If diving isn’t for you, but eating lobster is, take heart: You can catch lobsters without getting your feet wet.
All you need is a bully net, a boat and a light. Then go out on the flats of Biscayne Bay or the Florida Keys on a calm night and look for the crafty crustaceans as they feed.
“It’s an exciting way to catch lobster,” said Lou Volpe of Davie. “It’s challenging and you see so many cool things. You can do it with any kind of boat, from a johnboat to a 23-footer. You just need to be able to go in 3 feet of water.”
Flats come alive at night as the various links of the food chain go to work. Everything from shrimp to sharks is out feeding.
Still, finding a lobster in the water at night is not as easy as finding one in a tank at your favorite seafood restaurant. Volpe compared it to an angler trying to spot a bonefish.
“Generally, they’re going to light up pretty good when you see them,” Volpe said, “but you need to know what to look for.”
Volpe got his bully netting start in high school. A friend’s family kept a recreational vehicle at a campground in Key Largo.
“We used to go down there for most of the summer and on weekends. We’d load up the truck with friends,” Volpe said. “We’d cruise the flats in the bay, Blackwater Sound and Largo Sound. We’d go out at night with a spotlight and look for snook. We used to see lobster all the time and we’d say, ‘Gee, look at that. I wonder how you catch them?’ “One night we encountered a couple of people with this odd-looking net and a coal miner’s lamp hat. We went to the Yellow Bait House and said, ‘You guys got a net to catch lobster with?’ They said, ‘Oh, you mean a bully net?’ That’s how we got started.”
Spotting a lobster is one thing. Catching it is another. Good boat-handling is needed to get close enough to net one. Skill with a bully net is needed to corral a lobster and then get it into the boat.
On a recent outing in Biscayne Bay, a light, easterly breeze barely rippled the water. The Miami skyline was post-card pretty beneath cloudy skies.
Volpe eased his 20-foot Aquasport across the flats while Jay Spellman of Pembroke Pines scoured the water with a spotlight from the front of the boat. The light revealed blue claw crabs, needlefish, barracuda and snook, as well as empty bottles and aluminum cans.
“Lobsters come out of the channels and feed across flats,” Volpe said. “The best spots have live turtle grass with patches of sand, and you want moving water.”
At Volpe’s feet were two bully nets, one with an 8-foot handle and the other with a 10-foot handle. The netting was attached to a wire hoop that was at a right angle to the handle. Instead of scooping up a lobster, a bully netter places the net over a lobster, the hoop flush against the flat’s bottom so the lobster can’t escape. Volpe built the nets, making the handles of aluminum and inserting wooden dowels for strength.
As the boat idled across a flat, Spellman’s light revealed stretches of sickly, brown grass. When healthy, green grass appeared, Volpe got serious.
“This is killer grass,” he said. “I learned you don’t waste your time in that dead grass. You head for that green grass. That’s good bottom. And once you find a good spot, you stay there.”
The tide was just beginning to come in when Volpe spotted a lobster alongside the boat. Without a wasted motion, he put the boat’s motor in neutral and picked up the 10-foot bully net while Spellman kept the light trained on the lobster. Volpe gave the lobster a good look, then punched the net into the water and over the lobster.
With his left hand, Volpe grabbed a rope attached to the net and the net handle. Attached to the rope just above the sock of the net was a 2-ounce sinker. Volpe let go of the rope, the sinker collapsing the net on the lobster. With a flick of its powerful tail, the lobster shot to the back of the net. That’s when Volpe, with a twist of his wrist, lifted the net, swung it into the boat and deposited the 2-pound lobster on the deck.
“It’s important that the lobster shoots into the back of the net. If not, he can get out,” Volpe said. “You’ve got to play with them. You’ve got to sit the net on them long enough until you feel them or see them in the back of the net. Then, you just twist the net so they can’t get out.”
From that same patch of “killer” grass, Spellman spotted four other lobsters, and Volpe netted them all. The carapace – the hard part of a lobster – must measure more than 3 inches for a lobster to be legal. Volpe had to put back only one lobster.
Ledges that border healthy grass flats also are productive lobster spots, as are holes and trenches in a flat. Volpe hit a few more spots, getting a few more lobsters, before calling it a night.
“It’s just a matter of going out and trying different spots,” Volpe said.
Unfortunately, Volpe’s best-ever spot apparently was ruined by Hurricane Andrew. The spot consisted of a tractor-trailer tire in the middle of Biscayne Bay. Volpe hasn’t been able to find the tire, which he thinks fell off a tugboat or a barge, since Andrew, but he’ll always remember the first time he saw it.
“It was in 5 or 6 feet of water and it was full of lobsters. There were probably 50 tentacles coming out of the inside of the tire,” Volpe said. “We got like 10 or 12.”
