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“Jeez, I don’t know what to say,” was the response to a simple question posed to a charter party a couple of weeks back. The question was simple enough — what do you folks want to fish for?

Seems that we are spoiled around these parts with so many different and varied types of fish available. There’s traditional backwater fishing with snook, redfish, snapper, drum ... but then you can bounce outside and along the beaches work for big snook as well as pompano and mackerel.

Go out into the Gulf and stay in close and you’ll be into some of the best mackerel fishing imaginable — turn west and go deep and you’ll be into grouper, the spring run of kingfish and lots of cobia and maybe even a permit or two, not to mention all the good snapper fishing.

So our charter party participant had good reason to be confused.

He ended up wanting to do something “different” and that brought on a suggestion to make a run down into Gullivan Bay and work the points and grass flats in-between for nice size spotted sea trout.

The crew that morning was the father, two high school age boys and the little sister, named Natalie. The boys were full of adolescent swagger and marginally bored with taking this trip with Dad. The little girl was a ray of sunshine.

Natalie was probably nine or ten years old and very small and demure in stature. Looking like a miniature wind-up-doll, she was full of effervescent spirit that seemed to envelop her brothers to the point of their being bothered. The father just took all of the interactions in and played the role of the supreme mentor.

Our chosen day was nice weather-wise and the factors of tide, water clarity and wind were all favorable and working for us. Our run south, down the river and through Goodland went off without incident. During the trip, the boys finally came to life and began needling their little sister.

“You can be the shrimp girl and make sure we have bait. Maybe Dad will help you catch a fish! Make sure you don’t get in our way when we have the big one on.”

Natalie let all the nastiness roll off her back, with a big smile and a flip of her ponytail. Her father just took it all in.

We ran down past Gomez Point and set up on the grass flat on the incoming tide and began working shrimp over the flats on a drift. The action was spectacular with nice fat spotted sea trout nailing the shrimp on a regular basis.

The boys consumed most of the action with the father enjoying the balance. Natalie was allowed a token catch or two.

If it can be said, the action was too good. Whatever excitement the boys exhibited at the start was now worn thin with their repeated catches and they were flat out bored. They reminded their father of that fact every 60 seconds.

Dad ignored his two “chargers” for as long as he could. Their whining finally got to him and he asked, “We’re down south here, captain, any other opportunities that you can think of?”

Well, we could do the backwaters tossing jigs and baits along the edge of the mangroves but then considering the indifference of the teenagers, I dismissed the thought.

Now, there is a unique fish whose habitat, remarkably, is the crab trap marker floats and the lines that connect that device to the trap nestled on the bottom… the fish is known as a tripletail. A downright ugly and tenacious creature that can go to a size of 30 lbs. but it’s one of the best eating fishes in the ocean.

Down south here... there, hundreds of traps set in long lines. So why not? We announced that we would do some tripletail fishing.

I explained to the crew that the procedure was that they would be the lookouts and I would run the boat along the trap line looking for something that looked like a piece of paper floating on the surface right next to the float — that would be a tripletail.

If we found one, we would cut the engine and drift back and toss a freelined shrimp rig to the floater.

The kids looked at me with a sense of disbelief. Regardless, off we went.

The water was super flat and clear and we could see the surface very well and as we scooted by float after float. As before, the boys enthusiasm eroded quickly and their lookout efforts were nil but Natalie took over and would report findings float after float.

After a half hour of effort we got a positive scream from Natalie, “There’s one. It’s a big one!”

The boys ran for their rods. The father intervened. “This one belongs to Natalie… you guys gave up as lookouts. Sit down.”

We equipped Natalie with a rod loaded with 20# test and a nice fresh shrimp with just a splitshot for weight. Her Dad flipped the shrimp just a few feet from the sunning tripletail and handed the rod to Natalie.

The big tripletail flipped and nailed the shrimp in a heartbeat and headed back to the trap line. Dad helped Natalie hold the fish off the line that would have freed him. The fight was on.

This tenacious bubbly little girl did a great job of keeping the rod tip up, pulling up and reeling down and not winding against the pull and with coaching and help from her Dad soon had a nice fat tripletail alongside and in the net.

We put it in the Boga Grip and it was a hefty 9 lb. fish, lots of good eating there.

The “stalwarts” just sat there through the landing exercise just watching their tiny sister land the fish of the day. They never said a word.

On the way home, they repeatedly looked at the tripletail in the cooler and finally gave in with some comments as to “nice fish.” Then you knew they were really impressed when they asked her to join them fishing along the beach later in the week.

Natalie just smiled, gave them both a high five and flipped her ponytail. Success!

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Species in the spotlight

Name: Tripletail

In season: Year around

Florida Regulations: Legal length 15” overall. Bag limit of 2 per day per person.

Habitat: Usually prevalent during spring and fall of season. Like to hang around floating structure like crab pot markers and navigational poles. Usually can be seen near surface. Will take a jig or a shrimp. Excellent table fare.

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Capt. Bill Walsh owns an established Marco Island charter fishing business and holds a current U.S. Coast Guard license. Send comments or questions to dawnpatrolcharters@compuserve.com