soflabasser

Try taking the treble hooks out of a tarpon.They are much more grumpy than a catfish when you are dehooking them!

I have to agree with your son that spearfishing is far more fun that hook and line fishing. I do freedive spearfishing as well, mostly on boats and shoredives. Have gone on ocean kayaks that my friends have lended me and these kayaks are very good at taking 3-5 foot waves.I suggest you look for ocean kayaks and stay away from the typical bass/inshore kayaks since they might not handle the waves as good as a kayak made for ocean fishing/diving.

There are plenty of public areas you can fish bullseye snakehead in Western Broward. Use Google maps to find the areas, go scout them in person, and eventually you will have lots of good places to fish. They like hollow belly frogs and other frog imitating baits. They bite at night as well, so don't be afraid to fish at night for them.

Sounds like you had a very good taxadermist. Most +20 year old real bass mounts I have seen look like they are falling apart and the colors look faded.

I would consider this finesse fishing. Landing a 40 inch redfish on a barbie rod is far more difficult than landing a 1-6 pound bass on 4-8 pound mono.

Sadly most people don't like snakes( most likely poorly educated about snakes) and the behavior these children displayed is more common than many think.Those kids definitely need to be better educated by their parents that killing snakes for no good reason is wrong but I wouldn't give them a false diagnosis solely based on what they did ( any real health care provider knows this). These kids probably learned thier lesson and hopefully don't do it again. With that said these kids are nowhere as bad as a grown man that drives his boat close to a land based fishermen to bother them and especially nowhere as bad a jet skier/boater who flys by a no wake zone where land based fishermen are. Well said @Darren..

Welcome to the forum

I rather let go trophy bass and keep a couple pictures of them. Maybe get a couple replicas later on.

This thread is making me want to get a bass or walleye patterned swimbait and see how well it does the next time I fish for muskie.

As long as its legal I say go for it.

Mepps aglia inline spinner. Choose the size appropriate for the depth/current of the river you are fishing in.

Same here. 2 full Plano tackleboxes is more than enough for the places I fish and I leave the rest of the Plano Tackleboxes at home. I have at least 14 size 3700 Plano tackle boxes filled to capacity last time I checked and that would be way too much to bring fishing.

You can definitely catch a snook, tarpon, and redfish in the same day if you wanted to, especially on the west coast and some parts of South Florida. If you have a couple days to fish it will increase your chances of catching all these fish even more.

Good choice

What matters most is that you had a good time and caught a couple bass. Beats not catching anything at all.

Well said @DINK WHISPERER

Have caught channel catfish as bycatch while fishing for bass on swimbaits and jerkbaits.

That's terrible and I bet that fishing charter wasn't cheap. I reccomend you do your research months in advance before you visit South Florida again or any state you plan on fishing. That's what I do when I go on my fishing vacations up north and I tend to do well( have caught multiple muskies, smallies, various species of trout, rare types of bass,etc). You don't need a boat or fishing guide to catch a shark in South Florida and honestly sharks are not hard to catch in many places as long as you have the appropriate gear and you know how to handle a big game fish. I suggest in investing a decent combo for shark fishing and make sure to use a wire leader when shark fishing. You can get lucky and land a +7 foot shark with straight 12-30 pound mono and a small hook but that is unlikely compared to using 4 feet of 200-500 pound wire leader,10-20 feet topshot of 100-200 pound mono, and a couple hundred yards of 50-80 pound line. Many shark fishermen down here use much heavier line than I mentioned so your not going that heavy.

Sounds like you had a good time! Yes fishing in Florida is a lot harder than what most non Floridians think it is,especially for bass over 8 pounds and fishing for many of the saltwater species you mentioned. I have caught everything you mentioned in your list but it took me a while and it would be very difficult to catch all those species you mentioned in only 1 to 3 days of fishing. You don't need a boat to catch goliath grouper and you can catch them in the keys bridges, some places on the west coast,etc. Make sure to bring gear that can handle these fish since most gear cannot handle these fish. Another species of fish worth targeting is permit and you can catch them in the keys bridges as well.

My cousin uses yellow braid when he bass fishes and he seems to do well with it,even in the clear waters we fish in.

Sounds good. You will have a great time fishing for sharks from land in South Florida. There are other hard fighting fish you can target from land as well besides sharks. Let me know at least 1 month before you come and I will give you one of my fishing reports.

Uni to uni knot and Rapala knots are mostly what I use to tie lures and other terminal tackle.

I buy new rods every year or so but have many rods that are +20 years old. I don't plan on throwing away those old rods since they still work very well. Because of this I have more rods than I really need and probably have enough rods and tackle for a big group of people to fish comfortably.

8-10 pound mono for a size 1000 spinning reel will probably be better than using 20 pound mono.

How did your vacation go, where you able to catch all the fish on your list or ar least most of them? The fishing has been very good this month so I am sure you did well.