Bounty Of North Biscayne Bay

This scan of a photocopy of some little color prints looks like crap, no doubt! I have another hat that I wear at times. In addition to being a photographer I'm Captain Al Kaplan, a fishing guide in north Biscayne Bay here in Miami. I belong to The South Florida Fishing Club and one afternoon the phone rang. A panic stricken voice said "Tonight's speaker just cancelled! Can you be the speaker at the club meeting tonight?" "Sure" I replied. "No Problem. See you a bit before seven."

I pulled a bunch of photos from the album and rushed over to the Chamber of Commerce office to use their copier. I made about fifty copies to hand out just in case, even though an average meeting attracts perhaps 25 or 30 people. That's why I still have a few copies a dozen years later.

The lady in the left two pictures, Vivette Thomas, was the love of my life for many years. Both she and her younger son Craig loved fishing as much as I did. That's me in the upper right. The rest are of Craig. What I wanted to show was that there was some quality fishing in the shadow of those urban skyscrapers and the palatial waterfront homes. All of these specimens would be considered decent size, or even large for their species, and the two left hand pictures of Craig show him holding a black grouper (top) and a king mackerel (bottom). Neither one is commonly thought of as an inshore fish. They're mostly caught on the reefs off shore in the ocean. Vivette's spotted sea trout (lower left) and mangrove snapper (upper left) are the biggest I've seen, and the lookdown Craig is proudly displaying on the extreme right is about as big as they get.

I talked about where to look for fish, what techniques work best, and which lure to use under various conditions. I never fish with bait. The right lure correctly used seems to out fish bait every time.

Best of all, I never had to say "Look at the camera and smile". Those smiles were real.