Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

Captain Wayne Krystopa and I have been fishing together for the past three days. We were guiding Tim Rawls and his two boys, Talus and Weston, and their Grandfather “Pops.” Our only objective was to make a mess, catching lots of fish. We used ‘tipped’ jigs and free lined ‘dead ladyfish chunks.’ We caught, between the two boats, fifty redfish, 23 ladyfish, 17 trout, 7 snook, (big ones,) 57 catfish, (the boys kept a running count every day,) bonnet and blacktip sharks, a sea robin, a flounder, a bluefish, 5 puffers, a lizardfish, 5 jacks, 2 jewfish,  11 mangrove snappers, 1 manatee, and we got broken off a dozen times by mystery fish that the boys described alternately as, “a tuna, a wahoo, a giant snook, a tarpon, a giant redfish, a marlin, a goliath grouper, a great white.” It’s going to take weeks to bleach all the blood and guts out of my boat.