If you remember, a couple of months ago I had a business deal in Florida and met Dave Raska.

    The week before Christmas I was scheduled to be there Monday. At the time I was in Kansas on a deal so there was no use sitting around there over the weekend. At 3 a.m. Saturday morning I jumped on a plane to Miami.

    Dave picked me up at the airport and we headed to the Keys. My gear was pretty light. I had a pair of Kruger 10x40 binoculars to spot feeding birds/fish under them, a pair of Frogg Toggs for rain/wind, shorts and river sandals. Even though it was snowing in Idaho, it was warm in Florida. In fact, I got sunburned, which really got my youngest daughter torqued.

    It was be Dave, his brother Louis and me fishing. We hit Marathon and threw our gear into our bungalow. A channel ran right along our back porch and dumped in the bay. We only had to walk out the back door, cross the porch and jump in the boat. It was a perfect setting. I wish Katy could have been with me.

    As Dave and I were situating the boat that night, out of nowhere a private jet slid in over us not 150 yards high. We both about jumped in the water. Turns up there was a runway right next to us. We laughed and said it was time to hit the sack.

    The next morning we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and started getting ready. Chum loaded? Yep. Bait? Yep. Sandwiches? Water? Yep, yep.

    To hit the bay we had to cruise through a narrow slit tightly lined with mangroves not much wider than the boat. We hit the open water and Dave dropped the hammer on the twin Mercury 300’s. We planed out and soon hit our destination. We threw out an anchor, hung two bags of chum over the side, baited our rods and hit our fishing mode.

    The chum is ground and frozen in a block, which we placed into a mesh net. As the block of chum melts it drifts through the net and baitfish come up and go on a feeding frenzy. Soon you will see all manner of fish slashing through the water, which then attracts larger fish.

    On a bare hook we threaded fresh shrimp which we flipped out as far as we could in the trail of the drifting chum. I’d slightly tighten the line and it would not be in the water three seconds before I’d start getting a nibble. Our main target was Spanish mackerel, which Dave said were a good smoking fish. It was prime season so we had high expectations.

    We were periodically catching all manner of fish, including Red Snappers, Remoras, puff fish and mackerel. Snappers are weird. In the blink of an eye they set there chomping 90 mph. Don’t put your finger near their lips.

    Remoras are weird. They have a suction oval on top of their heads that they use to attach to the side of a shark. I hung one and Dave said “watch this.” He held it against his arm and it sucked on. Weird.

    Then we caught a pufferfish. It was an ugly little thing that I just glanced at. In a minute it had blown up so tight that it looked like it was about to explode. It’s the fish that the Japanese train to clean/cook. If you mess up, you die.

    But back to the Mackerel. When they hit, you knew it. The line zinged out like when you hang a King. They’re fun to catch and they put up a good fight. I didn’t measure any but I’d estimate that ours were in the 22 to 34-inch range.

    We moved twice and in the last spot hit a lick. We caught at least 100 fish. If we would have hit the last spot first there’s no telling how many we’d of caught. Periodically I used a jig tipped off with plastic, but the little fish snipped the tails off all my plastics in a short amount of time. So I went back to shrimp and cut bait. Cut bait was tougher and held on better.

    Well, like all days it finally came to an end. We reeled in and cruised back. We hit Dave’s house and had stuff unloaded and all the fish filleted right before the last ray of daylight got snuffed out by the horizon.

    I found mackerel’s an easy fish to fillet. I usually use a six-inch semi flex boning knife, but on these I used an eight-inch knife and it worked fine. Dave whipped out a marinade and we loaded up a big cooler with fillets to marinate for the night.

    The next night we loaded up his homemade smoker, ate dinner and tended the smoker. Whoa, he was right. They are a good smoking fish.

     The next night Dave’s buddies Randy and Doug came in town and we all gathered and made a boat load of Dave’s famous Mackerel dip. I was sitting in the Atlanta airport as I typed this article, thinking about cracking into my cooler and whipping out a batch.