Does anybody want to hear a bad fishing report... I don't think so! I have learned over the years that none of my anglers ever want to hear how good (or bad) the fishing was yesterday; they want to experience how good it is today! The phrase "you should have been here yesterday" was first heard a long time ago when the Mayflower sailed into Plymouth and a Pilgrim saw an Indian netting fish out of his dugout "how is the fishing" he asked. The Indian replied "not very good but you should have been here yesterday." There may have been earlier incidences of this but it is not well documented.

As anglers, we have a right; a ‘pass' so to speak to bend the truth. It's not that we are liars; we're simply optimists - hoping to catch the most and the largest fish. In our minds we sometimes believe that 70 pound tarpon was "almost" 100 or the 25 fish we caught yesterday was almost thirty. As anglers we have a pass to indulge in other activities as well, like getting up extra early and staying out late. We can eat all kinds of junk like bologna and Vienna sausages and get away with it.

Fishing reports can be found all over South Florida and the Florida Keys plentiful newspapers; and some of those publications are dedicated solely to fishing reports. There are also live radio shows almost every evening with Captains and anglers giving reports. Most of this info is reliable but at the time of publication it is also history and in my opinion is more about self promotion than fishing and should be called catching reports.

Our South Florida fishery is complex; tides, current, wind velocity, wind direction, water and air temperature, light conditions, barometric pressure, moon phase and storms, to mention just a few factors that have an effect on our fishing.  If conditions remained the exactly same each and every day, it would much easier to predict the fishing future and give an accurate fishing forecast. The current fishing reports would then have much more relevancy. Knowledge, experience, intuition and preparation is an anglers best friend when it comes to what tomorrows fishing may bring and a little luck never hurts.