Food chain study reveals pertinent fishing info

Catfish find a new home at Tropical Park

One of the most interesting scientific reports of immediate use to offshore fishing-doers tells us that baby sea turtles don’t just drift around at the whim and mercy of ocean currents. Instead, they appear to know where they want to go, and they swim to it.

Where’s that? Masses of sargassum seaweed — exactly where dolphin go for shade and forage. When they meet, the dolphins eat.

We learn about the purposeful swimming from a field study of toddler turtles, conducted for NOAA by researchers Kate Mansfield at the University of Central Florida and Nathan Putman of the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami.

More to fishing’s point, an article in the May-June issue of Florida Sport Fishing, by its editor Mike Genoun, tells us that dolphin consume the turtlets found in sargassum fields. They’re lunch when cobia
encounter them, too.

Right away, it must be said that you may not gather up sea turtles and use them for bait. It would be wrong and illegal.

In the case of dolphin, the temptation is easy to resist. A school of competitive mahi-mahi, (if you like that restaurant affectation), will bite any bait they think they can whup — live or dead naturals, plugs, jigs, flashy streamer flies, pretty nearly everything they can get their mouths around.

In our experience, cobia are much harder to find. The news that they’ll take a live turtlito should renew the interest of anyone who’s given up looking actively for cobia.
We’re already browsing tackle catalogs for lures that look right — not necessarily spitting images of sea turtle kids, but with just enough resemblance to persuade a predator to try a taste.

So far we like the look of soft plastic crawdads sold for freshwater bass fishing. It might be a good idea to add a bit of weight and crop the longer extremities.

Dolphin are easy to find; while trolling blue water for other species, just look for weedlines and debris fields. They won’t all harbor dolphin, but some will.

You’ll have to search harder to find cobia. They’re not something you routinely run across while fishing for something else.

Biologists speak of turtle childhood as “the lost years,” meaning they don’t know much about what the young do and where they go after they’re seen hatching on beaches and crawling into the surf.

Their association with fields of sargassum wasn’t a secret. Mike Genoun knew about that. It’s been documented scientifically before, but with the belief the turtles arrived by drifting.

Mike Genoun knew they were there, but didn’t know about the new science until we told him. If you can’t find Florida Sport Fishing in a store, look online at www.floridasportfishing.com where you can subscribe.

Scientists Putman and Mansfield weren’t thinking about turtles as fish forage. Their research grew from a need to learn more about endangered and threatened species. They doubted the popular notion that turtle youth travel entirely on the whims of ocean currents.

Mansfield rigged sun-powered tracking tags on captured turtle kids —24 green and 20 Kemp’s ridley — and turned them loose in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time and place, little free-drifting buoys were launched with the turtles.

If the turtles merely drifted wherever the currents took them, they figured to mimic the movements of those buoys, but they didn’t. Satellite tracking showed location differences as distant as 125 miles in just a few days. The little turtles clearly were swimming, not just floating.

At least part of the time, they looked like they knew, or thought they knew, where they were going —“active orientation,” in scientific lingo.

“Our data show that one hypothesis doesn’t and shouldn’t fit all, and that even a small degree of swimming or active orientation can make a huge difference in the dispersal of these young animals,” Mansfield wrote.

Keeper alert

Changing rules: The minimum keeper size for gray triggerfish caught in Florida state waters was raised in April from 12 inches (fork length) to 14 inches. The Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission made the change to conform to pending federal regulations. It will take effect after the federal rule is approved.

That size limit’s already in effect in the Gulf of Mexico. State waters range from shore to nine nautical miles out in the Gulf, and from shore to three miles in the Atlantic.

More changing rules: Commercial lobster diving rules are changing too. The FWC voted to extend indefinitely the existing mora-torium on issuing new or additional licenses. It would have expired on July 1. Endorsements (licenses) that are still valid can be transferred. The endorsement holder no longer is required to be aboard the boat when lobsters are harvested.

FWC said transferability of the permits will prevent the industry from phasing out eventually.

Their number has dwindled. In order to remain valid, commercial dive endorsements have had to be renewed annually since 2004. In that year, FWC issued 404 endorsements. There are 252 still active.

Catfish galore

There aren’t many places in southeast Florida where you can catch channel catfish, but one good spot is in the heart of greater Miami at Tropical Park.

FWC stocked 3,000 of them, including a lot of keepers, in the park’s lake for an April event called Vamos a Pescar Miami, targeted to families and children.

For fishing doers who don’t know any other Spanish, that’s a valuable phrase. It means “Let’s go fishing.”

It was a catch and release promotion, so most of those fish are still swimming around, available if not exactly eager to be caught and fried.

The lake’s a state Fish Management Area, getting special attention from the FWC.

The cats stocked there were 8-inchers and up, considered ready for catch and eat, compared to the usual stocking size of 4-6 inches.

“There are many things the FWC does to improve fishing, but the most direct is putting ready-to-catch fish right in the water,” said John Cimbaro, the management area’s manager. “These catfish might remain in the lake for over 10 years and grow to weights of over 10 pounds.”

The upsized cats were raised at the Florida Bass Conservation Center at Webster, Fla., but the project was paid for by World Fishing Network.

Also involved: the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, which established an education fund called Vamos a Pescar in honor of former President George H.W. Bush. It concentrates on grassroots programs in high density Hispanic communities.

Tropical Park, a former horse racetrack, is at the juncture of Bird Road (Southwest 40th Street) and the Palmetto Expressway.

Park information is available at this website: www.miamidade.gov/parks/tropical.asp.

For tips on catching catfish, look here: Fishing for cats: myfwc.com/fishing/freshwater/fishing-tips/#catfish.