![]() ![]() ![]() Nick and I hopped from spot to spot, fishing structure around bridges, wide coves, and anywhere else open enough to cast a fly. She and her husband were not having much luck, and when I showed her my dropper rig with a chartreuse Surf Candy tied above a small shrimpy-looking Crazy Charlie bonefish fly, she hollered over to her husband: “We need smaller lures!” ![]() Nick RobertsĪfter a tailgate lunch of five-day-old pork tenderloin and Cheetos, I chatted with a lady throwing 6-inch-long Senko worms. Bridge anglers hollered back and forth in Spanish. Many canal sections were hemmed in with deep woods and lined with lily pads. But there are certain charms to fishing the Tamiami Trail. There were times when Nick and I were standing so close to the road that we had to time our backcasts between passing cars, and trash littered the pullouts. Peacock bass are a headliner too, along with jaguar guapotes, snakeheads, and oscars-yes, the same as the aquarium fish-that grow to the size of basketballs. Since then, they’ve spread northward like a bad case of mange. The fish are native to South America and were first discovered in Florida Bay in 1983. Mayan cichlids are there by the bushel basket. Not only do native snook, largemouth bass, and juvenile tarpon find their way to the Tamiami Trail, but there’s a motley crew of exotic fish worthy of the Ringling Brothers Circus. The Tamiami Trail has proven to be an environmental tragedy, but its dark, alligator-rich waters have turned out to be a bit of an angling boon. An estimated 2.5 million sticks of dynamite were used to blow open a canal beside the road, which is now a de facto dam on the famed River of Grass, choking off the fresh water that once flowed through the Everglades. Highway 94 straight across the pristine wilderness of the Everglades, gashing through what would become the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. An Accidental Fisheryīeginning in 1915, the federal government built an extension of U.S. We did, however, have time to gunkhole our way along the Tamiami Trail, stopping at the fishiest-looking spots by the road.įishing whenever you can, wherever you are, is a mindset I plan to employ a lot more frequently. But we didn’t have time to fish from a poling skiff or charter a boat. But why waste a few good hours? Sure, we were in the center of some of the finest fishing on the planet, with tarpon, redfish, and snook in nearly every direction. We didn’t have a lot of time-maybe four hours between leaving Everglades City on Florida’s Gulf Coast and when we had to pick up my wife at the Miami airport. So not exactly world-class fishing, but a hoot to trick on a fly pole. My buddy Nick figured out that if you dragged a fly across their faces enough times, eventually they would be sufficiently pissed off enough to bite. And they’re practically everywhere in south Florida. These exotic fish look like the love child of a run-of-the-mill bream and a sheepshead, with dark vertical barring and a black tail spot rimmed in turquoise. The Mayan cichlids were hanging just off the limestone ledges of the canal ditch, and we could sneak to within a dozen feet and cast flies straight up to them. WE WERE LIKE 9-year-olds trying to catch 4-inch bluegills. ![]()
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