A question for the Floridians (or any coastal-dwellers here):
I live directly on Choctawatchee Bay, near Fort Walton Beach. Last night, at 11:PM, I saw flashes of light in my bedroom window. It was the wrong window for normal road traffic, so I got up and saw about five or six young men wading about 5-10 feet offshore, with buckets, nets, and flashlights in hand. They seemed to be searching the bottom of the bay for something, and occasionally dipping their buckets or nets into the water.
Several months back, I’d seen another dude quietly trawling along in a very quiet boat (electric motor?) with underwater lights doing the same sort of searching.
My question is: what are y’all looking for? Frogs (in a bay?)? Crawfish? Buried treasure? And why so late at night–why not just after dusk?
I doubt this is what your nocturnal fisherman were up to, but…
I used to canoe annually in FL on the Peace River. I’d always see folks that looked like they were panning for gold. When I asked about it, I was reluctantly told that they were searching for valuable items people may have lost. The implication was that they didn’t intend on turning it into the local police as a found item.
I spent a week on the Gulf coast in Alabama last year, and after dark lots of flashlights could be seen going up and down the beach. In this case, it was either tourists looking for hermit crabs to keep, or people looking for hermit crabs to sell to the tourist shops. Also, maybe clams or something?
Do they noodle for catfish in Florida? (Catch catfish by reaching into a crevice with their bare hand, letting the fish bite down and then hauling them out by the jaw). That would be my guess, if they were actually in the river along the banks, and the banks are stream-cut vertical faces as opposed to sandy beaches.
My first thought when I hear this is drugs. I lived in Florida and drops are just everywhere. It’s so easy to bring them in on small boats and leave them in pre-determained spots. Then people usings seemingly “innocent” modes retreive them.
What better cover than “I was hunting crawfish and just ‘happened’ to ‘find’ the drugs.”
I don’t buy the treasure hunt argument, because it’s too easy to find treasure and not turn it in. First of all who’d know you didn’t turn it in. Second who’s to say you didn’t turn it ALL in. Find a bunch of stuff turn one thing in keep the rest."
It could be legit, if there is a swamp critter that only comes out at night, but it could be anything from drug drops to illegal importing of ivory or whatever.
Call the cops and give them the info and then don’t worry about it. Just tell them, I don’t know if this is important but…Call the NON-EMERGENCY number to report it and let the cops have the info and they will deal with it or not as they see fit.
Really? I understand your point and the concept behind it, but I never see any traffic at the shoreline where I’m at except for these guys. I would think drug smugglers would be using GPS or some other sort of identifying land feature to at least mark their caches better. Sort of like GeoCaching, but for profit.
Tripler
But I hadn’t thought of the drug smuggling thing. Interesting. . .:dubious:
We saw people doing that once. The guy “captaining” our little boat cut the motor got away from their area so we didn’t scare off the fish or something. He did it just as a nice courtesy. But I would wager that it was just some good ol’ fishin. Drugs (as previously mentioned) would probably have a better system than just looking up and down shallows at night and treasure hunters? Meh.
Flounder. We grew up doing it. It’s fun but definitely one of those activities that benefits from the hat that holds two beers and has a straw coming down to your mouth.
Hey, Tripler. I didn’t know you lived down here. Are you based out of Eglin? I live on Holmes Creek in Vernon, about 35 miles up SR 79 from Panama City Beach.
I’ve never heard of flounder gigging on foot, but that’s probably what the guy in the boat was doing. The people who were wading were most likely catching chofers, crabs or eels for bait.
If you have access to a jon boat, give flounder gigging a try sometime. It’s a very easy way to catch a limit of flounder in a short time. You don’t even need a trolling motor - we usually go in pairs, one in the stern of the boat pushing it along with a pole, and the other in the bow with the gig. You can rig up a light with a 12V battery and a car headlight, or you can buy one of those fancy ones at Half Hitch Tackle or Bass Pro Shops that clamp onto the gunwale. Hang the light as close to the water as possible to limit glare.
Just run up toward the beach and cut the motor so you drift up to shallow water quietly, turn on the light, and pole along in water meter-deep or less looking for the outline of the flounder on the bottom. They’re pretty well camouflaged, but you can see their outline in the sand. Position the gig a few inches above the fish right behind the eyes, and poke it hard. Be prepared for a struggle! Flip the fish back into the boat and pole along to the next one.
They are delicious baked. I have the recipe from Captain Anderson’s if you want it.
Whatever you do, don’t call the cops on the fishermen unless you want to give them a good laugh.
Actually, yes I am. I’ll be graduating a particular school based there this Friday.
So, what do you mean ‘gigged’? As in, harpoon 'em or something? I’ve done a bit of fishing in my life, but it was all rod-and-reel. Although one day, my wife and I were wading in the bay and scared one off from the bottom.
Ich bin kein Floridian, but I looked up flounder gigging. This is apparently the Texas version; it talks about the “wadefishing” method which I think was what you saw folks doing
It’s more like a stabbing than a harpooning, as the gig is positioned inches above the fish before the strike. As you probably know, the water is clear as gin in your area, you can see the fish well, so it’s only a matter of slowly sneaking up on it, getting in position, then striking. You’re still holding onto the gig pole, so you just flip the fish into the boat, step on it, and pull the gig out.
According to Kimstu’s website and this one, it’s quite possible to gig flounder while wading. I’ve never known anyone who used that method, I guess because the best floundering spots are only accessible by boat. If you scroll down to the bottom of the (awful-looking) page I linked, there’s a photo of what the flounder looks like on the sand. Their rig is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen around here, everybody I know uses either a 12-16’ jon boat or a small flats boat.
The gig itself is a barbed fork on the end of a +/- 10’ pole. The forks are sold at just about any bait shop or tackle shop, usually you supply the pole yourself.
I bet if you ask around the guys on base somebody will know somebody who would fix you up with a gigging trip. My offer of recipes still stands.
ETA: I just took a better look at the website Kimstu linked, and it does a much better job than I did explaining what to do, with lots more detail. Be sure and check it out (it even has a recipe for stuffed flounder).
The answer is Sport Shrimping. Sport Shrimping is what we do for sport, food, fun and camaraderie while, most importantly, being environmentally friendly. It consists of wading in the grass flats at night, picking up shrimp, one at a time, (sometimes two) in a dip net or an “Ozello Shrimper.” We keep the larger shrimp and release the smaller shrimp for another day. Sport shrimping leaves the environment as it is found and causes minimal adverse impact. The lights shine and makes the shrimps eyes glow, making it easy to catch them. The tide must be right also. High tides make it hard to see the shrimp in the grass beds so a mid to low tide is perfect. Here in the West Central Florida area …the best time to start shrimping is mid May throughout the summer.
Also …Most of the good shrimping spots have crabs. These are also collected and sold as live fishing bait for the summer Tarpon run.
I used to live in a small fishing village next to an estuary in New Zealand, and very occasionally used to see some folk wading around at night shining an attracting light. Flounder, I believe, was what they were after.
I don’t believe we have the flounder thing here - or if we do, I’ve never heard of it. Maybe it’s a Panhandle thing. Here at night people are usually shark fishing, or gator baiting if it’s fresh water.
In Florida, shrimp are legal to net, with permits, for certain limited durations at certain strictly enforced locations, using certain permitted equipment. I went shrimping once and it was a lot of fun. We got our permits and went to a low bridge at night when they were “running” (swimming with the currents along the surface, on their way out to sea, IIRC), and caught a bunch using our small nets and flashlights. I remember the rules being such that we were legal where we were, but had we strayed, say, twenty yards away from the bridge, we would have been operating illegally.
