Publish date: January 31, 2022

Petie with a nice string of fish.

In true brotherly fashion Petie says to his older brother Jerry, you gonna see if they're biting at Game Wardens Point? Nah, say's Jerry, I think I'm gonna head for the "Cork Hole", I caught a nice mess of trout up there the other day.

Petie is as nice a guy as you will ever want to meet. He is the seventh son of 14 children. He is a Viet Nam veteran and made that tour about the same year I did, 1967, You'll know his boat by name, yep, you guessed it, "The Seventh Son". I've listened to Petie and his friends as they plan for the days fishing and almost always there's a lot of fishing hole names being bandied about. Beside the two names mention above I have heard names like, "The burnt camp", or, "The Redfish Hole", and the list goes on. When I hear people name their fishing holes I wonder just how did they come up with that name. The one named Game Warden Point, Hmmm....

I'm thinking now as I write of some of my favorite fishing holes, and of the many enjoyable hours I have spent at each one. I remember one fishing hole in a bayou I lived on in central Florida, till this day I refer to affectionately as, "The Honey Hole", I have caught some nice 15 to 18 pound Snook there. My friend David Patterson and I fished that hole so much we knew just when to be there. We knew to be there on a late evening, outgoing tide would do the trick, fact is, we knew the best time would be at about 45 minutes after the tide had turned out.

When I first moved to Florida back in 1983 we had rented a house on a canal that led into this several hundred acre bayou. The only boat I had was a 14 foot aluminum flat bottom Jon boat, with a seven and a half horsepower Firestone outboard my uncle in Georgia had given me when I was a teenager. I used that boat in the farm ponds and rivers in central Georgia to catch bass, bream and catfish. Sometime my son and I would just paddle the Jon boat out on the bayou to fish and because we didn't have a motor that would push us very fast we had to fish every spot and that's when I found we always caught fish in this same hole. Later on I remember we had some company come down and I mentioned I had a "Honey Hole" to fish and the name stuck, I would take the company fishing at the "Honey Hole" and was almost always guaranteed to catch fish, when it was time to go back fishing, someone says let's go back to that "Honey Hole", the name has stuck for years and all the friends I have ever taken there call it by that name. Does this sound familiar?

Have you ever named your fishing holes, and if you do, just how did you arrive at the name? I think when you put a name to a fishing spot it has to earn the name given. How much would you pay a charter guide for his fishing holes, it probably would be beyond reach in price and then I wonder if he would really give up all of his fishing holes for any price.

After several years of living in Florida I finally purchased a 19' Keywest center console boat and for the next 5 years or so we fished the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We would launch my 19' Keywest boat from Nick's Park in New Port Ricky, Florida. We would head for the reefs that lay starting at about 12 to 14 miles offshore, we caught some mighty fine Groupers there. In this part of Florida's West Coast the water is shallow, and at 22 miles offshore we would be in only 49' of water. I had a Loran C on the boat, and I found that, coupled with a good depth finder, would level the playing field when we were trying to catch fish consistently. When we would find a reef that produced fish to our liking we began to keep notes and to write down the Loran numbers. We would look at the bottom structure and note what was down there, i.e., rocks, coral or what we would call the garden bottom. We logged what we caught in this spot and what bait we used. The time of year, day, tide and weather conditions all played an important part in catching fish or going home with an empty ice chest.

Here are a few tips that will help you locate and develop you own set of "Named Fishing Holes".

Offshore Fishing Tip Number One: Never pass up a big turtle while fishing offshore, you know the ones with a head the size of a basketball, and they weight a couple hundred pounds. I have found they will always be over structure. Stop, throw a marker out and press that event marker button on your Loran C or GPS, let the numbers on the Loran or GPS settle down before writing them down, I make this statement to those of you who are not aware there is a lag in the position shown on your Loran C or GPS, for instance if you are doing 25 miles an hour and you press that event marker button on your Loran C or GPS, you may be as much as a few hundred feet off the actual position. Let me tell you, a hundred yards off the spot where the fish are will make a world of difference. To make up our markers we used one of the empty gallon oil containers with a string tied to it, and a brick on the other end, "Hey, it works", wrap about a hundred feet of string around it, more if you're fishing deeper water and you're good to go. Drive around the marker and get a good look at the bottom, see what's down there. You say, but how do I tell what's down there with a depth finder, simple, find yourself a spot where you know what the bottom looks like and remember what that looks like on your depth finder screen. If you catch a piece of coral on your bottom fishing rig and pull that up, look at the screen, remember that you're on coral bottom. Did the anchor come up with mud, sand or a piece of coral, all these things can tell you what's on the bottom. Learn what kind of fish hangs out in the sand, if you are catching "Squirrel fish" then I'll almost guarantee you, you're on a sand bottom. If you catch what you're after i.e., grouper, red snapper, look at the screen, remember what's down there, make notes about all the conditions down there and around you.

Offshore Fishing Tip Number 2: Never pass up those deep diving birds that hang out offshore, you'll see them sitting on the water and then disappear for a few minutes while they make those incredible deep dives to the bottom. Some of them I have found over reefs as deep as 65 feet. These birds look kind of like Loons, I don't know what they are, but I do know they have found us many a Grouper hole. Cormorants will also hang out with them. I remember one day in about 55 foot of water we came across several of these birds, so we stopped, threw out the marker and then tried to anchor down over the marker. By the time I got the wind figured out and the drift of the boat we were a 100 feet off the marker. I looked at the depth finder screen and recognized we were anchored over sand, I kind of knew it would be futile, but we baited anyway with live Squirrel fish and went down to the bottom, not a bite. We said , before we leave lets at least get anchored on the marker. We did, and I heard Jimmy, my brother in law grunt at soon as his bait hit bottom, he came up with a 13 pound Red Grouper. In a matter of minutes we had 11 fish in the ice chest and that's all we had room for, so we pulled anchor and went home. Watch out for those birds, it works.

Offshore Fishing Tip Number Three: If you're in luck and find a good reef to fish, but you're just not catching anything then move to the very outside of the reef. I have found the larger fish seem to prefer to hold just along the edge of the structure. I suppose they can dart out from a hiding place there and catch the bait fish that prefer the sand bottom, such as Croakers, Pin Fish, Squirrel Fish, and the like.

Inshore Fishing: When fishing inshore for such species at Speckled Trout, Redfish, Snook and the like, the tides, time of year, day, weather and water salinity all play an important part in finding your inshore fishing holes. I really like my notebook for this sort of thing. I can note the conditions as mentioned above. If you are catching fish, note what this hole has that other places do not. What is the bottom like, is there an Oyster bottom, are there drop offs where the current makes an eddy. What kind of bait fish do you see, is there a lot of Mullet around. The tide movement, time of year and day are probably the most important factors to note. Be sure to note the bait used and did you do something special to the bait, i.e. did you tip you're lead head jig with a piece of real bait such as a piece of shrimp, cut bait and the like. With a little work you can develop your own set of named fishing holes and have one for the morning, noon and evening all year long. I'm sure you can come up with your own list of fishing holes and I hope you do, just go fishing.

God Bless

The Webmaster

James Allen