I get to travel and fish quite a bit, but one thing that is probably, for me, better than both travel and fishing... is the anglers I get to meet along the way. As you will have probably guessed from last week’s blog, I love fishing, but for me what makes my angling special is the people I get to fish with.

In my new series for Total Sea Fishing “Modern Specimen Angling” I have been linking up with some of the finest anglers I know, and using them to teach the readership a few tricks of their trade - the tackle used, the tactics employed and the dedication required in pursuing one specific species and a good sized one at that. One of the anglers I have been working with recently is renowned, North Devon, specimen angling legend John Pattern aka the ‘Barnstaple Bagging Machine’ and he’s not called that for nothing. Wherever John goes, he bags up, because he’s good at what he does. This month’s TSF has some awesome insight into shore Conger fishing with Rob Yorke, to find out more about shore Tope with John Pattern you’ll have to wait until February’s edition of Total Sea Fishing!

As well as being one of North Devon’s finest shore anglers, John Pattern is also pretty handy from a boat, and with 15 years of intensive travel around the Caribbean, John is also a dab hand at tropical fishing using spinning tackle and saltwater fly. With a vast array of destinations under his belt, until last week John had never visited the Florida Keys, so how would he get on fishing and what would both his wife Sarah and he think about the Sport Fishing Capital of the World - The Florida Keys - let’s see...

John and Sarah’s flight into Miami from London Heathrow landed late on Thanks Giving, so after lunch with my Cuban Neighbours, I made the one and a half hour drive up from Miami to the Keys to collect him and then made the drive back in the dark, which is always a shame as the Overseas Highway, with the Atlantic one side and the Gulf of Mexico the other, is plain jaw dropping stunning. But then again it’s quite an experience to wake up to sun, blue skies and water all around!

As usual on Johns first morning we made use of the time getting licences, sorting bait and planning our weeks angling operations. John had a few species on his list that he hadn’t caught, so he was keen to try and target these with some good old Florida Keys sport thrown in for good measure! At the Top of John’s list is a Ton Up Tarpon, but he fully understood that as it’s not ‘Big’ Tarpon season and a ton up fish at this time of year would purely be a fluke migratory fish, left behind from the spring/summer run. Next on John’s list was a Spotted Sea Trout, A Goliath Grouper (aka Jewfish) and a Cobia. These latter three are prime Floridian winter species, so with a bit of hard work, it shouldn’t really be a problem.

On our first afternoon afloat we were fronted with the third cold front of my trip. With jacket wearing temperatures, 35mph winds and sloppy 2ft seas, it wasn’t what you’d picture the Keys to be like, but weather passes quickly here and it should prompt the arrival of more Sea Trout and Cobia - species that prefer colder water temperatures in the Gulf. We pushed the throttles forward to 35mph into a snotty head sea and it wasn’t long before we were 10 miles offshore on one of my favourite Sea Trout marks.

Now Spotted Sea Trout don’t grow enormous, but on light tackle they scrap pretty well. The attraction to catching Sea Trout is the skill required in lure presentation to get a take, and the critical strike timing as most trout will take a lure on the drop. Jigging for trout is quite a finesse art as it requires a swift lift of the rod, and a painfully slow drop to encourage the jig to act ‘shrimp’ like – shrimp being a major food source for this aggressive species.

Most British anglers are tuned to crank lures, so with no preconceived ideas of how to work a Trout jig, it was Sarah that was into the first trout of the day... and second, and third, until John finally caught on and slowed down on his winding. So Target one completed. In the end I lost count of how many both John and Sarah caught, well except for John caught the most and Sarah accounted for the biggest (ouch!)

With winds still high at 25mph, and the water seriously discoloured, on the Patterns second day we decided to go have a blast with some sharks. Anchoring a very deep channels (all of 6-8ft) means that any shark hooked can only go one way... out from the boat, and with most of the Keys Sharks averaging over 100lbs, most women doubt they could land one! My view is that sharks are quite predictable fighters and are an excellent choice for any women angler who wants to crack a ton-up specimen fish. And just seeing the smile on Sarah’s face when she boated her first Lemon shark which was well over 100lbs, made my job of t-barring it all worthwhile. Day two produced a handful of good Lemon sharks for both John and Sarah, but unfortunately no Bull sharks due to the dramatic drop in temperature. The species fishing for snapper, lady fish, grouper and the likes while we were waiting between shark runs, was pretty good too!

On day three the winds dropped to less than 10mph over night and the seas dropped with them, so with a good forecast and rapidly clearing water clarity is was time to head out into the Gulf to find some new wrecks and hopefully some Cobia. Now Cobia aren’t the prettiest of fish, being part of the Remora family, but over wrecks in shallow water they shoal up, and with fish between 20-40lbs regularly, this is another one of those ‘screaming reels’ sporting species that are just ace to catch. At 38mph, in 50 minutes, we were soon over the mark with the sounder on looking for the new wreck. Up she came, I pinged the MARK button on the new Garmin touch screen, and then we went up for our first drift.

Scream went the reel on the 10-20 class John was using as soon as his first bait hit the water - Cobia on. Ten minutes later we had yet another new species for John next to the boat, just topping 25lbs. The next few drifts produce more Cobia, to roughly 30lbs, until they became spooked and retreated from the feed, as they do! I even managed one myself. We then chucked the anchor and enjoyed some great sport fishing for Jack Crevalle and Spanish Mackerel, the latter we caught several between 7-8lbs. Can you imagine what 8lbs of mackerel feels like on a light spinning rod and 20lb braid!!

Something I hadn’t yet done in the Keys was to head towards Flamingo and fish for Redfish (Red Drum), so on day four we set out to give it go. I had some marks that a friend had given me, but as he’d got them from a friend of a friend, it was all a bit trial ‘n’ error, so with only 2 hours of tide to spare, we throttled out to the marks.

6lb class rods are used to toss Berkley Gulp shrimps (I like Root beer) which are attached to ¼ ounce jig heads (I like chartreuse) into the mangrove roots and then its jig, jig, jig and hopefully hit, strike, and hold. In just over an hour’s fishing we managed a couple of Redfish to perhaps 4lbs, so a great result, but this is one whole new area I want to start exploring in 2010. The holiest of sport fish include Tarpon, Permit, Bonefish, Snook & Redfish, so as you can probably guess... they’re a species that are right up my street!

With John moaning that he still hadn’t had his Jewfish, after the tide eased on the Redfish mark, we shot straight off to my grouper wreck to see if we could nail target species number three. After the anchor was down we chummed up and then lowered live grunts, on circle hooks and running rigs, right back to the wreck. This is hit and hold fishing at its finest! After a hook up, gain and inch and you’ll win, let the grouper have an inch and he’ll be right back to his home.

I choose to fish light 20lb class spinning rods for my grouper, because I find it ‘sadistically’ more fun to get smashed up by what are really monster 100lb Ballan Wrasse! After several hit, hold and lost fish, we finally nailed a couple of smaller grouper and lost some monsters. Another new specimen for John, however the 100lb Goliath will have to wait for another day.

On the last morning and evening of John and Sarah’s trip, with good, clear water conditions we decided to try for a Tarpon and to end with week on a high note, we managed to nail a few!

So what did John think of the Florida Keys... well they say actions speak louder than words and John has already been on the phone to me trying to organise two trips for 2010... One for the spring run of monster Tarpon, and one for some more mixed species fishing.

The Florida Keys are the Sport Fishing Capital for one reason only... because they have vast array of fishing grounds including flats, banks, channels, wrecks, reefs and blue water, and the most diverse range of species that are available to specimen sizes, in ridiculous volumes. Throw in the fact that they are English speaking, offer sun, good food, and good beer with some of the largest tackle shops in the world, all for not much more than a trip to Norway... it’s really not hard to see why first time anglers to the Keys get hooked and come back year after year!

We still have a few spaces available for next year’s Tarpon season, so if this interests you feel free to visit our website www.fishinginflorida.co.uk or give us a call 0845 203 3474

By the way, I forgot to mention... in between trips John managed to find himself a load of Snook to chuck plugs at from the shore. I actually lost count of how many he caught. I’m certainly looking forward to fishing in the Keys with John in 2010!!