When it comes to fishing the flats of Florida or Belize, Costa Rica or Mexico, you can’t do better for a guide than Mr. Henry Waszczuk. If you check out his TV show, Fishing the Flats, you’re guaranteed week after week of exciting trips to far-flung locales all in the pursuit of nature’s most challenging sport fish.
Waszczuk is an unlikely provider of fishing the flats TV. Born in England in 1950, he crossed the pond with his family as a toddler. Football was his first love, playing for Kent State, and later professionally, before setting down to teach high school Science for a decade or so. It was around this time he began fishing the flats in Florida and elsewhere.
The appeal of fly fishing the flats is easy to understand. Perched on a fishing platform on a typical shallow water skiff, an angler first of all takes in great scenery. To fish the flats means to enjoy the peace of the Florida shoreline, with miles of salt marshes, native birds and swaying pine trees.
It works like this. When the tide is out, the fish I seek are scarce. I’m there to fish the flats, not waste my time. On the other hand, when the incoming tides flood over the flats, it encourages the reds to fan out and go huntin’ in newly accessible (higher) areas.
More reds, more chances for me. This is prime fishing time, when the game fish are rushing in on the flats, right on the top of an incoming tide. Fishing the flats at time like this is what it’s all about. Think about it mathematically. Fishing during a full moon plus a spring tide equals 3 to 4 hours of good fishing!
What about further afield? Fishing the flats TV seeks bonefish in the Bahamas, an outsize specimen called roosterfish in the exotic environs of Costa Rica, and shark, of all things, in Long Island, Bahamas. Fishing the flat marshy waters of Louisiana is an unforgettable experience, poling a skiff along back waters dimmed and darkened by Spanish moss draped trees.
Exotic locals alone do not make for riveting Fishing the flats TV. Your host, Henry Waszczuk, also provides knowledgeable guidance on gear. What kind of skiff is required to fish the flats of St. Augustine for flounder, for example? What kind of rod is best, what kind of line, what kind of lure?
And of course, there’s always the Everglades National Park in the southern part of the state. Fishing the flat waters of the Everglades is an angler’s dream, providing not only excellent shallow water fishing, but the chance to see up close the best of Florida’s wild animal and plant life. Truly, the hardest part of fishing the flats in Florida is choosing where to go.
