A Return to Key West
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By Eric Seeger An entire morning of watching lures skip to the surface, trail a stream of bubbles, dive down and return to do the same eased my brain into subdued operation. My mind started to wander after a few hours of trolling in the heat and calm waters that are so common during a Key West summer. Actually it wasn't really wandering; rather, it had switched into screen-saver mode - the system was on, and just waiting for a task. The Jack Tar II continued its zigzag pattern, making the mellow even more undeniable with every passing minute. Still, my mind was waiting for something new to focus on.
Laptop Battery Just moments before I attained a firsthand understanding of Buddhist meditation, the long-awaited distraction came: the audible pop of an outrigger clip.
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Thinkpad "We've got something," yelled Capt. Mike Weinhofer as he eased back on the throttle, slowing the 52-foot David Canady down to idle. I lifted myself to my feet and prepared to run down the ladder to help clear lines as fellow angler Chris Robinson of Key West jumped across the cockpit to snatch up the dancing rod. The line zigzagged back and forth in short bursts, but whatever was on wasn't taking any drag. Our eyes focused on the end of the line as Robinson started to reel.
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Microsoft Suddenly the fish breached the water in a staggering aerial display. No, it wasn't the blue marlin that that we were hoping for, or a sailfish, or even a wahoo. Instead, a scrappy 6-pound dolphin skittered across the smooth ocean's surface, water skiing in on the Penn 50. As everyone on the boat let out a disappointed sigh, my legs relaxed once again and I started to sit back down. Before my butt ever touched the bench, however, yells once again erupted from the cockpit. Out of nowhere, a blue marlin materialized behind the imperiled peanut and swatted it 10 to 15 feet across the water.
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Laptop Computers "Loosen the drag and let it run," yelled the mate. Robinson kicked the reel into free-spool, and we watched the dolphin scurry frantically back and forth across the spread as we continued to clear lines. The blue chased down the peanut, gave it a good thrashing for a few more seconds and then faded out of sight just as suddenly as it appeared.
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Laptop Computer Close examination of the dolphin revealed bill scars from pec to tail and even a puncture wound in the fish's side. The force and agility displayed by the predator was a spectacular introduction to one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite blue marlin fisheries.
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Notebooks Key West Untapped?
Lenovo With all the stories of Hemingway's great angling feats between Key West and Cuba, one would think that the local waters have been regularly fished for blue marlin since the turn of the century. Surprisingly, that's not the case.
Hard Drive After Hemingway's death in 1961, the area's billfishing was largely limited to the many sailfish found near Key West's reefs. It wasn't until the late 1970s that Capt. Norman Wood and friend Danny O'Laughlin set out to find the blue marlin that seemed to be so prevalent in neighboring waters.
Travelstar "I wanted to get away from the light-tackle stuff and move into something bigger," says Wood. "So I asked myself, 'Why is it that people are catching blue marlin in Cuba, Cay Sal and the Dry Tortugas, and we don't get them here?'"
Gateway Guessing that the blues were migrating from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, he drew a straight line from Cay Sal (in the lower Bahamas) to the Dry Tortugas. His estimations put the best blue marlin grounds about 18 miles south of Key West.
Laptop Parts At first, the pair's offshore expeditions had a lot of people enthusiastic about catching a blue marlin. "We would go out every weekend," Wood says. "Danny would have a boatload and I would have a boatload, but you know how boring marlin fishing can be when nothing is happening. Eventually it got to a point where we would take his boat one weekend and then my boat the next. Then finally we went out one Sunday, and it was just Danny and me." That's the day they caught their first blue marlin.
Software Once the fish came to the boat, the duo was confronted with the question of what to do next. As they looked over the transom of the plywood-hulled Petticoat, "There was this huge 470-pound blue. He's wild as hell and trying to stick his bill in the back of the boat and sink us, so we let him go to let him calm down," says Wood.
Hard Drives Despite Wood's historic catch, marlin fishing here garnered only a meager interest for many years. Anglers simply weren't interested in going 20 miles out for a chance at a blue when sailfish were so prevalent in nearby waters. It wasn't until Wood organized the first Key West Marlin Tournament in 1982 that the small island town's marlin habitat was legitimized once again.
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Canon The Wall
Desktop Pc After purchasing a depth sounder that could accurately penetrate the deep water he was fishing, Wood finally understood why the fish were where they were. It turns out that his predicted location of a blue marlin highway off Key West coincided with that of an interesting piece of bottom structure. About 22 miles south of Key West lies a sharp east/west-running ridge where the depth drops from 900 feet to nearly 2,000 feet over the distance of roughly a mile. This drop-off is now known as Wood's Wall and marks the beginning of the Straits of Florida that run between Key West and Cuba.
Desktop Computers Nutrients that normally lie in the strait's deep water get pushed up to the surface as currents push up against the wall. Complemented by the weed lines that move with the same currents, these nutrient-rich waters attract large numbers of baitfish to the wall. In turn, an awful lot of predatory fish - dolphin, wahoo and tuna - are drawn to the area as well. It is this concentration of surface-feeding baitfish and medium-size game fish that keeps a consistent number of marlin in the 300- to 500-pound range within a few miles of the wall.
Think Pad However, the wall is not just a straight, flat structure. Along its length, three deep canyons jut into the side of the ridge: the East Crack, West Crack and Middle Crack. Each of these pie-shaped wedges congregates both fish and fishermen alike. "The water depth plummets even more steeply over these canyons," says Capt. Jim Sharpe, longtime Keys captain on the Sea Boots. "They just drop right off - a lot like the canyons in the Northeast. And each crack has a lot of holes, ledges and bottom contours that surround them," says Sharpe.
Repair Judging by the Bimini start on the first day of the Drambuie Key West Marlin Tournament held this past August, one would assume that the West Crack is more productive - it's the one that drew a majority of the local captains. But that is not necessarily the case. Weinhofer explained that no single crack is more productive than the others because most of the fish caught at the wall are transient. "If you listen to the radio, it will be quiet for a long while but then all of a sudden you hear three, four or five guys either hook up, lose a marlin or release one within a half-hour of each other." He and many other local captains theorize that they are encountering packs of blues that are simply passing through. The fact that the bite is usually fairly localized adds credibility to the theory.
Data Recovery With such a well-formed piece of bottom to work, you'd think most captains would have it made just by following the wall, working each crack down the line until they feel it is time to move on to the next one. Unfortunately it's not always that easy. The current can play heavily on the blue marlin/wall equation.
Cisco "It's hard to always stay right on top of the wall because the upward current is always trying to push you off of it," says Sharpe. "I prefer to fish around the area where the wall goes from 900 to 1,200 feet. The current isn't as fierce there, and it is easier for me to still stay on top of the deeper side of the ledge."
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Monitor It's Getting Better and Better
Desktop "It's not the hot bite that you'd get in other places in the world," says Sharpe, "but you can still get fairly consistent marlin fishing here." Sharpe, who has been fishing the Key West area for roughly 40 years, has seen the area's marlin bite cycle up and down over the last 20 or so years. "I can remember times that we would have five blue marlin on before noontime, but they would be followed by a period where we just didn't see many. In the past several years, however, we've seen a real overall strengthening of all our billfish action," he says.
Infosys This time, however, Sharpe feels that the increased activity is more than just a mere cycle. "Over the last four years, the sight of sailfish schooling bait over the reefs is becoming more and more common," says Sharpe, who has not seen this sort of activity for over 20 years. "Don't get me wrong; we've always had a lot of sailfish. But we've never had the large amount of bait for these fish ball up and work. We saw the bait return once they put the net ban on in Florida, and consequently we started to see more sails at the same time." Sharpe expects this progress to carry over to the deeper water as long as the net ban continues and longline fishermen are prohibited in Key West.
Refurbished Laptops A strong catch-and-release ethic has also played a large part in the return of local billfish populations. Every morning Weinhofer lays out the rules to each new charter: "If you can't eat it, then we're not sticking a gaff into it," he says. At the same time, Sharpe proudly states that he has not intentionally killed a blue marlin since 1987.
Wipro Tolerance for the killing of any billfish is growing shorter and shorter as the tag-and-release ethic gains momentum. The Drambuie Key West Blue Marlin tournament initiated a 600-pound minimum weight this year to keep possible kill numbers as low as possible. These programs are especially important to Key West fishermen since there is still relatively little understanding of the blue marlin's migration and breeding behaviors in the area. Several blues tagged in Key West have later been recaptured in the northern Gulf of Mexico, off Cape Hatteras and even as far away as Africa.
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Refurbished What the Blues Are Eating
Memory Artificials take most of the blue marlin caught off Key West. Aboard the Jack Tar II, Weinhofer and his mate of three years, Cory Robinson, prefer an orange-and-black medium-size Softhead as their lure of choice but aren't afraid to put out a little meat as well. Naked ballyhoo on the riggers and ballyhoo/skirt combos fished on the flat lines also do well for the team.
Intel When good bait is available (and it usually is), a daisy chain of ballyhoo with an armed ballyhoo trailer might work its way into the spread, as well as a large squid fished on the shotgun. "I don't like to leave any holes in the spread," Weinhofer says. "Every fish that passes through my spread should be presented at least one bait."
As400 For teasers, twin daisy chains of small Softheads and artificial squids - a carryover from Weinhofer's New Jersey tuna fishing days - are almost constant fixtures on either side of the wash.
Averatec Aboard the Sea Boots, Sharpe prefers to run 10-inch Mold Craft Super Chuggers and his own brand of Kona-type lures in yellow-and-green or blue-and-white. Purple-and-black and yellow-and-green are his favorite color combinations, however, because they simulate the small skipjack tuna and dolphin that are so prevalent in area waters.
Hardware Sharpe keeps the flat lines 50 feet and 75 feet behind the boat and runs his riggers 150 and 250 feet back to prevent crossover when making turns. The resulting hole is closed by a ballyhoo/ lure combination that runs in the center of the spread, halfway between the two rigger lures.
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Seagate While the waters off Key West are ideal for targeting blue marlin, the area gained its fishy reputation from the incredible variety of game-fish species that make the Keys their home.
Computer Sales Sailfish have played a tremendous part of the Key West billfishing experience for decades, and Weinhofer recommends working the 300- to 400-foot depths for some of the best sailfish action in Florida. These waters are only an eight-mile ride due south of the island and provide a lot of light-tackle opportunities for sails in the 30- to 60-pound range. In fact, fishing with fly tackle or using live pilchards on 20-pound-test is becoming quite common on many local boats.
Computer Hardware As stated earlier, fishing the wall will put you in contact with a great many species - whether you like it or not. Wahoo ranging from 20 to 100 pounds can be a common catch, and a 12- to 15-pound downrigger ball should put your bait down into the 'hoo zone.
Printers It's the ubiquitous dolphin, however, that has really been the star of the show in Key West for decades. It's nearly impossible to fish the wall in the warmer months without catching a few slammer-size dolphin. Anything floating is bound to have a few dolphin no matter where you are fishing in the Keys, and the weed lines that bunch up in the currents along the wall are no exception.
Technology "The hardest part of fishing the wall is to not get preoccupied with catching dolphin," says Sharpe. After watching the way our elusive blue marlin pummeled a hooked-up peanut dolphin, however, you'd be hard pressed to convince the blue marlin off Key West to leave the tasty little treats alone.
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