I had a pretty good rhythm going into March, but then I timed it all wrong on a trip to Chokoloskee. Captain Pat Kelly had invited me down for some backcountry fishing. Stuart marine artist Brian Sylvester, who fishes the Everglades whenever he gets a chance, agreed to join us. Kelly had been tapping some great mixed-bag action at rivermouths south of Lostmans, and he all but promised us a slam—this one with a tarpon thrown in.

Everglades rivermouths also begin producing fish as spring approaches.

A whistler of a cold front beat us to town, and when Brian and I awoke the next morning to meet Kelly, the outlook wasn’t promising.

We donned long pants and waterproof jackets, but really should’ve worn waterproof boots, pants, jacket, scuba mask and an umbrella. The ride down “the outside,” through Rabbit Key Pass, past Pavilion Key, Chatham River, the Plover Keys, was a choppy nightmare, even on Kelly’s 22-foot bay boat. By the time we arrived, we were soaked to the bone. And shivering.

In adverse northeast weather, Kelly tucks up in rivermouth coves. Our first stop produced a couple of lean, sub-legal snook. The tide was extremely low due to the hard offshore wind. “We’ll have to see if the water even turns around,” Kelly noted dourly.

We weaved around sandbars and ducked into a smaller rivermouth. Kelly dropped the anchor and pointed to an exposed mud bar, with scattered oysters and some downed timber.

“They’ll crawl right up on there when the tide comes up, and it’ll be war. Just watch.”

The Gulf of Mexico returned with a vengeance, pouring dark brown water into the rivermouth. There wasn’t any sign of fish, but like Kelly promised, they were there.

Brian and I each caught a couple of small snook, using freelined live pilchards for bait. Kelly likes throwing topwater plugs in midwinter, but really likes throwing a castnet when the pilchards move in. The tarpon, seatrout and redfish—which had chimed in for Kelly over the past week—failed to show, but we enjoyed some fun snook action while we thawed out. A wall of mangroves, 20 or 30 feet high, totally blocked the northeast wind.

“We’ll run on in through the inside,” Kelly said, referring to the tortuous, but adequately marked network of creeks leading from the Lostmans River mouth into the Wilderness Waterway. From here, you can return to Chokoloskee via the back bays of the northwestern Everglades. My body warmed at the prospect of avoiding the chop outside.

Along the way, we stopped at a small island with current ripping through a deep slough on the eastern tip. I tied on a cool-season backcountry lure which has worked well for me in the past, a 3⁄ 8-ounce black jighead with a rootbeer-colored plastic shrimp tail. Kelly hooked a foot-long ladyfish and began lobbing it toward the island, with goliath grouper or goliath snook in mind. Brian stuck with a pilchard. I patiently crawled my jig along bottom, with the tide, in 10 feet of water, nudging it occasionally with the rodtip. The drill is much the same as we use with the soft baits on the Indian River, only deeper. It’s akin to freshwater bass “worm” fishing, and deadly in cool water.