| I’m a meat fisherman. I want to eat what I catch. But not everything I catch makes a great dinner. Thus I tend to target only those fish that are yummy, whether fried, grilled, baked or smoked. In the Indian River that means mostly trout, snook and redfish, with an occasional flounder to relieve the monotony. I also snag an occasional grouper and the larger mangrove snapper I sometimes catch have been known to appear on the table.
But my quest for piscatorial delicacies necessarily means that I don’t target what many anglers refer to as “trash fish.” In inshore fishing terms, that means jack crevalle, ladyfish and, worst of all, catfish.
Still, I’m human. When the going gets slow on the water I start to get antsy. I’m out there to catch, not just fish. That happened a few days ago. I had gotten up early headed for a favorite weed bed on the flats, hoping some live pinfish and pigfish would get me a few trout or a redfish for that night’s dinner. But after an hour of nothing I was beginning to think there was no life in the river at all.
That’s when it always happens. The cork goes down with a loud “plop” and the line starts peeling off the reel. Of course, I hoped it was a big redfish or maybe a large snook. But the first few determined runs told me I had a big jack on the other end of the line. Jacks are common in the river, but they tend to be schoolies that are on the small side.
This one acted more like an inlet or offshore jack and on really light tackle that posed a challenge: break him off and go home for coffee or bring him to the boat? Since I don’t get to fight a fish like that one very often, I opted to play it out. Fifteen minutes later, he was aboard and destined to become bait in my crab traps.
I had a few pinfish left so I put another one out on a cork and not two minutes later the reel was screaming again. This time I knew what I had because the ladyfish went airborne at the end of its first run. Ladyfish are known as the “poor man’s tarpon” because of their spectacular leaps and powerful runs and this one played the role perfectly. It didn’t take nearly as long to get the ladyfish in the box; it was only about a quarter of the size of the snook. But it, too, would make fine crab trap bait.
Catching those two powerful fish reminded me of something I tend to forget when fishing for food: a powerful fish on the line can be just plain fun. I know kids I’ve taken fishing would far prefer to catch a ladyfish and see it come shooting out of the water shaking its head than they would an equal size trout, which tends to wallow more than it fights. And they don’t call jacks “inlet tuna” for nothing.
Still, I was glad I hadn’t hit the so-called “trash-fish trifecta,” which would have required that I also catch a catfish that morning. I’ve had a catfish fin through the sole of my shoe and into my foot and if I never see another catfish (what’s the chance of that?), I won’t regret it. |
