Here in the Florida Keys there are always fishing options, even when the wind churns up the sea or an unseasonal “cool down” keeps a lot of anglers at the docks. The other day my son-in-law Capt. Jacques Pauchey, along with three of his college buddies, my son Scotty and I, donned our windbreakers and took one of those options: chasing Spanish mackerel out in the Florida Gulf.

Forty miles out, in a brisk chop, it was a day of surprises, some good, some not so good. After finding a “pocket” about 15 feet deep, we dropped the hook and baited up with yellow jigs and live shrimp. The action was fast. The mackerel were big, lively and cooperative. Within an hour or so our fish locker was stacked with enough Spanish mackerel to provide more than enough fillets for a dozen people at a Superbowl Sunday gathering.

Only one of the many netted fish got back at us. Bob, from Buffalo, trying to remove his hook from a slimy catfish, got a puncture wound in his hand, which can be toxic and nasty.

Soon, we picked up and headed for a special sanctuary island called Sandy Key known to be a hangout for a variety of magnificent seabirds such as Roseate Spoonbills, White Pelicans, Skimmers and many others. You never know. Sometimes, if you get lucky, a dolphin or two will show up astern and frolic in your boat’s wake. The birds didn’t disappoint us, but, when it came time to leave Sandy Key, the Yamaha 225 four stroke outboard did let us down. It would not start. This, as you might appreciate, is not good when you are 40 miles from your dockage..

As is invariably the case on most fishing boats, when there is a mechanical problem, everybody aboard is an “expert. Pooling our vast knowledge we were soon able to isolate the problem, which turned out to be a bad external fuel filter that was not letting the gas flow properly. We bypassed the stubborn filter long enough to get the outboard’s gas pump cooperating and, after reconnecting the external filter, we were back in business.

Undeterred we decided to hit another fishing spot on the way home. Florida Bay, which is part of the Everglades Waterway, is peppered with mangrove islands of every size and description. Some, if you know the right ones, are security habitat for large schools of Mangrove Snapper. It was our good fortune that, Capt. Pauchey, who grew up fishing Florida Bay, knew the honey holes.

Soon we found the hot spot, tied the boat up to a mangrove branch and commenced to get hookups one after another. We soon iced down a dozen or more snapper on top of our mackerel catch. But not before

Yours truly experienced an unpleasant first. A razor-toothed Mangrove Snapper, bent on revenge, tried to bite off my ring finger. Ouch!

The pay off, of course, after a productive day on the fishing grounds is a fish fry. As the Super Bowl got underway, we fired up the turkey cooker with peanut oil and deep fried the beer-battered mackerel fillets ( at 350 degrees for three minutes per batch).

You talk about good! The traditional Buffalo wings are OK, but, in my view, they don’t hold a candle to deep-fried Spanish mackerel fresh caught from the Florida Gulf.

By the way, “Catfish” Bob is none the worse for wear. He took proper care of his wound and is headed back to wintry Buffalo with a full belly and a new respect — not only for the Denver Broncos, but catfish as well.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors.” His e-mail address is paul@sportingjournal.com . He has two books “A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook” and his latest, “Backtrack.”

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