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Reefs Provide Fish Buffet: Looking for Dinner? Palometa, Snapper, Mackerel and Much More Are on the Menu in the Shallow Reefs Off Homestead

Posted on: Thursday, 23 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Susan Cocking, The Miami Herald

Mar. 23--In the blustery, changeable weather of South Florida's early spring, plenty of anglers grit their teeth and doggedly pound out to the reef through six-foot seas, believing this is the only way they can catch dinner.

But two longtime South Miami-Dade expert anglers say those back-breaking slogs through the soup are completely unnecessary.

Al Pflueger and his friend, Dick Coe, both members of the Tropical Anglers Club, say they usually catch all the dinner fish they want by trolling the shallow patch reefs between Triumph and Pacific Reefs, west of Hawks Channel.

"We go to places that people go by and don't fish," Pflueger said.

Because few anglers try these spots -- and some who do don't really understand how to fish them properly -- Pflueger and Coe catch a huge variety of fish in 18 to 25 feet of water.

"Like a box of chocolates -- you never know what you're going to get," said Coe, paraphrasing a famous line from the movie Forrest Gump.

Coe wasn't kidding.

On a recent daylong, midweek trip to a couple of patch reefs off Caesar Creek on board Pflueger's 20-foot Sailfish, Coe and Pflueger caught the following dinner entrees: palometa (like Florida pompano but with longer fins and black vertical stripes), African pompano, gray snapper, yellowtail snapper, red grouper, cero mackerel and a huge porgy. They also released two nurse sharks in the 200-pound class, two moray eels and numerous bar jacks.

Unlike many modern-day anglers who read magazines and attend seminars hoping to be spoon-fed fishing hot spots, Coe and Pflueger found their most productive patches the hard way -- trial and error.

"You keep going till you find one that produces, and you write the numbers down," Coe said.

In the old days, "numbers" meant LORAN-C coordinates. But now, with the pinpoint accuracy of GPS, the two men can get right on their productive holes without wasting any time.

They anchor upcurrent of the reef -- not right on top of it -- to guard against snagging hooks and weights in the abundant coral heads, sea fans, and sea whips that make up most of the oceanside patches. These patches usually are surrounded by sandy depressions that "look just like donuts," Coe said.

A bag of chum is deployed over the side, the current sending its fish bits and oily essences to the patch.

Coe says the stage of the tide doesn't really matter, but there has to be water movement.

"You can fish both tides," he said. "You've got to have current."

Added Pflueger: "Murky water helps."

The two friends use a variety of bait -- live pilchards or bally hoo if they can net or hair-hook them; fresh, cut-up ladyfish caught in the canal at Homestead Bayfront Park; and live shrimp.

Their tackle is light -- 10-to-20-pound spinning and baitcasting gear, jigs and egg sinkers in the 1/8 to 3/8-ounce range and 30-to-60-pound leader. They sharpen hooks frequently.

"You don't want to use too big a sinker, because you get fewer bites," Pflueger said.

Along the way, they have learned certain tricks: live bally hoo cast far from the boat for mutton snapper and hair hooks tipped with shrimp for the palometas. African pompano (thought to be persnickety by some) will eat cut ladyfish, and red grouper that you think have you "rocked" often will come out of their lairs if you briefly slacken the line.

"All this patch fishing involved trial and error and finding the right things that work," Coe said.

You might want to give it a try the next time you're on the hunt for a good dinner.

It will only get better from now through the late spring.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

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Source: The Miami Herald

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