Encouraged by the fast paced action of the fishing charter, I eventually made a trip to the waterfront West Marine and picked up two fishing starter sets (poles, reels, tackle boxes containing various truck such as hooks, weights, leaders, and lures), a bait bucket, a set of PVC gloves, and a pair of snips. Then, I referred to the Standard Mapping charts lovingly hung up in the hallway, and decided to fish the Bogie Channel between Big Pine Key and No-Name Key, from the bridge.
I read everything I could about bridge-fishing, most of which went right over my head. But I picked a good enough time to go, around 3PM, shortly after a gentle tide change in the middle of the day. We stopped at the bait shack in Big Pine and got a few dozen shrimp, and we were good to go.
There was some confusion, I'd never had to tie a knot in monofilament (I was using centauri knots, which I had just learned about online an hour prior), or bait my own hook with shrimp (they're slippery lil bastards and they take practice to grab properly), but eventually we were casting off the bridge with weights, leaders, and shrimp-bearing hooks. After a little while, I became one of the only people on the bridge to catch anything at all that day, and this is what I pulled up (still image courtesy of Flip MinoHD video camera that I carry everywhere now, thank you Grace):
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, that's a puffer. I was only targeting snapper that day, and couldn't identify him at the time, so he was release unharmed after grunting at me during my first-ever unhooking attempt. Later, I caught a very juvenile snapper ("very" being only a few inches) and tossed him back. After about two hours of this, we headed home and got everything unpacked in time to watch the sunset.
I don't want to gloss over it; It was terribly frustrating setting poles up, re-setting poles up, setting poles up again, cutting line, re-tying line... ugh. But on balance, I think it went extremely well for a first self-guided fishing trip. I had all the right essentials: The bait bucket, gloves, and snips were necessary and useful. I caught fish, which only one other party on the bridge that day can say. But I also think I could stand to use better reels, lighter weights, and different hooks. And it was hard coming home to look Daisy-kitty in the eye and tell her that Daddy couldn't catch any snapper for her today.
Yeah, after a bit more research, we're gonna try again soon. Hang in there, Daisy.
-Chris