FISHING
Two happy anglers aboard the Last Mango out of the Fort Pierce City Marina show off their catch.
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TREASURE COAST BOATING
Sportfishing charter boat captains are a tough breed.
They have to be, living a sometimes precarious life
chasing elusive fish every day for their livelihoods.
A competent charter captain always has to know
where the fish are hiding and to be able to put his clients on
the fish on demand. That’s hard enough to achieve during
normal times, but the pandemic added yet another challenge
for these rugged one-man entrepreneurs.
The early months of the pandemic sent shockwaves through
the Treasure Coast fishing community. Charter fishing, along
with much else in the tourism industry, was shut down for a
couple of months. Yet before long, a rash of trip cancellations
in March and April 2020 began to ease, local captains said, as
anglers were going stir crazy cooped up at home.
It wasn’t long before they began to rebook charters and get
back out on the water. Since then the charter business on the
Treasure Coast has recovered — unevenly for some — and so
TRISTRAM COLKET
far this year has proved to be a banner year — the best several
captains from Sebastian to Stuart have ever experienced,
they say.
Most of the five captains interviewed for this story
shrugged off the effects of the pandemic relatively quickly
after experiencing an initial burst of trip cancellations. One
captain from Sebastian reported losing 17 bookings in three
weeks. At around $1,500 a charter, that represents a sizable
loss of income for one- or two-man businesses.
Since 2020, business has been up and down, yet most captains
interviewed seem more concerned by a variety of other
factors affecting their businesses, including rising gasoline
and diesel prices; being unable to quickly get spare parts for
their outboard motors; and the long-term environmental decline
of their fishing grounds. Dirty water, excessive rainfall
and pollution have decimated lagoon seagrasses that once
sheltered and nurtured a broad variety of gamefish. >>