By John Kumiski
An outfit called Osceola Outback Adventures (https://osceolaoutback.com/barramundi-fishing/) offers fishing opportunities for great barramundi, and I’m talking Holopaw, Florida here, not Australia. They say with pride, “This is the only place in North America where you can catch barramundi! Native to Australia, these exotic super fish possess all the best qualities of our native sportfish. Weighing up to a hundred pounds, they strike with the tenacity of a largemouth bass, fight with the power of a snook, soar through the air like tarpon, and the good news is you don’t have to traverse the globe to catch one.”
Yes, the barramundi do take flies.
Photo courtesy Osceola Outback Adventures.
I once visited the barramundi ponds. There were two small (+/- 1.5 acre), rectangular ponds that had been dug out with a backhoe. There were fish, lots of them, quite willing to eat lures, too. There were rods and reels. There was novelty. I’d never seen a barramundi before. They’re beautiful creatures, muscular and strong. There was entertainment. The fish, although only running eight to ten pounds at the time (they get much larger), fight hard and jump like crazed ladyfish. Word on the street is, they’re delicious. They are as game a fish as one could ask for. If you were going to design a fish you’d be hard pressed to do a better job.
But something about the experience bothered me, just a tiny bit. The nagging sense of irritation in the back of my mind was similar to the irritation that your foot gets when you get a diminutive pebble in your shoe. The barramundi pond experience, although undeniably fun for a few minutes, just didn’t fit me quite right.
Then I had a minor flash of insight. When you go fishing, you understand that you may not catch anything. You may not even see a fish. While fishing undeniably requires skill, luck is important, too. A terrible angler can have a great day, and a highly skilled angler can get skunked. “All men are equal in the eyes of a fish,” as Harry Truman once said.
The barramundi ponds remove luck and (most of the) skill from the equation. Ten thousand aggressive fish scour the entire water column, jammed into two small ponds. If you cast a bait out there, you will catch a fish. You may not get one every cast, but you will get one on many of your casts. It’s a great place to bring the kids, just for that reason.
Erica Lynn with a fat barramundi.
Photo courtesy Osceola Outback Adventures.
What bothered me, then? It’s not fishing as I know it. It’s sure thing, captive audience, pay-for-fishing, fishing. Is this a bad thing?
I have fished in Florida for over 40 years. Back in 1985 you could launch your boat at 8:00 AM on a Saturday at any boat ramp you cared to (except when the clammers were working the Indian River Lagoon) and could get a parking spot. You could go to almost any fishing spot you wanted to and would not be met by the two or even three boats that were there already.
Obnoxious boaters would not be burning down a flat that people in 10 or 12 other boats were fishing.
There weren’t as many people here then. And there were a lot fewer boats.
At 8 am on a nice morning these days, you will be lucky to find a parking spot at the boat ramp, or a spot that doesn’t already have a boat or three. The fish will have all run for cover, cowering until Monday morning comes rolling around. It’s sad. And it’s probably not confined to Florida.
Additionally, water quality issues, red tides, fish kills, loss of access, etc. – it gets harder to catch wild fish every year.
I like solitude when I fish. It pains me to go fishing on weekends now. The water is crowded.
Rock concerts should be crowded. The county fair should be crowded. Parades should be crowded. Baseball and football stadiums should be crowded. Fishing spots? They should not be crowded. For me, fishing in a crowd causes stress and is not enjoyable. For me, fishing in a crowd is a bad thing. If I have to risk getting in a fist-fight to try and catch a fish, I would rather not fish. If we could ask the fish what they thought, I believe they would say, the fewer people the better!
At the barramundi ponds you pay, you fish, you catch fish. There are no crowds. It may not be fishing as I know it but it definitely has value.
Builders build condos and golf courses like crazy but no one is making any new bonefish flats, or new trout streams. They can dig new ponds, though. They can stock them with thousands of fish. They can require us to pay before we fish them.
Only you can decide if this is good or bad for you. I can see more and more folks pursuing businesses like Osceola Outback, though, especially as our natural waterways get ever more crowded. I can see more and more sportsmen using them.
I’m experiencing some existential dread about this. Are public places to fish doomed? Is pay-to-fish the future of fishing?
