Florida Keys Fishing Hole Thieves
Keys Treasures
BY JENNIFER BABSON
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/nation/10757605.htm
MARATHON, Fla. - (KRT) - When in doubt, Capt. Jack Carlson [
http://www.twoconchs.com/ ] confiscates suspicious cellphones and other
devices and stashes them in an orange tackle box. Then he goes a step
further.
"I just watch'em like a hawk, and I'll say, `Do you mind if I look in
your bags and see if there's anything in there that's not supposed to
be?'" he said.
Carlson isn't searching for drugs or guns, and he's not moonlighting
for the Transportation Security Administration. The Keys charter boat
captain is looking for the latest bane of fishing boat skippers: Global
Positioning System devices. The increasingly sophisticated - and
portable - technology has made it ever more difficult to keep secrets
at sea.
The problem: Some people who charter fishing boats are carrying the
devices with them, allowing them to return to a prime spot later on
with their own vessel or rented boat.
The satellite-positioning devices, affixed to a growing number of items
- watches, cameras and cellphones, airplanes and automobiles - have
upped the ante in an old-school vocation where you're only as good as
your ability to repeatedly exploit that ripe fishing spot on the sly.
''It's screwed everything up. There just aren't any secrets anymore,''
said John Brownlee, senior editor at Sport Fishing magazine. "Any guy
who can plunk down a few hundred dollars can get a pretty good GPS.''
It's not just a Florida phenomenon, either.
''I've had some run-ins with it. I don't think they care,'' Len
Greiner, a Cape Cod-based captain who runs excursions off Nantucket
Shoals for striped bass and bluefish, said of GPS position swipers.
``They want to spend $500 and gain a lifetime of experience. It's taken
me 15 years running as a captain to get as good as I am, and for $500,
that's not what I'm selling.''
The devices work by picking up navigational messages from several of
nearly 30 GPS satellites orbiting the earth. The radio transmissions
give the location of the satellite at a particular moment, allowing the
GPS to derive latitude and longitude - generally within five to 15
yards of accuracy.
Charter boat captains use the devices themselves to keep track of their
best spots - and they guard the coordinates zealously.
''There are probably between 40 and 60 million GPS receivers out there
now, and we are probably adding between a half-million and a million a
month worldwide,'' said Glen Gibbons, founding editor of GPS World, an
industry magazine.
But the convenient gadgets have a downside for trades - like surveying
and angling - in which human precision was once required and most
information cannot be owned. Before the GPS, professional fishing
guides relied on instinct and the use of a compass, time, heading and
landmarks to navigate. Today, that's a dying art.
''It's taken a lot of the skill out of it,'' Brownlee said.
At a time in which a watch with a built-in GPS costs less than $160,
there's a nightmare adversary for the trackers of bottom-dwelling fish,
like snapper and grouper, which congregate in fixed locations: ''Fish
stalkers'' who might charter for a day and then swipe coveted GPS
coordinates using their own hidden device - which can be easily
programmed to track locations over a period of hours.
Good fishing spots are ''basically our bank account. Our customers
wouldn't need us if they had spots,'' said Capt. Kevin Goodwin of
Marathon, who caught two people on his boat with a handheld GPS device
last year. At that point, the trip screeched to a halt.
''I actually took them to the dock,'' he said. ``We're going home.
Anyone like that you don't want on your boat anymore.''
Area residents may pose a particular danger in that context, guides
say.
''If it's a local client, chances are he's got his own boat, and he is
trying to find out where you are fishing and how you're fishing,'' said
Jason Long, an offshore charter boat captain based near the Seven Mile
Bridge.
The practice tramples on tradition but stops short of qualifying as
criminal.
Capt. Albert Ponzoa of Marathon chartered out to a Pennsylvania
vacationer in June in flats off the Middle Keys, stopping at a
top-secret spot flush with hungry permit. Everything went swimmingly -
until he ran into the guy the next day at his special spot in a rental
boat.
After learning that Ponzoa was miffed, the man left a message on his
answering machine.
'He said, `Now I'm going to hurt you, I'm going to put your GPS
coordinates on the Internet.''' Ponzoa hasn't checked to see if his
former client has made good on the threat.
Once a really fertile patch of ocean - dubbed a ''honey hole'' or
''super hole'' - is marked on multiple GPS units, there's no telling
how overfished it might become.
''A super hole is a place you can take your best clients and catch as
many fish as you want, whenever you want,'' Ponzoa said. ``It's a
mythic land.''
Some sweet spots are inherited - from relatives and others who ply
local waters.
''The guy who basically raised me was a very good fisherman here and he
gave me spots, reefs and wrecks that he would find,'' said Goodwin, 32.
``They are still good.''
The magic coordinates of such places are so prized that in places like
the Keys - where charter fishing is incredibly competitive - many
charter boat captains have taken to locking a metal plate over their
console each night. It's not the expensive equipment they're guarding.
''That's so people can't go in and steal their (GPS) numbers,''
explained Daryl Simeon, captain of the Key West-based Cool Change.
Stealing good fishing spots is hardly new, though technological
advances have made it much simpler.
''There is no demographic stereotype for people who do this,'' said
Byron Goss, the Marathon-based captain of the B.I.G. Time, a fishing
charter.
But there are a couple of behavioral indicators: The person noting the
coordinates of a prime fishing spot ''has always got his hand in his
bag when the fishing's good,'' Carlson said, referring to a common
technique.
Recently, Carlson caught a fast food restaurant honcho - whose name he
declined to provide for fear of retribution - red-handed and
crimson-faced while fishing several mutton snapper super holes.
"First spot, I see him go in his bag. Second spot, I see him go in his
bag. By the third time, I'm thinking, `It's getting a little
coincidental,'" Carlson said.
So Carlson asked to look in the bag, too.
''I found his GPS, and it (had) every spot,'' he said. Carlson deleted
the numbers and then employed a revenge tactic familiar to those with
saltwater coursing through their veins.
''The bite went from red hot to ice cold,'' he said with a grin.
Fast-food man was embarrassed and apologized. But it was too late for
redemption in the eyes of the captain.
"I flat-out told him, `You have a lot of money, your children are going
to get an inheritance,''' Carlson recalled. ``My kids, they are going
to inherit GPS numbers.''