South Florida storms are nothing to mess with..

​On the island as the storm approached

​Set up and ready to spear..

Southeast Fishing

4 min read
  After a string of travel baseball tournaments for both my sons in mid June, I found myself with about a 5 hour window to get the boat out and do some fishing. It was a Monday and I knew that the boat traffic in Biscayne Bay would be minimum. If you are from the South Florida area, you know that weekends on the water can be crowded to say the least. Sandbar parties, wave runners flying around everywhere and anchored yachts with loud music, although makes for a fun day in it’s own right, is not what you want when you are looking for a nice relaxing day, fishing a local gem for mangrove snapper.

  Set up and ready to spear...After waking up and getting a quick side job in, I went home, hooked up the boat, picked up my youngest son (my avid fisherman) and we were off! After a quick 30 minute drive, we arrive at the boat ramp. Since it was a Monday we were able to back right in and dump the boat. We pulled out of the marina, hit the throttle and it felt great! Finally on the water and headed to our spot.
After a fairly short run we anchor up and start to get set up. My son wanted to snorkel the small wreck and possibly spear something. Chum, dive flag, safety rope and dive buoy deployed. As he is snorkeling around I hear a fait rumble far in the distance to the south. I can see grey skies but it was pretty far south and didn't pose a risk at that point. As I’m watching him snorkel, I hear the rumble again and this time it sounded closer. I looked south and sure enough, it looked like it was getting closer. Really?!?! I grab my phone and check the radar and sure enough it was coming our way. As I sit there cussing Mother Nature for a minute and checking the radar again, I decide to play it safe and start to pack up everything and prepare to move. At this point the radar showed it was coming closer but was still going to stay to our south. We quickly pack up everything and head to a small nearby island to wait it out. This thing was going to stay south and we would be fishing again in no time…………right???
ABSOULUTLY NOT!!

  Within 10 minutes of pulling up on the island, this storm had quadrupled in size. It was almost like it was growing right on top of us. Shit! What do we do….. the marina was too far to make a run for it at this point. The winds picked up, white caps in the Bay is never good, lightning started popping all around us and the torrential downpour had reduced visibility to almost nothing. As I sat there with my son contemplating my decisions, I continued to check the radar hoping to see that it was going to pass. Every time I checked the radar the storm was growing more and more. It was like we decided to hunker down directly below the fuel source of this storm, which by now was proving to be very angry. As this storm raged on for about an hour, we finally saw some light. Could it be, finally the break we needed!

  We jumped up, pulled the anchor from the sand, pushed the boat off the island and hammered the throttle! At this point I wasn’t particularly concerned with the “Minimum Wake Outside of Channel” sign. As we made our way north, we looked back at the storm and wow, it look ferocious! After a quick 15 minute run, we pulled into the marina and prepared to pull the boat out of the water. Much to my surprise, there were about 5 boats showing up to launch at the same time. I thought, where the heck are they going…. The South Florida boat culture is unique in many ways, but that’s for another blog! At this point I was happy and grateful to be back at port safely and in one piece with my son. We caught no fish, speared nothing and sat nervously on an island for a few hours but it still beat a day in the office and my son has a story to tell his buddies at practice!

 If you would like to check out a little video from this day you can check out the video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@southeastfishingfl