold more than a dozen fisherman and that sell individual tickets for half or full-day trips. Then there are the whole boat charters rented by a single group that also go out for half or full days.
My buddies had other ideas. Their plan for us was a full two day excursion by the top fishing charter company in Miami, Ultimate Fishing Charters. Ultimate Fishing Charters specializes in providing exotic fishing packages for elite clientele. They combine high end yachts that have all of the amenities of a villa, with a full boat crew to see to your every need. Best of all, they have a fishing expert and local guides on board for the trip, who know everything about the best way to find and catch the fish you are after. We were welcomed by their professional crew and settled into their beautiful boat very quickly. The crew got us up to speed about the yacht and we relaxed for a bit. On the way out to sea, the fishing expert gave us a complete tutorial on what we should expect, safety instructions, and how we catch fish (I thought I knew, but I learned a lot). By the time we weighed anchor two miles out, we felt like fishing pros. In short, we had the best time fishing ever. The only down side was that it was two days and not a week.
I do not know how these guys are going to top this trip next year, although I cannot wait to find out!
