What about this?

[jake in jupiter]

Just hook him through the lips. I like to bridle baits when sharking but its a mullet I just don't see much advantage to it.

[jake in jupiter]

Try it and tell us the results I am willing to try anything that has potential.

[Daeron]

i have to say, at first i thought you were daft man.. but i hear the logic in what you're saying. Lets not forget, however, that in the hundred-year picture, tarpon numbers are at least as sharply down as snook numbers.. and sizes... the tarpon fishery has also gone through some major trauma, and while in the last few decades the snook population has been more threatened by declining habitat, any conscious influence excercised over gamefish population needs to be minimal to say the least.

The estuarine ecosystem restoration that has been going on in palm beach county is fantastic, even though they leveled and totally resculpted a spoil island my father grew up on (it was ~ 100 yards south, and the width of lake worth east of his house as a boy until my uncle sold it in 1997) they have basically "munyonized" a four mile long stretch of the lake worth lagoon, centering on the outflow of the C-51 canal. I haven't seen anywhere near as much detail in their Northa nd South County projects as in the Lake Worth Lagoon...

But my point is, help is on the way. You folks down in broward and dade owe alot to the foresight that has been taken up here in Palm Beach County as far as what we have saved from being paved over, or sludged under.. you get a trickle-down effect from projects like this at least...

Does anyone know of any projects like this going on down in lauderdale and miami?? i know the Loxahatchee and St Lucie river estuaries are going through intensive therapy as well, but i havent heard much about down south.

Click here to go to a PBC ERM (Environmental Resources Management) webpage that outlines all of the estuarine enhancement programs that we have going on up here. In high school, I was involved in getting alot of this going through Forest Hill High's Environmental Academy. Within ten years (five if they'd just seed the lake with 10,000 shrimp every two weeks) this fish population is going to explode, and im sure they will migrate north, and south...

[BoatlessFisherman]

Wow Robalo and Daeron
You guys seem to have a great handle on this knid of stuff, if you guys see good articles around or want to add your own stuff, I would appreciate it.

Please help that Regulations, Rules, Enviromental Issues area out and post some of this stuff it's GREAT, I really understood what you guys were saying and thats cool, so often some of this kind of stuff shoots over my head.

I enjoyed reading what you guys had to say Thanks, Tom

[kyfisherman]

Wouldn't it have been nice to fish south florida before all the canals and junk were made. I mean the everglades is in fact a river that carries vast loads of nutrients to the sea, but when you look at how it's been torn apart it has had to have a major impact on the fishery. I'd like to been down in south florida a few hundred years ago with some modern gear! Hang on lol

[JackJack]

I fished around the Lantana Bridge, and Lake Worth Pier way back when every day and night, later the fishing got so bad you never saw bait. I started fishing again last summer and I was amazed at how much better the fishing was after a twenty year lay off. I think we have to remember that politics has played a role in that Lake Worth lagoon restoration. the baitfish are coming back. Last time I went to Lantana bridge the bait was so thick I almost cried. I heard Warren Newell, County Commissioner has fought long and hard for that restoration effort. All grown up now and we have to be involved.

[PBFisher]

I was fishing from the old lakeworth bridge about a month ago. Something seems to be going on in the shallows next to the golf course. Is that a mangrove project there? Do any of you guys watch "The South Florida fishing report" friday on sun? That guy Henry is constantly complaining about the South Florida Water Management District. Like they are the masters of all evil.

[Daeron]

well, originally lets not forget that the agency known as the "South Florida Water Management District" was until recently, plain ol' "South Florida Flood Contorl," and in a sense, they were the architechts of the draining/destruction down here... but only in a sense. they only responded to public will like any proper government institution.. they drained the swamp. so you could sorta say that SFWMD has an original sin to pay for... and its also ALWAYS been a bureuacracy, and some people just automatically hate them....plus, they are the ones in control of the water levels in all the canals and lakes, and they are responsible for maintaining a proper watershed for the aquifer (ie rain does what it is historically SUPPOSED to do) while at the same time avoiding any flood damage or inconvenience. SO when we are in the middle of a drought, and water levels are low, its easy to say they shouldnt have dropped them so much.. and when we are flooded out, its easy to complain about how they should have lowered water levels more.. but its VERY hard to make casual observations, and have a CLUE what their operating parameters are.... so its easy to get mad at them, and not easy to forgive them... but they run a complex equation that angers people sometimes.

All that, is one of the two problems that people might have with SFWMD. (hey!! Search For Weapons of Mass Destruction! weird coincidence) The other problem, the problem i have with them, is the fact that immediately upon taking office, our dear governor was kind enough to make his first act as governor the removal of all scientific staff from the board of directors at SFWMD and replace them with tried-and-true old skool government bureaucrats..... so instead of the informed, wise group of people in that building, who helped to AUTHOR the everglades restoration act, that Act get to be implemented by the same desk-jockey, paper-pushing, un-scientifically trained, inexpert chumps who run every other aspect of our civic life (when was the last time you went to the DMV??

so there are the two main reasons most floridians have to look down on the SFWMD, but they have an absurdly complex and impossible job; they are the ones that get to deal with 8 million people + swamp cannot equal desert.... and that is the simplest way i can sum that part up.. and at the same time, they have had their head cut off and replaced by this bureaucrat-head, that is used to reading minutes and sitting in meetings, making votes and sitting in Air Conditioning at a big long Table, instead of being used to the fieldwork and junior study that was their path towards a PhD, and the gradual climb throughout their careers up the ladder to the top of their field....thats about the simplest way to sum THAT up.

I mean, I will come out and say that I am a liberal, a registered dem, and i have MAJOR problems with jeb bush other than that.. but as soon as he took office and did that, all politicality left my opinion of him, in this mindframe at least.. because regardless of who you are, two years into the inception of the Everglades Forever Act is NOT the time you do something nitwitted like that. I dont think any greater political views pervaded my post at all, but i wanted to put a slight disclaimer and apology down here in case it seemed to drip. I try to be a nice guy, even when i cant help but let a few venomous remarks slip.. so i wanted to explain that i did TRY to keep the body from getting to be any sort of "bush-bashing"... because i know alot of ther other south florida fisherman are as liable to have the opposite views from my own, and i dont want to make a disagreement, i just want to give credit and blame where they are due.

[JackJack]

Yeah, thats the restoration effort i was talking about. that was an initiative paid for (at least some?)by the County Commission and speaheaded by Warren Newell and a lot of people who have the same concerns. i think it is already functioning as it was meant to. we need all of that effort and more. The restoration project there goes all along the golf course northward and basically recreates the fishery, not as good as nature, but good. If you go over there and climb over those rocks and look on the inside of that area you can see the water is even clearer in there and the little fish swimming in there. I have been waiting to see the mangroves grow and now they are coming up.

[Daeron]

how seriously would anyone commit to a program of seeding shrimp into the lagoon? my dad has been screaming it for years.. but we couldnt afford to go buy live shrimp and dump them out.. not ALONE anyhow... i mean, an influx of shrimp would only help seed the lagoon with one of its basic food groups, and be (to my thinking) the next logical step beyond the mangrove habitat establishment..

thoughts?

[JackJack]

i have to say either it is already in the works or it has been thought about. By re-establishing the habitat they are probably hoping that a natural population for that area will occur and with more restoration...more natural populations, just a laymans guess. usually these efforts have more involvement and are more thought out than we think. i know that restoration effort was talked about for many years. I was in Warren Newells office six years ago and the whole office is filled with literature on the lake worth lagoon, i would bet you could call over ther and hear everything you'd want to know about the restoration. i also just heard that the Lake Worth pier will finally be getting re-built, know anythging?

[PBFisher]

I read something online not long ago that said something like, that part of the lagoon does not get flushed very well. So that the salinity varies too much for resident species. In the dry season it is very salty and very sweet in the rainy season. Maybe someone whose family has lived here for generations could tell us what it used to be like (and might be again) at the Lake Worth Bridge.

[Daeron]

well that was the original purpose behind opening the boynton inlet, was freshening the water supply in the south end of lake worth. while i was in high school, i was a student in the forest hill HS environmental academy, and we planted alot of the mangrove seeds that grew into the seedlings planted in the full extension to the munyon island project.. i was involved in grantwriting commitees for funding the program, and everything.. but nowhere had anyone mentioned seeding of fauna as well as flora.. so i dunno. I guess I oughta do some more research, but maybe we could get some grass-roots growing for some fundage.. perhaps do it as a private affair with the approval of the "powers-that-be" so to speak...

i dont know, it just seems like such a good idea that I would like to see it enacted. maybe its foolish. I will check into it, and if I find anything, post it here.

shawn

[PBFisher]

Dearon take a look at this. Its a document called Lake Worth Lagoon Management Plan. It's a long paper but one of the things it talks about is restoration of sea grasses. I'm no biologist, but I don't think you can have shrimp without first having sea grass. What did you grand pappy say about what they used to catch there (old lake worth bridge)? I only caught 2 mojarras in 3 hours fishing.