May 26, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min · 23 segments
Records, Reefs and Road Trips. Carl Navarre Jr. joins us on the Tarpon Diaries series on CAMERAS OFF to tell it like it is - and what it was. Truths about early Keys and Homosassa flats a few myths…
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Jamie HowardHostYeah.
You know, the Keys was a different place in the '60s and the '70s and, and anybody who was around then will recall that when you came down from Miami, Homestead, and then when you crossed Jewfish Creek, it's now called something else, but the world changed.
The air smelled different.
Everything felt different.
There was just this Monroe County kind of laid-back way of life.
This is what, to use kind of a cliché, this is what Jimmy Buffett really captured so incredibly well.
There w- th- that, that kind of...
It wasn't just the lifestyle, it was just kind of a vibe and an attitude that people had, and it was really fun and en-
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, all that unfolding of history in the Keys, you know, everything has to start somewhere, and I think that's what makes it fascinating.
You know, we're sitting around on, on boats with pole towers on them, but you know, it wasn't always that way.
Right.
You know, we're, we're seeing guys pole the flats, but it wasn't always that way, and you actually saw some of this occur.
Right.
So the fishing has, um, flats fishing has evolved tremendously since the '60s and the '70s, but there are really two styles of flats fishing.
One is the ambush style, where you take a position on a flat, whether you anchor or in a place, edge of a channel, edge of a bank, where you either stake up the boat or you anchor up the boat so that it's stationary and you are waiting for fish to come to you there, and you're gonna intercept them.
The other style is to stalk fish, is to shut the boat down in a place where you think there are fish and to pole the boat moving, so the boat is a moving platform.
Up until really the mid-'70s almost, 99% of all of the flats fishing was ambush from a, from a fixed boat.
There are several reasons for this.
One reason was that the fly fishermen then weren't particularly good or a lot of them.
Yeah.
You know, the Keys was a different place in the '60s and the '70s and, and anybody who was around then will recall that when you came down from Miami, Homestead, and then when you crossed Jewfish Creek, it's now called something else, but the world changed.
The air smelled different.
Everything felt different.
There was just this Monroe County kind of laid-back way of life.
This is what, to use kind of a cliché, this is what Jimmy Buffett really captured so incredibly well.
There w- th- that, that kind of...
It wasn't just the lifestyle, it was just kind of a vibe and an attitude that people had, and it was really fun and en-
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, all that unfolding of history in the Keys, you know, everything has to start somewhere, and I think that's what makes it fascinating.
You know, we're sitting around on, on boats with pole towers on them, but you know, it wasn't always that way.
Right.
You know, we're, we're seeing guys pole the flats, but it wasn't always that way, and you actually saw some of this occur.
Right.
So the fishing has, um, flats fishing has evolved tremendously since the '60s and the '70s, but there are really two styles of flats fishing.
One is the ambush style, where you take a position on a flat, whether you anchor or in a place, edge of a channel, edge of a bank, where you either stake up the boat or you anchor up the boat so that it's stationary and you are waiting for fish to come to you there, and you're gonna intercept them.
The other style is to stalk fish, is to shut the boat down in a place where you think there are fish and to pole the boat moving, so the boat is a moving platform.
Up until really the mid-'70s almost, 99% of all of the flats fishing was ambush from a, from a fixed boat.
There are several reasons for this.
One reason was that the fly fishermen then weren't particularly good or a lot of them.
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