This episode of the Tom Rowland Podcast is a conversation with Carter Smith-Wellman, a charter captain who runs the only inshore fishing operation on Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands. He guides out of kayaks, targets every flats slam species the Caribbean holds, and catches bonefish on Rapalas and swimbaits rather than shrimp and crab flies. We cover the island's fishing history, its collapse and recovery, and why Saint Croix may be the best-kept secret in saltwater fishing.
Listen now: press play in the player above to watch the full conversation with Carter Smith-Wellman.
Carter Smith-Wellman is a charter captain based in Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands and the only inshore fishing guide working the island. He runs Silver Kings Kayak Charters, guiding clients out of kayaks to the flats along Saint Croix's South Shore. His family roots on the island go back generations—his mother was born there and his grandmother arrived in the 1950s—and he grew up visiting the Caribbean from Connecticut. After years in the energy and sustainability field, he left a consulting career about sixteen months before this conversation to guide full time.
Saint Croix is the southernmost of the US Virgin Islands, sitting about 40 miles south of Puerto Rico and separated from the other islands by some of the deepest water in the Caribbean Sea. It is 23 miles long, with a South Shore that forms one nearly continuous flat broken into roughly 20 bays. Carter Smith-Wellman calls it under the radar rather than on it—he is the only inshore guide on the island, and there has only ever been one inshore operation there. Baseball legend Ted Williams fished it for bonefish in the 1950s and called it the best he had ever experienced, but the fishery later collapsed and few anglers have thought of Saint Croix as a flats destination since.
Carter Smith-Wellman says the island holds every flats slam species, and his boats landed more than 32 unique species in a single year. Anglers can target bonefish, permit, tarpon, and snook inshore, along with jacks, several snapper species, barracuda, triggerfish, and more. Saint Croix does not have redfish or trout, which do not range that far south. Offshore, a commercial fleet works tuna, mahi, and wahoo, and the same pilchard schools that feed the flats fuel that fishery too. The best inshore fishing runs along the South Shore and out to the east.
On Saint Croix, bonefish feed heavily on pilchards—known locally as sprat—that make up most of the island's bait biomass. Since those bonefish are keyed on baitfish rather than shrimp and crabs, Carter Smith-Wellman targets them with lures and baitfish flies: four-inch Wild Eye Storm Shad swimbaits, small Rapala-style diving baits, bucktail jigs, and EP minnow patterns. He watches for subtle surface disturbances he calls pits—little raindrop-like dimples that signal bonefish feeding on bait below—rather than tailing fish. He rarely ties on a shrimp or crab fly anymore, and says the technique likely works across much of the Caribbean, not just Saint Croix.
Starting in the 1960s, Saint Croix industrialized its South Shore, dredging a 700-acre mangrove lagoon—the island's largest nursery—to build one of the largest oil refineries in the Western Hemisphere and a major aluminum refinery. Deep shipping channels split the island, gill nets arrived in the 1970s and 80s, and by the early 1990s the bonefish had all but disappeared; Bonefish & Tarpon Trust's Dr. Aaron Adams reportedly had to fly to Saint John to catch his first one. A string of changes reversed it: the aluminum plant closed in 2001, a tarpon and bonefish moratorium came in 2004, gill nets were banned in 2006, the oil refinery went bankrupt in 2012, and a major cleanup followed. Carter Smith-Wellman says this has been the best fishing he has seen in more than ten years on the island.
Carter Smith-Wellman runs Silver Kings Kayak Charters. Trips can be booked through his website at silverkingsvi.com, and he posts fishing videos, photos, and reports on Instagram and YouTube under Silver Kings VI. He runs most charters off kayaks because many of the best flats sit behind private property but are reachable from public beaches. Saint Croix is small enough—about a 60-minute drive tip to tip—that visitors can stay almost anywhere, though the Christiansted area on the South Shore puts them closest to the best fishing.
I met Carter over the podcast text line. He would send me messages about the fishing he was doing in Saint Croix, and the more he told me, the more I wanted to hear the whole story on tape. What got me was the bonefish. I have spent my life on the flats in the Florida Keys, and I have a handful of stories about catching a bonefish on something that was not a bonefish bait—a pilchard, a jig—and treating it as a fluke. Carter is doing it on purpose, every day, and he had listened to my episode with Mike Larkin and gone and applied the science to his own water. I wanted to sit down with a guy who respected the fishery enough to figure it out and build a whole approach around it. The way he tells it is better than anything I could summarize here.
On most flats, you throw a shrimp or a crab fly at a tailing bonefish and hope it eats. Carter does something almost nobody talks about—he targets them with hard baits and swimbaits, because his bonefish are keyed on pilchards. He explained the mechanics of how a fish with a downturned mouth actually eats a four-inch baitfish, and it changed how I think about water I have poled past a thousand times. He walks through the whole approach in the episode, and it is worth hearing him lay it out himself.
Ted Williams called Saint Croix the best bonefishing he had ever experienced, and this is a man who set dozens of fly world records. He stayed in Christiansted and fished the same southeast flats Carter runs today. What happened between that era and now is the part of this conversation I keep thinking about—how a fishery that good could nearly vanish and then quietly come back. Carter is a Connecticut guy and a serious Red Sox fan, so he tells the Ted Williams piece with a little extra care. Hear it in his own words.
Carter walked me through a timeline I did not know: a mangrove nursery dredged for a refinery, deep channels that split the island, gill nets, and a bonefish population that all but disappeared by the 1990s. Then the plants closed, the regulations changed, and nature did what it does when you give it room. I have watched the same thing happen with redfish in Florida, so this one hit home. The full arc—the collapse and the recovery—is one of the better fishery stories I have put on tape, and it lands harder on the audio.
Carter kept describing little surface disturbances he calls pits—faint raindrop dimples with no tail, no wake, nothing you would notice unless you knew. I have seen exactly that on my own flats and written it off as bait doing bait things. He is convinced those pits are bonefish, and he backs it up by throwing a lure in and hooking them. Once he described what to look for, my head started spinning about places back home. He explains the tell better on the audio than I can in print.
Carter runs almost all of his charters off kayaks, and it is not a gimmick. A lot of the best flats sit behind private land, but every beach on Saint Croix is public access, so a kayak unlocks water you simply cannot reach from the road. He also has a hidden spot—a spoil island built from dredged coral and sand—where he caught a 15-pound permit on one side and a bonefish on the other in the same afternoon. He names it in the episode, and you will want to hear that stretch.
Listen to the full conversation with Carter Smith-Wellman: press play in the player above, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
A day after sitting down with Carter, the thing I keep coming back to is how much fishing is still hiding in plain sight. Here is an island that a Hall of Famer once called the best bonefishing in the world, and most of us have never once thought to go. One guy, guiding out of a kayak, is quietly rebuilding the whole idea of what that place is.
The bonefish-on-a-Rapala piece is what will get people's attention, and it should. What stuck with me more was the reminder that a fishery can be run into the ground and still come back when people decide to let it. Carter changed his mind about how pessimistic to be, and after this conversation, I did too.
I told him I am coming down, and I meant it. Press play in the player above, or grab the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Silver Kings Kayak Charters · silverkingsvi.com · Ted Williams · Dr. Aaron Adams · Bonefish & Tarpon Trust · Mike Larkin · Rapala · Wild Eye Storm Shad · EP minnow · Hobie kayaks · Buck Island · Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge · Christiansted · Frederiksted · Shell Island · Los Roques, Venezuela · Saint Thomas · Saint John · Puerto Rico
Carter Smith-Wellman is a charter captain in Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands, and the only inshore fishing guide on the island. He owns and operates Silver Kings Kayak Charters, guiding clients from kayaks to the flats of the island's South Shore for bonefish, permit, tarpon, snook, and more than 30 other species. Raised visiting Saint Croix from Connecticut, where his family has roots dating to the 1950s, he left a career in energy and sustainability consulting to fish full time. He is known for an unconventional, baitfish-driven approach to bonefish, and for his work documenting and promoting Saint Croix's recovering inshore fishery.
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 911: Carter Smith-Wellman
In this episode: tarpon stacked in the sargassum “four or 500 individuals just on a little 2,000 foot strip of beach,” bonefish crushing a four-inch Wild Eye Storm Shad, the eight flags that ruled St. Croix, the refinery that killed the fishery and the recovery after it closed, and a hot seat on the first category five ever recorded in June — in the exact words spoken.
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Carter Smith-Wellman: go. I'm Carter Smith Wellman, and this is the Tom Rowland podcast.
Tom Rowland: Carter, what's up? How are you, man?
Carter Smith-Wellman: I'm good, Tom. Thanks for having me on today.
Tom Rowland: I appreciate it. I'm I'm glad to have you on. I wanna know about about, your fishery. Your tell me where you are.
Carter Smith-Wellman: So right now, I'm based out of Saint Croix in The US Virgin Islands. So for those of the folks that might be listening and that haven't heard of that, we're a small island, part of The US Virgin Islands just South of Puerto Rico, about 40 miles, kind of isolated. We've got Saint Thomas, Saint John, and the the BVIs to our North, and then we've got Puerto Rico, Culebra to our East.
Tom Rowland: Saint Croix. And is there a national park there?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yes. We've got a few national parks. Buck Island's the most famous one. It's a national park that the Rockefellers set up, back in the fifties. And then we've also got, Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, which is one of the largest, turtle laying, nesting laying, beaches in The Caribbean as well.
Tom Rowland: Very cool. Very cool. I haven't been to Saint Croix. I've been to The US and the, British Virgin Islands, but never Saint Croix, and that's definitely on on the list. I need to go there, for sure. I need to come down there and fish with you. That's what I need to do. Tell me about your fishing, man. Tell me, like, you're you're catching a lot of bonefish. I see that on on Instagram, but I also think they're permit there. Right? It's pretty good permit fishing.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So we've got, every slam species here. And in fact, in the last year, we've actually landed over 32 unique species.
Tom Rowland: Oh, really?
Carter Smith-Wellman: So being in The Caribbean, being in this tropical climate, you know, we have quite the diversity in our fishery here. Everything from snappers and jacks to, you know, barracuda, box fish, trigger fish, snook, permit, tarpon, and, of course, the bonefish as well.
Tom Rowland: What about the parrot fish? Are you fishing for those at all?
Carter Smith-Wellman: You know, so that's a great question. I've only actually seen one instance of the parrot fish up on the flats tailing. So for the most part, those parrot fish tend to stick more to the deeper coral reefs. So we don't typically target them too much. They're actually a popular fish to eat down here. A lot of the commercial guys down here will, get them in fish cages. And so we call them potfish. Basically, just any sort of fish that you catch in a pot and you cook in a pot. But as far as, as far as, you know, recreationally going, not not too common, for parrot fish to be to be seen kind of on our flats.
Tom Rowland: What about triggers?
Carter Smith-Wellman: So triggers are around, but, again, they typically also like a little bit of that deeper water. So, you know, you could potentially go for them, but we just got so many other species here that, you know, at some point, you kinda have to pick a lane and really become an expert at at what you want. And so for us, and for me personally, it's the slam species that I I really try to focus on and really try to, kinda get my clients on those species specifically.
Tom Rowland: And so as far as the tarpon goes, what tell me about the the way that you fish for tarpon or where you find them, what type of areas are you able to find them in?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. Absolutely. So we've got I got two different ways that we can fish for tarpon. One of them is on the flats. And so our flats here, you're probably pretty pretty familiar with this in The Caribbean. A lot of grass, and then we have these big sinkholes, kind of potholes we call them, where, you know, it's a depression in the flat, and you're gonna have anywhere from six to maybe three foot of additional depth. And a lot of time, what we see happen here is the bait gets brought up on the flat, and the birds are diving on it in the skinny water, and that pushes them into these deeper pockets. And that's typically when we see those tarpon, and those snook show up on the flats to feed on them. But what's really cool down here is, in June, we had our first huge patch of sargassum come on to the South Shore here. And so that's sargassum. You know, if you're a tourist, that's your worst enemy because that could ruin your vacation. But if you're an angler, that's that's probably the the most exciting thing you can see or smell is a bunch of sargassum, because what that does is Saint Croix is an extremely isolated fishery. And so we don't have a lot of new nutrients that come to the island. The island is very self sustaining. But with the sargassum mats, it brings in those sargassum crabs. It's been bringing in anchovies. And so we've been having a lot of, tarpon, bonefish, and snook feeding on those sargassum lines. So we've probably hooked two, three thousand pounds of tarpon just off of this one beach over the last thirty days.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Carter Smith-Wellman: It's been some of the best tarpon fishing I've I've ever seen.
Tom Rowland: That's really cool.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Four or 500 individuals just on a little 2,000 strip foot of beach.
Tom Rowland: So would you I mean, did those tarpon come in somehow from the deeper water and and now they're available to you because they follow in the seaweed, or were they there all the time and they're just concentrated now? Like, what do you what do you think is going on there?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. That's a great question. So, basically, this island has 14,000 foot drops on the north and the west sides as well as the south side. So, there's not very many inshore fish that are gonna traverse the second deepest trench in the Caribbean Sea. So for the vast majority of our fish, including tarpon, they're gonna be here twenty four seven, three sixty five. The key is where are they, not if they're here.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And so what happens is when you get those big sargassum mats that come in and you get a million bait fish in a bay, you'll probably get tarpon two, three, four bays down making that journey to find that. And so, you know, in a month from now, I could go fish this spot, and there won't be a single tarpon.
Tom Rowland: Really?
Carter Smith-Wellman: But when they show up, they show up typically anywhere from 50 to 500 individuals at a time.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's so awesome. And what we have in The Keys, we have something that we refer to as a shrimp hatch. And when our sargassum piles up, then well, the shrimp hatch really will be shrimp coming out of the mangroves. But it happens a lot around these these sargassum patches and these these areas that kinda smell sulfury like you're talking about. And Yep. This shrimp kinda comes out. And I think that the water has kinda low oxygen because of the because of the decaying mats and everything. And so it's usually on an outgoing tide when the water has the least amount of oxygen. And these shrimp are kind of, like, just swimming slow and and kind of up on the surface kind of, you know, and and fish too will will be doing this. And the tarpon get in there. And because they can roll, in the low oxygenated water, they're rolling often. So it's easy for us to see them and find them and know where they are. But then they can just go in there and clean house on these bait fish and shrimp that are not, you know, at their full capacity because the oxygen level's low. Are are you seeing things like that going on there, or are they just kind of eating everything that's in the sargassum?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. That's a that's a great point. We are absolutely seeing that. And that's one of the reasons why fishing sargassum is so great for tarpon is as you as you pointed out, the more that sargassum starts to break down, the more it starts to eat up that oxygen. And so when we're going on fishing these sargassum mats, you're seeing them tailing all the time. I mean, it is a sight fishing dream, and the beauty of it is you can wait out into about probably three foot of water. So you're about, you know, waist deep, maybe a little bit, you know, just under the chest. And what I like to do is get out to about two, three feet from the edge of that sargassum line. And what you'll see is tarpon rolling right on the edge. I mean, we're talking within a fly rod distance of where you're standing. And, that is absolutely what we're seeing. Now what's interesting is, we went out, on Monday, and we had some pretty strong winds. We had twenty, thirty mile an hour winds, and the seas were white capping in the bay. And we didn't see one tarpon roll. Now we hooked up a few. We caught the cup a couple big ones. It looked seem like the fifty, sixty pounders were out there that day, but that was really interesting because for the first three, four weeks, you'd go over there and it would just be hundreds of tails. Absolutely incredible. And then when it the seas picked up and that, that white water started to oxygenate the seas, we still had fixed sargassum mats, but we didn't see more than two, three tails despite hooking in a five six tarpon on the fly in just a couple hours. So that's definitely an advantage of fishing sargassum is that you typically will see those those tarpon having to roll a lot more, because of that low oxygen level.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. It's so cool. I mean, we have we have a tremendous amount of that, and sometimes it's too much. And sometimes the offshore fishermen, you know, like it when it piles up into into mats and don't like it when it's all scattered because it's all over your all over your baits that you're trying to troll or everything. So, I mean, sargassum can be such a a a beautiful thing under the right circumstance. And then, like, when we're tarpon fishing at the bridge or whatever, the tide is just running through there. It's just constantly getting on the the the baits or the mullet or the live live baits that you're you're fishing with. So constantly reeling it in, getting it off. But when it's there and it's the right circumstance, it is a fish magnet. And, that's so cool that you're that you're doing that. So what how do how do you end up in Saint Croix, or or were you born there?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yes. That's a great question. So my mother was born here, and her mother came down here in the fifties and met, my grandfather here. And so I was born in Connecticut. My mom ended up going to college up in Connecticut, where she met my father. And so I I was born up there, but we would go down to The Caribbean every year once or twice to see the grandparents. So I was coming here since three weeks old. And so that's really what got me on to Saint Croix, initially. And then, during COVID, you know, the I was working in the energy and sustainability space, and everything went remote. So I ended up kinda coming down here for a year and, working remote. And I just realized that I was waking up most days not to go to work, but to get off work so I could go out and go fishing. And, one day, I just had a light bulb moment. I was like, that's not that's not what you wanna do with your life. You know? You don't wanna just wake up and sit behind the computer for eight, nine hours a day. So that's when I decided, to make a switch. And, about sixteen months ago and left my you know, the consulting career and started the, inshore fishing, company that I run today.
Tom Rowland: And what, it's it's mostly are you catering mostly to tourists, or are the is there a destination angling kind of community that's that's already coming there that you can tap into, or what's your clientele?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. I would say it's probably 80% tourists. We do get some guys that have fished all around the world. Really good anglers. We've been getting a lot more fly fishing clients. That's something that I, didn't expect when I started this up. I was thinking we're gonna be doing mostly spin, but we're getting a lot more fly fishing clients. But I would not say that Saint Croix is on the radar. In fact, I would say it's it's really under the radar. And you can just tell because, I'm the only inshore fishing guide out here. Oh, that's true. So and there's only ever been one. Yeah. Yep. There's really only ever been one company for the last fifteen years that has been doing inshore, and, they shut down basically 2022, and that's what really light bulb kinda went off and realized that there were only deep sea charters here. And so wanted to kinda figure out a way to reinvent, the fishery a little bit. So, actually, we we run almost all of our charters off of kayaks, off of Hokies, which is pretty cool. And in part, it's because a lot of our best flats and fisheries are are pretty close to our launch points. You can't get there from the road because it's private property, but the beautiful thing down here is every beach is public access. So as long as you get to the beach from the waterfront, you can unlock a lot of this island that you traditionally couldn't unlock without some sort of vessel to get you there.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's awesome, man. Well, anytime that you're, the a pioneer in an area or the only one, that's that's amazing. That's so cool that you're doing that. So what was what was Saint Croix like in COVID? Was it locked down or or, like, what was the
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: The scene?
Carter Smith-Wellman: It was definitely locked down for a while. One of the things in The Caribbean is is health care is a huge issue here. You know, not very you know, we might be part of The United States, but we definitely don't have mainland access to to health care. So, you know, we might have five or six beds in an ICU here. So the island was very cautious, about COVID because if we did get a big outbreak, they would not have been able to handle it. And, you know, you would have seen some pretty, devastating results. So, they locked it down, but the cool thing and I think this is actually something that's been huge for The US Virgin Islands, and you see it even today, is when the whole world locked down, a lot of people still wanted to go somewhere tropical, get away, have a vacation, kinda forget about, you know, get away, have a vacation, kinda forget about, you know, the craziness that's happening. And The US Virgin Islands saw a huge increase in tourism. And they had a little portal. You know, you had to give them a negative COVID test, but, you know, there's no passport requirement to get here. If you're a US citizen, you can come here just like you would go any other state, or like Puerto Rico is the same way. So, you know, you had a lot of folks that did come to this island for the very first time during COVID, and it definitely started to see a bit of an uptick. But one thing that was, in the fishing community specifically is when it did start out, they started in enforcing curfews. Oh. And curfews for for the commercial guys are really difficult because a lot of those guys like to go up go out three, 4AM. And so their days were, were a little bit basically, they couldn't fish the way they normally could. And so there was probably about six months right at the beginning of COVID when, you know, we didn't really understand what was happening, how bad it could be. So that really was locked down like a lot of cities, like a lot of states, did. And so I actually think that that lockdown was a huge kind of, reprieve for the inshore fishery, especially the baitfish. And I think that little three, four month window where they didn't get pressured at all at all, really gave them a a chance to catch their breath and, you know, get a really strong spawn. So our spawn typically happens, in April. And so that kind of aligns almost perfectly with when COVID started in that February, March, April time frame. And so, you know, that first sixty days of lockdown, typically, you know, in April, you're really trying to get as many sprat as you can because you're getting the real big ones in there. So a lot of the commercial guys are catching thousands of sprat in these massive spawning, schools. And so they couldn't do that. And so that I think was a part of the reason why this year, the fishing has been absolutely lights out better than I've ever seen it, in the ten plus years I've been fishing down here.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's awesome. So you referred to the baitfish as sprat? What Yeah. What baitfish is that? I mean, I'm sure it's a baitfish that we have, but we call it something else probably.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So that was one of the things I had to figure out. Uh-huh. So so if you Google Sprat, it turns out it's a freshwater baitfish out of The Netherlands. Uh-huh. And it actually makes a lot of sense because the West Indies or the Dutch West Indies, basically, you had a bunch of guys coming over here back in the sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hundreds, and they would see these minnow like creatures in the salt. And so they would call them sprat because it reminded them of the fish back in Europe. And so in the in The West Indies and in The Caribbean in general, almost everybody locally is gonna refer to the bait fish as sprat. But the issue is there's about six or seven different varieties of bait fish that are deemed sprat. Mhmm. But what we were able to find is the number one most consistent baitfish is something that I'm sure you're very familiar with, the pilchard.
Tom Rowland: Yes, sir. That's our that's our, you know, bread and butter right there in the Florida Keys. The pilchard Pilchard and the mullet, you know, for the for the most part, but the pilchard, that's that's what we have. So you have a good population of pilchards.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yes. We've got a very healthy pilchard population. And in fact, I would say that is, especially on a biomass perspective, probably 70 to 80% of the, like, the bait biomass is gonna be pilchards.
Tom Rowland: Wow. And then what are these other six or seven baitfish that you have?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So you're gonna have a few different types of sardines. You're gonna have a couple couple of herrings, and then we get anchovies. Right now, we got a bunch of anchovies that come in with the sargassum, and glass minnows are the other ones. So really, you know, pilchards, anchovies, and glass minnows, those are, like, the big three. But you've got a couple other other types of herring, out there. Very similar to a pilchard, just slightly different coloration on them. So, yeah, that's kind of our, you know, our bait is anywhere from an inch to those those big spawning pilchers will get about six inches or so.
Tom Rowland: Wow. Nice. And so when you were talking about the the commercial fishermen at the beginning of COVID, not being able to fish the way that they normally did and that it gave the baitfish kind of a reprieve. Tell me what their, program is. Are they going out? Are they cast netting the bait? Are they, like what are they doing? How how do they fish?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. That's a great question. So what I see a lot, is they go out and they cast net inshore, and they'll try to get anywhere from a couple 100 to depending on if it's a bigger boat, maybe a thousand sprat. And then it's a couple different things. So some guys will kinda stick a little bit more inshore, and they'll go out, you know, into maybe thirty, forty foot of water, and they'll just start chumming up snappers. Muttons, probably. Right? And, yeah, muttons. We've got, yeah, a lot we got basically five types of snapper here that are pretty common. Muttons being the biggest of the snapper.
Tom Rowland: Cuberas?
Carter Smith-Wellman: And then
Tom Rowland: see those?
Carter Smith-Wellman: We do. Yeah. We have them. They are, caught a couple babies in the mangroves.
Tom Rowland: Mhmm.
Carter Smith-Wellman: I know a few guys that have caught some, you know, forty, fifty pounders at at night, doing some night fishing, because that's typically when they fire up out here. But, yeah, for the most part, these guys are going offshore. So I almost rarely ever see commercial guys fish in the areas that I'm fishing. I see them come in, grab their bait, and then they disappear into the horizon. And then you've got other guys that are are still using those pilchards to go after the Pelagics as well. Mhmm. You know, tuna's huge especially for restaurants, Mahi, Wahoo. You know, those are, you know, quality high priced fish. So you get into those, you can make a lot of money as a commercial fisherman here.
Tom Rowland: Well, I tell you what. Like, what you're describing is a dream come true for, you know, like, the type of fishing that we do in the Florida Keys. It's the same thing. We we we cast net bait, and and we'll fish with it inshore or the offshore fishermen come in and do exactly what your guys what you're talking about. They come in, they catch bait in the in the shallow flats, and then they take off and you don't know exactly where they're going.
Carter Smith-Wellman: But Right.
Tom Rowland: That now that I've done a lot more offshore fishing, I do know where they're going now. And they're doing some amazing incredible things with those pilchards and bringing entire tuna schools up to the surface. They're doing tuna schools up to the surface there. Do Doing incredible things. And what what intrigued me there was the fact that that you have an entire fleet and you have, a pilchard population that can can sustain that. Because that fishing, using pilchards and having boats with live wells capable of carrying a thousand pilchards, that doesn't happen everywhere. Right? Like, sometimes, you know, they only they might catch the the bait in certain places that I've been, but they don't keep it alive. They they they fish dead bait. And but to to be able to live chum pilchards, that's what we do in The Keys. And that's how lots of fly world records have have come from that technique of of chumming these fish up and throwing a fly to them offshore, everything. Wahoo, sailfish, mahi, tuna, name it. I mean, every fish that lives out there loves pilchards and, even yellowtailing. When we go yellowtailing, we we get pilchards before we go yellowtailing, and it just fires everything up. So, like, for what you're doing on the inshore side, fly fishing for permit, tarpon, bonefish, snook, and then what? Redfish? Do you have redfish?
Carter Smith-Wellman: No. Unfortunately, we don't reds don't get this far. So, yeah, we don't get reds or trout.
Tom Rowland: It's really the But the mutton snapper though, you could probably you could probably do permit, tarpon, bonefish, snook, mutton snapper. That'd be a pretty awesome slam. Yep. But but the the ability to go inshore with you a couple of days and then go offshore and maybe chum up some fish offshore and and what gets me excited is that, like, we have plenty of that deep water chumming for for, like, tuna and everything else that's out there. But what I've seen in The Bahamas a couple times before and and other places is this this that shallow water chumming that you're talking about where you get in 30 feet of water and you're getting these giant snappers coming to the surface and eating and you can catch them on fly. That is man, that that sounds amazing. But so does your inshore fishing. Like, you're you're what you're talking about, fishing the the sargassum weed and the and the tarpon and the permit and the snook and all that stuff, that sounds amazing. You like, you could put together a really amazing trip here is what what I'm gathering from, from this interview. And I didn't know some of this. I didn't know that you had that offshore fleet, and I didn't know that you had snook there either. Like
Carter Smith-Wellman: Oh, yeah.
Tom Rowland: There's a lot to be discovered in Saint Croix. So what's the history of Saint Croix? It's a US territory, but has it changed hands a few times? Has it been a British colony? Like, do you know the history of it?
Carter Smith-Wellman: I I do. Yeah. So, there's a great book by a historian down here called, the eight flags. And so, basically, his book goes and documents the eight different nations that ran Saint Croix at some point in history. One of those eight being pirates as well. So this was a huge, Saint Croix is again, you know, it's it's very isolated. If you go South of Saint Croix, the next land you will find is Venezuela. So if you if you are, you know, sailing back in the day and you miss somehow Puerto Rico and you miss the, you know, the BVIs and Saint Thomas, Saint John, which is kind of all connected, if you get to Saint Croix, you're good. If you pass Saint Croix, you're in trouble. Mhmm. And so, you know, basically, a lot of, a lot of pirates would use this island, to ransack the Spanish on the South Shore Of Puerto Rico. So we had French. We had English. We had Danish. We had Dutch, Knights of Malta even, on this island. And so, eventually, it ends up in the Danish hands. And after World War one, The United States is worried that Germany might start to buy up islands in the Caribbean to use as military bases. And so we purchase, the islands in the nineteen twenties from the Danish for, I think, about 25,000,000 in gold, which would be about 8 or 900,000,000 today if you held that gold for, you know, a hundred a hundred years. And so, basically, yeah, a little bit of history. It actually, what's really neat about Saint Croix is if you go back and you try to find some documentation on kind of the first fishing that was happening here, the first thing you'll find is the nineteen fifties. And there's a guy, a pretty famous guy named Ted Williams, who actually discovered Saint Croix in the fifties, and he would stay in King Christian, in Christiansted, which is kind of our main call I kinda call it a capital city. It's our main we have two big cities here. That's our main city. And he would go out with one of the local park rangers to our Southeast Shore, the flats over there that I fish today that are loaded with fish. And he would go out after bonefish. And, actually, there's a few articles that had him stating that Saint Croix was the best bone fishing he had ever experienced in his life. And Ted Williams is no chump when it comes to fishing. A lot of people know him, 19 time all star. I'm a Connecticut guy, big red sox fan. So, you know, to me, you know, I argue he might be the best hitter of all time, but he was actually a hall of fame fly angler as well. And he set dozens of world records on the fly back when he was fishing. And, one of the really interesting things here, and this kinda blew my mind when I learned it, is if you're ever down here and you see some of these older gentlemen still doing the hand lines, you know, the big spools, they just kinda whip it out and just let it sit on the bottom and wait for stuff to eat it. You know, if you talk to them about bonefish here, they might give you a blank stare. And, you know, we might be part of The United States, but Cruisin culture is very unique. It was a huge sugar plantation island. And so you had a lot of Europeans as well as Africans brought here to work and run the sugarcane plantations. And so there's actually a really strong culture here. San Crowe is one of the first islands to have a, basically, a slave revolt that shut down all of the plantations here. And so we've got an awesome mix of Afro Caribbean, Dominican, even Puerto Rican folks that live here. So it's really a a bit of a melting pot, as well as obviously people from The States and from Europe, some of those older families. And so, what's really cool is that, you know, you have different names for fish down here. So when you're talking to these older local guys, they'll call permit, kabla, they'll call creval, kovali, and then the bonefish. The bonefish name here is the 10 pounder. And when I heard that, I asked the guy, and I said 10 pounder. That's a very I've never heard a fish be named after a size like that. You know? Like, feel like calling a fish the 36 incher. And, honestly, I so I asked the guy, you know, what what what does that really mean? You know, were they big? Like, were they 10 pounds? And he just takes his finger, and he points the tip of his index finger, and he traces a line all the way back to his shoulder. And he said about yay big. Wow. So about the length of a man's arm. And, I think that's why Ted Williams said that this was some of the best bone fishing in the world because to to have a a fish be called the 10 pounder, that's not a one in a 100 catch. You're catching that pretty consistently. So that was, you know, one of the first things where I realized there's something unique happening on this island here. But, unfortunately, that, that fishery never became what it could have been. So in the fifties, you have Ted Williams documented down here. In the sixties, they decided to industrialize the South Shore. And the site that they chose to industrialize was a 700 acre mangrove lagoon, the largest mangrove lagoon on the island. And they put in the world's largest oil refinery in the Western Hemisphere, and they put in one of the largest aluminum refinery refineries, in The Caribbean. Wow. And both of those places basically dredged up all of the mangroves, backfilled the channels, and, well, they weren't well regulated. Let's just put it that way. So from the sixties to the seventies to the eighties, they did a lot of things that we didn't find out about until the nineties and early two thousands. But long story short, that destroyed probably the biggest, nursery on our island. And what it also did is our entire South Shore is one contiguous flat that has maybe 20 different bays. But if you, you know, you'd be able to trace the fringe and coral reef line, that will be anywhere from a quarter mile to two miles out to sea depending on which bay you're in. You know, that that reef line will run the 23 miles south shore. That is something you do not see in Saint Thomas. You do not see in Saint John. You don't see it even in Vieques or Culebra. And that South shore is where I'd fish 90% of the time. Wow. But when they when they did build that refinery, they created these thirty, forty foot deep water shipping channels, six or seven of them. And what it basically did is it split the island in half. There's a lot of studies that say that show that fish do not like going over deep channels. That's where the kudos are. That's where the hammerheads are. And so, basically, what I think it did is it it broke the island in half. You probably had fish that would swim from the east side to the west side and back. And now they basically swim 12 miles. They hit these massive jetties, these deep water man made channels, and they just stop and probably turn around. So that was a that was a huge impact, to our fishery here. And then in the seventies, eighties, gill nets became really popular. That was, you know, a little bit of a newer invention. You know, it came to The Caribbean again around the seventies and eighties. And the issue with the with the gill nets is we had so many bonefish still. You know, it doesn't you can't kill an entire, you know, an entire species just in a few years. But you can obviously start to impact it. And so you already had the the mangroves gone, the the nursery gone. And then the issue with the gill nets and the bonefish, yeah, I don't know if you've ever tried a cast net of bonefish, would not recommend it. You know, they go berserk. And imagine catching a ten, twelve pound bonefish in a net. That net is gonna get mangled, ripped, broken, and there's very, very little, you know, meat quality. I mean, there's so many bones. I've actually there's a few ways that I've learned that they they basically mush the fish down and create little fish cakes.
Tom Rowland: Mhmm.
Carter Smith-Wellman: But long story short, it wasn't a fish they wanted to catch. So there are stories of people throwing dozens and dozens of bonefish up on the beach because they were so tired of them ruining their gear, costing them money, costing them time. And so, basically, by 1993, when, doctor Aaron Adams actually from Bonefish Tarpon Trust started out as a marine biologist down here, you know, he's got a few articles that he's quoted saying that he had to fly to Saint John to get his first bonefish because they were gone. They were they were completely disappeared, and that's probably why almost everyone listening to this has never heard of Saint Croix as a bonefish spot. Because by the nineties, with the South Shore Industrial Complex, with the gill netting that happened, the bonefish population disappeared almost entirely. Wow. And and so that it's it's used, a lot as a an example of how quickly you can take a world class fishery and bring it to the point of oblivion, basically, or nonexistence.
Tom Rowland: Mhmm. So that's the bad side of it. How does it return? How do you regain that fishery? So the
Carter Smith-Wellman: good news is yeah. So that's the bad news. The good news is in 2001, the aluminum refinery finally got caught for all the things that it did, and it got sued by the EPA and it closed the next day. And then in 2004, the Caribbean Management Fishery Council declares tarpon and bonefish, illegal to kill, puts a moratorium on taking tarpon and bonefish in Puerto Rico and The Virgin Islands. And then in 2006, which quite frankly, gillnets had gone out of style before that, but in 2006, gillnets are officially banned in The US Virgin Islands. And then in 2012, the oil refinery, again, gets sued by the EPA and and it declares bankruptcy the next day and leaves island. So within a span from 2001 to 2012, a ten year span, all of the things that I just mentioned on paper get fixed. So the industrial complex is a shell of what it is. It's no longer polluting. You finally got basically some court cases in. So they had to spend $4,050,000,000 dollars cleaning up a lot of the toxins that they put into our salt ponds and the lagoons and the channels. So by about 2014, from a legal standpoint, everything is now officially clean and healthy. And so that, I think, is really the turning point. And if you think about especially with bonefish, you know, we know they live about twenty three years, maybe even a little bit longer. But if you think about 2024 and we go back to 2001 when that aluminum plant closed, that's about one, you know, full generation of bonefish later. And a lot of the fish we're probably getting today were born within the last ten years, maybe even the last five years. And so I think that was a huge turning point for this island starting to pick up again and starting to rebound, when it comes to the inshore scene here.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's really cool. You know, it always goes back to just, you know, we've had different things in The United States here with the redfish, and, they were they were, fishing for mullet so aggressively that it was really damaging to the redfish, and and they stopped all that. And it wasn't long after that that the redfish rebound to an incredible level. I mean, the redfishing now all over the state of Florida and many other places is so good. And, but but that's a fish that was on the brink of not being around maybe or not being very good, and it was very difficult to find them for a long time. But, you know, if you give nature a chance and you set the regulations, you can see some amazing things. So that is that's a great story of of what happened there, and, hopefully, it doesn't, repeat itself in other places. But what what goes on with that refinery and the all that closed down? Is the is the building still there? Is it, like, what what it Yep. What happens with all that?
Carter Smith-Wellman: That's a great question. So, yeah, we actually are still, right now, there's still a lot of political will trying to reopen the refinery.
Tom Rowland: Really?
Carter Smith-Wellman: So we had a company come in and open the refinery a few years ago and restart production. And within a couple years, they had, basically made so many mistakes, spewed spewed a lot of oil all over the the South Shore. EPA came in. It's one of the only times the EPA has actually used the Clean Air Act to shut down a refinery. And so they were shut down. They sold at auction for, like, $60,000,000. And we're talking about a refinery that at one point refined 20% of all gasoline in The United States.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Like, we're talking one of the largest refineries in the world. Even today, if it was to reopen, it would still be in the top 15. And so there's still a lot of political you know, it was a huge job creator. You know? You gotta look at it from the other side too. This island was at 1.1 of the richest islands in The Caribbean because of that refinery and because of the high paying jobs. And then gas was so cheap here because you had so much of it. Energy was cheap, so the island really could thrive. And so there's still a lot of people that wanna bring Saint Croix back to that kinda quote, unquote glory day and of the seventies, you know, where you had well paying jobs. You had a lot of businesses that were, you know, feeding and clothing and and doing trips and excursions with the folks, you know, from the oil rigs of Texas and Louisiana that would come down here as well. So there's still a lot of a lot of political pressure to open that refinery again. But this time, the EPA has got them on the top of their watch list. Whereas back in the day, the EPA never even came down here for probably twenty, thirty years to check anything. So there's still pressure to keep industrializing here, but there's a lot of locals that no longer want that because they've dealt with the fallout. And they don't want the they don't want their cisterns full of gas again. They don't wanna have to, you know, clean their roofs because oil droplets are all over them and, you know, all over their cars and, you know, creating all of the smog and other other kinda negative impacts that you get from heavy refining.
Tom Rowland: So the opposition, when when you're trying to avoid that, they've already been through it once and they've seen what happens and they don't want that again. There's a big economic boom if you reopen it. Is the opposition now that we can we can keep the island super clean, and bring tourists here, and that's gonna replace the the economic loss from the from the refineries that because that's what you typically, it's gotta come down it comes down to money sooner or later.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Right.
Tom Rowland: Like, one one group wants to one group wants to bring in, you know, the oil. The other group wants to bring in tourism. One group wants to bring in the cruise ships. One group wants to keep them out. I don't know. You always see these different these different things, but it comes down to that's a tremendous amount of money that could come into that that community. So the opposition has to address that. Like, if we're not gonna bring this in through oil, how will we bring it in? I'm just curious of what the that kind of temperature is there. Seems like that would be a real dividing line between locals.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. It absolutely is. You've got folks that, again, it's all about economy and jobs, and you got folks that are saying, hey. You know, the reason that they didn't do this on Saint Thomas was because they didn't want Saint Thomas to be inundated in a negative way when it comes to tourism. Well, now Saint Croix, a lot of people, a lot of my clients are first timers to Saint Croix. And there's a there's been a change. Saint Thomas is real built up. You can have two, three, four cruise ships in a day. You can have 20,000 people on cruise ships. Saint Croix, you come here and it is it's like the country. You know? We'd like to say Saint Thomas is the city. Saint Croix is the country. And so a lot of people like the slower, laid back vibe, kind of the the the longer, you know, less built up island. And, you know, that is really driving a lot of tourism today. People don't wanna necessarily go and stay at the Ritz Carlton anymore. You got those folks, but you got a lot of folks that say, give me a boutique. Give me some unique nature. Give me just my own beach so that it doesn't have 300 people on it. And that's where Sandcor is really appealing to folks. And then the other piece, honestly, about the refinery here is it it's never gonna be a it's a shell of what it was. I mean, it laid idle on a salty ocean for seven, eight years. And if you drive by it, it looks like an apocalyptic Mhmm. Movie set. And I've always said they should just film movies there. I mean, it's rusted. It's you've got huge piles of waste. I mean, it's been picked through and scrapped to the point where it really isn't a massive eyesore, and it's extremely difficult to restart it. That's why they had issues when they tried to do it prior because you let something sit for a year here, it's gonna be rusted. You let something sit for several years right on the ocean, good luck. You know? Anyone anyone listening
Tom Rowland: to this that owns a boat, that that boat does not get used very often knows that if it's around saltwater and you don't I mean, the best thing you can do for a boat is use it every single day. And Yep. When you let one sit, everything rusts, everything breaks, everything that's the worst thing you can do to a boat, to a house, to a oil refinery is lack of use around saltwater. Like, that is it's a killer, like, for anything. Yeah. Your swing set in your backyard for anything. Like, it's just gonna rust away in in a in a in the Keys environment, in the Saint Croix environment. Like, it's that I can't imagine that they could even ever get it restarted. Maybe I mean, you can do a lot with money, you know, I guess. But
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. I don't I don't think it's gonna get restarted personally, but we'll see. There's a lot of court cases right now. So they gotta get through the EPA, and then we'll see.
Tom Rowland: Super interesting history, and you are doing a really good job of of of being the the tourist development council for Saint Croix as far as, anglers go because, like, everything that you've told me sounds like paradise. You don't have very many people there. The fishing is amazing. You can fish inshore. You can fish offshore. You have tremendous history, and and it's just a it seems like just a super cool place. I'm definitely gonna come. I'm gonna go I'm gonna come with my wife. She just had a hip replacement. So as soon as she starts feeling better, we're gonna we're gonna, we're gonna come down there. I'm gonna fish with you. And that sounds that sounds amazing. I love the history there. That's that's super cool. We have a lot of the same type I mean, anywhere in The Caribbean, you're gonna have a lot of the same type of history. You're gonna have some pirate history. You're gonna have some celebrity kind of things. But with a couple of things that you talked about, Ted Williams had had a, a a presence in the Florida Keys. He, wrote, a book called The Big Three, which ironically was not permit, tarpon bonefish. It was tarpon, bonefish, and Atlantic salmon was the book that he wrote about. And, those were his what he called the big three. Then and back when he was fishing, they probably didn't fish for Permit much. Like, it's just a fish that kinda like we look at, parrot fish tailing or something or triggerfish tailing for a long time. It's like, I don't know what those aren't bonefish. Go over here. These are bonefish over here. Right? You just avoid them. But then sooner or later, you figure out how to fish for them, and then they become a real target. And I think that's the way that permit worked for a long time. But Ted Williams had a, a presence in The Keys, and then, you know, one of the things that got us to do this podcast together is we've been talking over, over text. And, one of the things that you said was that you had listened to the Mike Larkin podcast, where he came on he's been on so many times, but he's a he's
Carter Smith-Wellman: a
Tom Rowland: man that has a tremendous amount of knowledge about bonefish and many other many other species. And you you were able to, learn some things from that podcast, and I I I would like to know what they were and how you applied them to your to your fishery. And you you said that you've been you've stayed in touch with Mike Larkin after after that. Right? Yes. Yep. That's so cool.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. He's a he's an awesome awesome brilliant man.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's so cool. So, like, what kind of things did like, when you hear somebody talk about bonefish and stuff and and, of course, Aaron Adams, also has has been on this podcast too, but, in a in a clean water kinda thing rather than a bonefish science Sure. Type thing. But, what what kind of things did you learn from the podcast we did with Mike Larkin?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So to kind of preface this, so I went into, basically, I went into listening to that podcast because I had stumbled upon a a picture from a few years back from one of the guides with a bonefish with a rapala sticking out of its mouth. And so I called the called the guide. I I knew him. I had been fishing with him before. I called him up and I said, hey, man. I saw this photo from, like, 10/1716. There's a bonefish with a with a Rapala in his mouth. Like, was that was that just a random one off? Like, what what was going on there? I've never seen a, you know, a Rapala bonefish, set up before. And so he started telling me a few things that really kinda started blowing my mind a little bit. And, when it really all clicked is when I listened to that podcast. And what I really was so so surprised about was his study on growth rates and diet. I think that is to me, that is, like, the most interesting study I think anyone's done on bonefish to date. You know? I love the spawning studies. I love a lot of the other studies, but, you know, the The Bahamas versus Florida Keys growth rate, Absolutely incredible. And I think so for folks that may not have listened to that podcast, there was there was one thing that really stuck out to me. And we were talking about what is the age of a 10 pound bonefish? Mhmm. Right? And so, Larkin doctor Larkin had basically found in his study that in The Bahamas, on average, those 10 pounders can be around 16 years old. They're a little bit slower growing there. They're on that benthic diet, you know, that bottom bottom feeding diet. And when he looked at the Florida Keys, and this is what really shocked me, he was saying that you could potentially find 10 powders as young as six years old. So he was seeing, you know, a 2.67 time greater growth rate in the Florida Keys. And one of the main things that, was talked about was in the Florida Keys, you've got this fish. We don't have them down here called it I think it's called a toadfish.
Tom Rowland: Yes.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Is it? Mhmm. And he was saying that when they when those bigger bones start to get on those toadfish, the calorie content that they can get from those fish really increases the growth rate, exponentially. I mean, we're talking 267% faster.
Tom Rowland: Mhmm.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Like, if that was if that's a stock, you are rich. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, that is an incredible, incredible way to speed up the growth rate. And in my experience down here, I had only ever caught four or five pound bonefish. And so in my mind, I was still under the kind of more pessimistic impression that we're catching old bones. I'm not seeing the one, two, three pounders, so this fishery is in trouble. Like, we're catching fish that were born ten, fifteen years ago, you know, and we're kinda catching the older fish. But what I think was really kinda crazy is I don't think that's exactly what's happening here. And in fact, I know that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is these bonefish are eating pilchards and not just two, three inch pilchards. I'm talking four, five inch pilchards, which just how a bonefish can actually eat a pilchard, you know, with the mouth being underneath them, that's pretty incredible. Turns out that they actually get above the bait and they dive bomb it because they they don't they're not like a tarpon. They're not like a snook. They can't come up and just create that vacuum and suction everything into the mouth. And so one of the things in that podcast is that bonefish can see straight and down, whereas tarpon sees straight and up. So that's an interesting piece is basically if a bonefish wants to eat a baitfish, it has to be eye level or above it. And that's something that's pretty unique. And that also is one of the reasons why I don't see that many tailing bonefish here. There's a few spots where I see tails consistently, and they're going after these ghost shrimp that burrow in the sand right on the, right on the beach kinda where the waves come up and kinda churn that sand up and the bonefish use those waves to help kinda undig those those shrimp. But if a bonefish is feeding on baitfish, you're not gonna know unless you start to really get into the ecosystem and start to see, okay, this is what it looks like when a bonefish is eating baitfish. And what are you
Tom Rowland: seeing does it look like?
Carter Smith-Wellman: All you see are these little it's almost like big raindrops. These I call them pitses. Just this little pit pit pit pit, and you don't really see the fish. You know, you don't see any tail coming out. You know, if it was a tarpon or a snook, you know, the snook, they make that really unique snook sound when they come up and hit something on the surface. Tarpon here are flying out the water when they're feeding, so it's really easy to see a tarpon feed. And so, basically, you just see this this bait going crazy, but it's not jumping like a jack would run through it and it makes the fish fly everywhere. All you're seeing is just this little bit of a surface disturbance, and there's a lot of bait around. And that's because those bonefish, you know, they can't eat off the surface. They probably don't eat anywhere within 18 inches of the surface. They're eating pretty much that middle water column and down. And when I see this behavior, I would say it's anywhere from two and a half to maybe six or seven feet deep. So we're still talking pretty shallow, but we're not necessarily talking like a flat flat. You know, maybe more of a more more of a beach that kinda slowly kinda tapers off and then forms a flat around eight or 10 feet. So maybe a we call it maybe a little bit of a deeper water flat for down here. And so I got to see this really well this past, this past month with the sargassum. And I think this is what's crazy. I don't know many places and, you know, tell me if I'm wrong where you can go for tarpon. And I had a bunch of military guys down here doing some training with the air force national reserve here and brought them out fishing. And we were going for tarpon. We were cooking up the tarpon. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we just start catching bonefish. We didn't change our lure setups. We're using 50 pound leaders. We're using four inch swimbaits, you know, big half ounce bucktails for these tarpon. And all of a sudden, these guys start hooking up to bonefish.
Tom Rowland: How big a bonefish is eating a five inch swimbait?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Anywhere, it's incredible. As as small as three pounds, but, typically, a bonefish here around five pounds. Basically, what I would say is a fish under 24 inches is what I would consider small here. A fish over 24 inches is is bigger, and anything over probably at 26 mark, you know, seven, eight pounders, that's that's when I start to say that's a that's a big bonefish. But I would say, yeah, almost every bonefish we've caught has been between four and six. 80%.
Tom Rowland: And so do you ever see like, you say you don't see many bonefish tailing. Are you and the bonefish that you do see tailing, are they the the really big ones, or are they the smaller ones, or, like, is there any core any correlation to the size of fish that you're seeing tailing?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So, actually, my best tailing spot is the same spot that I've been fishing for the tarpon and the bones. And so because that's sargassum's all along the edge there, those fish can't go and eat those shrimp right now. So they've switched on to the anchovies, and they've switched on to the sprat that are around. So it's the same fish that I see tailing ten months out of the year. And then for those two months that the sargassum's inundating the flat, those fish are are off that sargassum edge feeding, pretty consistently on on baitfish. So, you know, in that bay, I've actually had the chance to go snorkeling one day when it was real clear, and I found about three, four hundred bonefish schooled up
Tom Rowland: on a real clear day. Water was it? Four feet. Four
Carter Smith-Wellman: feet. Maybe 30 foot off the beach.
Tom Rowland: There's there's Yep. A big group of bonefish. And what are they doing when you find them? Just chilling out or they
Carter Smith-Wellman: They're just chilling. And in fact, I actually think when it gets real calm, real crystal clear, I think they become prey. So they were they were schooling like a bait ball. They were and they were rolling and flashing like you'll see bait, you know, flashing. You'll see other fish that'll roll on their side and kinda give you that. I don't know if it's a warning to the to the school that there's this, you know, human that's pretty close, could be
Tom Rowland: a shark. You don't think that that's a feeding behavior? Because we see that too. Like, when you see a group of fish and you see the the the flashing on the side and sometimes that's all you see. Like, you're looking over a flat and for so long, you know, it's maybe two and a half feet deep, nobody's tailing, nobody's throwing any kind of wake, but you just see this one little mirror for just like a split second. You're almost like, did I see that? Like, you know, and you're looking and you don't see it again. And then Right. But if you know what you're looking for, you know that's where they are. And if you go up there and you get closer, you'll see them mudding and things like that. But it's that one little flash that you saw that that occasionally can can, you know, be the telltale sign how you can find that school. Otherwise, you weren't gonna see them. Right? That's that's
Carter Smith-Wellman: Right. Absolutely. And, actually, yeah, I just posted a a little YouTube short, which shows exactly what you just said. And that was in the sargassum watching a pack of bones, probably seven or eight of them, pretty big. I'd say they're four to seven pounders. And, you know, it's a little hard to pick up on the camera, but what you see clear as day is that flashing as they're rolling by. Mhmm. And then not a second later, you look over to the left and you're seeing those pittses. So they're they're coming like packs and they're schooling. But I also saw it when they were just schooled up, you know, two, three, 400 deep. And what's interesting to me is, you know, it's in theory, they say, you know, when those fish get bigger, they start to become more solitary. What was interesting about this school is they were as small as two pounds, and there were some fish that I would put conservatively at 10, if not twelve, fourteen pounders. I mean, super large fish. And those guys, you know, when you kind of get near the school, they they're shy. So they'll start swimming away. It's it's not something I'd you know, you typically do is snorkel with bonefish. They're not the most, you know, human friendly fish out there. Pretty spooky fish. Mhmm. But those big ones, you can just tell that they're the big ones because they don't really run from you. You know, the rest of the school will kinda move away 20 feet. They'll kinda linger slowly behind that school, just kinda live in their best life. But I do think they school because there's some huge barracudas, and I've seen a few scarred up bonefish here. And I think when it gets crystal calm like that, you know, they they become the prey.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And I
Carter Smith-Wellman: think it's I think it has to be a a defense mechanism because they don't typically school like that. They're typically feeding. And when they're schooled like that, you won't see a single tail. Mhmm. You won't see a single fish feeding, and that's that's how you know they're probably schooled up.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that that that's a that's a defense mechanism from a lot of different fishes to ball up together, and it wouldn't be it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's exactly the case of what you I mean, you know the fishery better than certainly certainly better than me. But another thing that happens in those situations is some sort of a spawning behavior where they will stage up like that together. And who knows? I mean, that like, that's why Bonefish Tarpon Trust and and Mike Larkin and Aaron Adams and these other people are in business is because we don't know very much about the Bonefish. Right. Like, you you know, and so, like, we learn things. Like, what you're talking about, Bonefish are feeding in these diff in these deeper areas that, for the most part, not many people are looking for them. You figured it out with catching them on rapala, which is amazing. Yeah. I mean, how many are you catching on the rapala? Like, can you do that regularly, or is it kind of a thing which you're you're tarpon fishing and you just catch one, or are you targeting them with with lures?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Targeting them with lures. And so, actually, I've got one here. This has been my best producer. Nice. This is a four inch. You've probably seen this before. It's it's the most basic a little bit.
Tom Rowland: There you go. Right there. It's in the middle.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Alright. Right there. Yeah. So this is the four inch wild eye storm shad. You could throw this for bass. You could throw this for striped braids. You could throw this for just about anything. I've even had permit eat this. But what's amazing is this is the half ounce. And so when I started, we, we started catching them on the smaller one. We started catching them on this little three, three inch quarter ounce. And this is what works real well in skinny water, and, actually, this is what we troll. So we've caught about six or seven bonefish trolling off the kayaks using these guys, which is pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, you could
Tom Rowland: you could throw one
Carter Smith-Wellman: in a barracuda, a jack, or a bonefish fish. Are you using wire too? No. No. I'm usually using 30 to 50 pound fluoro Okay. Typically.
Tom Rowland: You know, I get wire. They will eat it. I've caught them
Carter Smith-Wellman: on wire. Okay. I I didn't know that.
Tom Rowland: You you you I mean, I would think that if they're gonna eat that thing, they're gonna eat it with 40 pound fluorocarbon or they're gonna eat it with wire. They'll they'll eat it either way, I think.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: And then you Oh, yeah. Then you won't get snipped off every time a Kuda eats it. You know?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yep. Absolutely. But yeah. So this this four inch one, this is what we caught our bonefish on when we were tarpon fishing. So tarpon love this one. I've got one other jig. She's a little bit beat up. Lost a few feathers here.
Tom Rowland: That's much more like what we what we fish with. And and, you know, so we like, I fished with this guy. His name was Mitch Howell, and he he was the best I had ever seen at this. And he would always come in in these tournaments, and he would win, you know, the artificial division. And he would always catch bonefish. And I finally had the opportunity to fish with him, and we fished a number of tournaments together. And I was so excited to fish with him because I wanted to see what in the world he was doing catching these fish on jigs. And I thought maybe they were targeting these these fish on jigs, but we we would basically go to any area where we were gonna catch bonefish. And we would tailing fish or or where we're gonna see them in shallow water, and he would have a couple of rods. And he would have one with a sight casting shrimp. Right? You know, just a just a shrimp hooked up like everybody else has. But then he would have another rod with a with a jig on it, kinda like what you're what you just showed me, that bucktail jig.
Carter Smith-Wellman: A bucktail.
Tom Rowland: A smaller hook and a smaller it was a little bit smaller. And Right. You know, like, anytime you're pulling down the flat, there's gonna be an area that has glare. Right? You can't see very far into the glare. And he would just throw into that glare, always straight into the glare because we could see it in
Carter Smith-Wellman: the ground.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. We could see he would let me look out in front of the boat to where I could see, you know, from the polling tower. I could see pretty far out there. He can see pretty far out there, but there was a whole area that we couldn't see at all. And he would target that area with the jig, blind casting the jig. And, dude, it was good for three or four fish every single Yep. Time. And, you know, and I'm watching how he's doing it. I'm like, that doesn't seem like the same thing that we're trying to do when we're fly fishing for them or whatever, and we're imitating this thing that goes down to the bottom. The fish comes up to it, and we move it out of the way like it just like it just got scared. And the bonefish jumps all over it. Right?
Carter Smith-Wellman: With
Tom Rowland: the jig, they were definitely chasing it down. And they were definitely eating it. And it was in the same areas that they were doing all of this other stuff, but we couldn't see them and and but we would catch a lot of fish that way. And the reason I know that they will eat wire is because there'd also be these, you know, anything from 12 inch to to 24 inch barracudas all over the flats up there. Right? You probably have the same thing going on. Oh, yeah. And so we're throwing those jigs. Well, those barracudas love those jigs. And so Yeah.
Carter Smith-Wellman: They do.
Tom Rowland: You know, we would throw out there and snip that, you know, you'd you'd just get a little bump and no jig. Then you have to tie
Carter Smith-Wellman: another one
Tom Rowland: on, and we go through it two dozen jigs. I'm like, I'm putting wire on there. I'm gonna I'm gonna put some wire on there. I don't I don't have I can't go through two dozen jigs every time I come out here. Right? So I just put a little wire on there, and I'm thinking, you know, this will be fun for the other guy to catch a few barracudas. Right? We'll just keep the rod bent. It'll be fun, and then we'll just be really looking for the bonefish. Well, sure enough, first bite, bonefish on the wire. Like, oh, that's weird. Then it just didn't seem to matter. Like, they you know, everything's moving and they're not getting a real good look at it anyway. And they ate the they ate the wire just as good as as the as the fluorocarbon.
Carter Smith-Wellman: But Yeah.
Tom Rowland: And I was I yeah. I got a question about, what you're what you're talking about, these big raindrops and and the way that you're seeing these bonefish tailing. We or not tailing, but feeding in the deeper water. And you refer to it as big raindrops, and then you refer to it as something else.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Like a like a I call it like a pits. I don't know.
Tom Rowland: It's just pits. Okay.
Carter Smith-Wellman: You know, it's like it's like boop boop boop boop. Yeah. Like, it's just these little, like, droplets.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. So, like, when we're cast netting pilchards, that's what we look for. We look for that. On slick calm days, you see that happening. So when you're seeing these this and you're dissociating it with bonefish feeding on these fish, are do you think what you're seeing is the is the bait fish doing what they're what they're doing, like, when we're when we're cast netting them and and you just see the bait fish making these kind of raindrops? It look and it sounds like it's raining too sometimes. Like, you can hear it and you hear like a little crack. The bait fish the pilchards will make like a little cracking sound And then, you know, the guys that are good at throwing the cast net, they're like, it was right over there. And you move the boat right over there and then then you're gonna throw the net. But what you're seeing are you seeing the baitfish making this disturbance that you're is your that you're calling big raindrops or pits, or do you think it's the bonefish making that disturbance? Just wanna be clear.
Carter Smith-Wellman: It's definitely yeah. I think it's definitely the bonefish because, especially at the sargassum line that we've seen that, you know, we were seeing in the last couple weeks. You know, there's millions of bait on that line. You won't see anything, and then all of a sudden, you'll just start seeing, you know and and the thing that you also see along with it are the flashes of silver in the water. Right? Because when those bait fish
Tom Rowland: are flashes of silver or the bonefish flash a silver?
Carter Smith-Wellman: The baitfish in particular. And you'll start to see those baitfish freaking out, and then they'll go calm again. And you wouldn't know they were there unless you saw them. So Interesting. Me, I would definitely I would definitely say I think you know, there's plenty of times where, you know, pilchards are just doing what pilchards do. Like, they, you know, they stick on the top. And when they're spawning, they come up and they slap their tails.
Tom Rowland: Mhmm.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And, you know, if you have spawning pilchards, you'll see that same pitting happening. Doesn't mean there's any fish there. But if we're not in spawning season, yeah, a 100%. And you
Tom Rowland: know consider spawning season? What month?
Carter Smith-Wellman: For us, March and April.
Tom Rowland: Okay. So any month outside of that, if you're seeing that that behavior, you're you're you're pretty sure that it's bonefish feeding, or you can at least you think they're bonefish underneath those those Yeah. Until you're throwing you're you're throwing a ropala into that and catching bonefish.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. Exactly. And, honestly, what I, yeah, what I think is actually more fun, I'm a I'm a big spin guy personally, but fly fishing, mate. I mean, for bones, you know, you can get a nice medium light setup and get a great, you know, great spin setup going and get that real screaming, but there's nothing better than fly fishing. And and I think my favorite thing is especially when I get the guys that, you know, they're like, yeah, man. I caught, you know, 20 bonefish in Belize. I've caught, you know, 15 bonefish in The Bahamas. I've caught stuff on Christmas Island. You know, they're they're they're world traveled guys. And they come to me, and they show up, and I've got something like this on, which is, EP minnow. Yeah. It's what that guy is. Big EP minnow. This is what we use for snook and tarpon. But I'll put something like this on. Or if if if we're in dirty water, you we go black and purple. Because at the with the dirty water, all that matters is a profile Mhmm. In my opinion down here.
Tom Rowland: You're fishing that profile. Go to for a small fish.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Fish. This is my six pound killer. I mean, she's she's pretty rusted up, a little beat up. Mhmm. So she's kinda retired now, but this one Say the water is
Tom Rowland: three feet deep. Are you trying to keep that in the mid midwater column, or are you putting it on the bottom? You're getting it to go
Carter Smith-Wellman: or mid water column. Yeah. Mid water column. Yeah. And then this is these style baits, this is probably the most successful style bait that you can throw, fly that you can throw down here because what is it? It's a pilchard. It's a greenback. You know? Sometimes I I have a couple that I like that are a little bit darker green. Yep. But that chartreuse, what I love about this one is that chartreuse gets seen in that tannic water. So when we're fishing, you know, muddy conditions or deltas from salt ponds that are bringing out tannic tannic nutrient rich water and Mhmm. Basically, you'll have, like, crystal clear water next to dirty water. Yes. These are fantastic. And so, really, like, this is probably the number one, style fly to throw here. And what's amazing for anything
Tom Rowland: Well, I can see for it. You you don't even have to explain it for everything else. But for bonefish, just to be clear, that's what you're throwing. Because I can guarantee you that if you go to Christmas Island, the only reason that you have that in there is you might see a small trevally that you're trying to throw to. You don't throw that at bonefish. Yeah. But but the what I think is so interesting about this conversation is that when when you're telling me all of these things, I'm thinking back, my friend, Simon Becker, who's one of the best guides in the Florida Keys, he tells me his story about catching his first bonefish, and he was just going out to this beach to in the Florida Keys to catch anything. Right? And so he comes from an offshore background, and he wires together two deceivers, basically the same fly that you just showed me. He Yep. He wires them together because he thinks he's gonna catch maybe barracuda, maybe a Jack Crevelle or whatever. So it's on wire, then there's wire between the two, deceivers and it's not one deceiver like you're holding up, but two. So two. Right. And he throws out it. He sees a a splash or or some sort of disturbance, throws out there, and catches a bonefish. It was the first bonefish that he ever caught. And and you think about it as a fluke, like caught this bonefish on a deceiver. And then but then you're like, okay. Well, I wanna catch more bonefish. So you start digging into the the books and talking to people, and they're like, no, man. You you don't use that. You use this, like, this crab plier, this, you know, this this shrimp pattern or anything. Yep. And so all of a sudden, you found something that was in my experience, fishing, there are no flukes. Like, if you caught that fish on a deceiver, there's a reason why. That fish didn't just just bite that out of I mean, maybe you had no idea that you were fishing for bonefish, but you caught one on a deceiver. That's not a fluke. That's not a fluke. Right. Those fish are feeding on bait fish in that area. But then, when you're like, okay, well, I really wanna dig into this and find out more, everything points you to that was that was a fluke and you really need to be doing it this way. 99% of the bonefish are caught this way. Well, maybe that's because we just don't think about fishing them the other way. And what you're what I think is the most interesting thing about this is, like, when you're telling me this and you're telling me about the way that you're targeting and things that you're seeing, I'm I've seen those same things. But I don't associate it with bonefish. I associate it with I don't know. I gotta move through this area to get up there where the bonefish are real shallow. Right? But you could be passing over all of these opportunities that you don't even know about. Like, recently, we went to, we were filming a show, and, it'll be for next year. But we go to this, this mud, and and it's a it's what we thought was a mullet mud. Right? Do you have mullet down there?
Carter Smith-Wellman: We we have mullet in certain areas.
Tom Rowland: Yes. Do they make muds and and just this it just stays kinda cloudy for a while, but I'm sure you have bonefish muds too. Right? Like, do
Carter Smith-Wellman: you Yeah. Sometimes.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Yeah. I
Carter Smith-Wellman: don't see it too often, but sometimes. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Well, in The Bahamas, you'll see, like, bonefish muds and they will stay there for a long time, like, all day.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: And if you go over there and you cast into the mud, you catch a bonefish almost every time. Right? Right. It's so much so that a lot of people have to tell their guides, like, I wanna catch bonefish, but I don't wanna go to the muds. Right? It's super popular, but you're not see you're not sight fishing. You're you could just sit there and catch them as many as you want pretty much. And so some people would be like, well, that's fun for five minutes, but I don't wanna do that all day, so I wanna go sight fishing. Well, we found this mud, and we've always associated these muds with mullet. And, but we start throwing out there. My friend, Jeff Malone, he says, well, I caught, you know, 22 bonefish yesterday or some crazy number. And then I I find out later that it's in a mud. And but he was not fishing for bonefish when he was doing this. He was just he just had people out there trying to bend the rod, jacks, ladyfish, you know, whatever. Whatever's in there. But then you start catching these bonefish. So then we go back. I wonder if that's a fluke. Catch more bonefish in these areas. And and it's like, well, maybe these aren't mullet muds at all. Maybe these are bonefish muds. Bonefish muds. Yeah. We just thought that they were mullet muds. And a 100 boats run by and Right. And looking for something else never stop. But even then, it's like, okay. Well, if you threw in there, with a jig, you know, you're more than likely to catch a ladyfish immediately because they're they're more aggressive. But if you throw out there and you let it go to the bottom and then you kinda move it slow, you were able we were able to catch bonefish. So the point I'm making is that you're you have pioneered this fishery down there where now you're a 100% confident that you're that what you're seeing is bonefish and you're actually targeting them on lures or streamers on fly, and you're you're you're you've honed in on how these bonefish are feeding on baitfish. And you're fishing in different areas than someone who believes that only bonefish that bonefish only feed on shrimp and crabs in shallow water. Right? Right. So when I think about that, like, one of the most in interesting things to me about any kind of fishing is taking what somebody knows about a certain area and then applying it to another area. And, I mean, my my my head's just spinning of different things that we could try in different places that may have the same kind of thing going on. And if, of course, Mike Larkin's already proven that bonefish are eating these these, toadfish and pilchards and other things in the Florida Keys. So why couldn't we find these situations? It seems like we would be able to.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And so yeah. The only other place that I know that's very well documented is Los Rocas in Venezuela. And so those guys, they're on glass minnows. So they're on, you know, smaller, skinnier minnows. But, I mean, the pelicans, like, they they they they do what our tarpon do with the pelicans here down there. So if you've got pelicans diving, like, down there, you most likely got, bonefish on there. And so a lot of guys, that I know that have fish there will say that you can catch them on, you know, little two, three inch, you know, silver bait fish flies and lures like that. But what I've never heard is, like, four or five I mean, one story, which is real quick, is we were fishing this flat for, tarpon. And I had these, like, four inch dead dead bait dead sprout because sometimes the tarpon here, they'd rather eat a dead sprat than one that's moving. Mhmm. They're just super lazy and, you know, whatever. The bite kinda slows down. We're fishing this flat that's got these kinda deep kinda cuts in it. So, you know, you got maybe ten, twelve inches of grass flat, and then you get this bigger sand pocket. The the bite kinda slowed, so we started kinda walking back. I had seen one bonefish in this big pothole, as we were walking by. Went back to that pothole, threw out bobber, sprat, one aught circle hook, gave it, like, thirty, forty seconds in the, in the pothole. And I was like, okay. Let's keep going. So he's my client's reeling it in, and it gets about seven feet, six feet from us. Not one, but two big boned fish are chasing this thing like a brown trout would chase, you know, a a dead bait that you're, you know, you're working like a lure or something. I tell the guy, pause. He pauses it. One of those bonefish just lightning quick, just runs, hits that hits that pilchard. And the next thing for the next, like, fifty seconds, I've just got this little trout bobber with this four inch bonefish or sorry, four inch baitfish dangling out of the mouth of the bone, and he's just zipping all all across the flat. And this isn't a thing that I've seen here alone. I mean, I would say based off my experience, you could probably use these techniques almost anywhere in The Caribbean. Any of these Caribbean islands because I know I've got a buddy in Saint John who told me his biggest bonefish was on a dead sprout.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And, you know, I think it's I think it's a little bit, you know, I don't think it's probably true that we are so unique that we're the only only place in the world where this is happening. You know? We might be the only place where it's we're consistently using these techniques every day. I couldn't tell you the last time I put on a shrimp or a crab batter for bonefish. I mean, I just don't do it anymore. In fact, the you know, you give them a big big old fly, you know, you give them a bigger bait kinda like a snook. You know, they want those slightly bigger bait sometimes, and I think they just they just see a meal, and it's too tempting to pass up. You know, sometimes with those smaller, you know, those smaller jigs, I mean, I I still use bugs jigs all the time, and, you know, we still sometimes use crab and shrimp patterns. You can catch them. It's not that you can't catch them traditionally. You absolutely can. But for me, you know, you can catch them as good if not better on these baitfish patterns than you can on your traditional bonefish patterns.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And why not catch them on a baitfish pattern if you can. Right? You know, you can catch you can catch them anywhere, you know, on the other stuff. Like, you come to Saint Croix, let let let's throw on those two to four to five inch, you know, pilchard imitations, and and let's have some fun. That's so cool. That's kinda how I think about it.
Tom Rowland: That's really cool. And I'll tell you what, the way that you the way that you, describe the your your home there, I think you're gonna have some people coming. So we're gonna, tell tell people how they could reach you, if they wanna come down there and go fishing.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. Definitely. So we're, my company is called Silver Kings Kayak Charters. We're online, silverkingsvi.com. Also on Instagram and YouTube, Silver Kings v I. We have a lot of really cool stuff. You'll see some of our our bonefish. You know, been able to video some of the stuff we've talked about today.
Tom Rowland: You guys YouTube or are you on
Carter Smith-Wellman: Instagram?
Tom Rowland: Just
Carter Smith-Wellman: YouTube and Instagram, Silver Kings v I as in Virgin Islands.
Tom Rowland: K. Both of these channels.
Carter Smith-Wellman: That's our that's our tag. Yep. And then silverkingsvi.com is our our main channel, and we're always updating it, you know, with new photos, blogs, you know, fishing techniques and tricks, what's working, what's not. So, you know, we're always trying to provide a wealth of information for folks that are coming down here Yeah. And may have no idea what they're getting into.
Tom Rowland: And so if you are coming down there, is there a certain area that you prefer your people to stay in, or is the island small enough that they can be anywhere and you can you can fish with them wherever they're staying or how
Carter Smith-Wellman: So the islands?
Tom Rowland: I feel more familiar enough about with the island yet. Yeah.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So the beauty of this island yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. So the beauty of the island, it's 23 miles long. So from tip to tip, you're talking maybe a sixty minute drive. So pretty much if you're staying most of the best fishing is on the South Shore and out to the East. So staying around the Christiansted area where quite frankly is where most of the tourism tourists do stay, that would probably be the best spot. But, I mean, even if you're way out west in Frederickset, it's only a forty minute, you know, ride. I mean, I drive forty minutes to my favorite my favorite beach, and it's a beautiful drive. I mean, we're talking, like, two stoplights. The whole drive is just oak I mean, it's it's country roads, but on one side, you have beautiful flats. On the other side, you've got agriculture. You know? We're just missing corn mazes, and you could be back in The United States.
Tom Rowland: Dang.
Carter Smith-Wellman: But, sounds amazing, though. Sounds amazing. Live anywhere. Yeah. Stay anywhere.
Tom Rowland: Okay. So we we figured out how to do that. And, typically, on the, on the podcast, we have this thing called the hot seat. And, typically, we do it in the beginning, but we started out with such a such a, a good conversation, that we're gonna close out with a hot seat. But before we do, I wanted to mention that we are recording this on July 3. And on July 3, if anyone has, been paying attention to the radar and the what's going on in the tropics, there's been a a very large, very aggressive hurricane that skirted you. Tell give us a little update on on what that hurricane was before we close it out with a hot seat.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. So this is something that we're keeping our eye on here because you may have heard this is the first category five to ever form in June in the history of recording. So this is really rare. We kinda I kinda knew this was gonna happen. Our surface temperatures in March were what they should have been in June. So we're about three months ahead of schedule from a water temperature perspective. And the tricky thing about these storms so this storm really impacted what we call kind of the windward islands. So the bottom part of the archipelago, Saint Vincent And The Grenadines. Really devastating to see you there. So, you know, keeping them in prayers and thoughts for those guys as they recover. You know, we've had a couple category fives through here, and it absolutely is devastating. Even with the backing in The United States, we still had no power for six to eight months after Maria and Irma came through in 2017 Wow. Wiped out Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. Probably remember those storms were pretty pretty massive.
Tom Rowland: Yeah.
Carter Smith-Wellman: And that's something that is is kind of scary a little bit is this storm is two to 300 miles south of us. And yesterday and even today, you might have heard a little bit of wind gust. Apologies if that messes with the audio, but we are getting twenty, thirty, 40 mile an hour gusts here and there. And then the seas were projected over 14 feet yesterday. They're projected at 12 feet today. So we're we're keeping the kayaks in the in the in the storage unit right now. We're not we're not gonna go brave that. But we even got rain bands. And, you know, we're, again, we're two, three hundred miles away. And this storm is so massive and so powerful, and this is common. You know? Even if they don't get to category five, the amount of rain and the and the the impact of these storms and you see this in Florida, I'm sure. You know? You might not get a direct hit, but, you know, you can get flooded. Even just a tropical storm can shut down the airports and flood streets these days. And it's really the you know, it's the rain that that can be real devastating. So luckily, you know, we didn't get really impacted in any significant way at all, but we obviously are still feeling it. The the skies are pretty gray today. It's still gusting probably 20 to 30 today. It'll probably keep gusting that until tomorrow. Then we'll go back down to our normal 10 to 20 mile an hour winds. But, yeah, it's something especially if you're gonna be traveling to The Caribbean in the summertime. Usually, I would have said August, September, but now, I guess, we have to say June through September, maybe even into October. You know, you wanna obviously keep an eye out, make sure that there's no storms coming to make sure that you're safe, and that you don't get caught up in a in a situation down here. So it's something that, unfortunately, we're we're dealing with. You know, the world's a little crazy when it comes to the climate and weather patterns and some of the strong storms that we're seeing. So, you know, it's something that we're we gotta keep our eye on here, but we we got lucky this time. And, unfortunately, some of the other islands didn't, and that's kinda how it goes. You know, some years you get lucky. Some years you're the unlucky one.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, I'm glad to hear that that you're safe and and, certainly prayers and and thoughts for the people that have are are in that storm's path previously and in the future here because it's it's a serious storm. Alright. So to change change it up a little bit, Carter Smith Wellman, we've got you on the hot seat, and these are just quick questions that we go through to get to know you a little bit better. And, it's designed to, actually give us something to talk about in the beginning. This is the first time we've ever done it at the end because, you're you're a natural dude. You should have your own podcast. So here we go. Text or call?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Text.
Tom Rowland: Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Inshore or offshore?
Carter Smith-Wellman: That's an easy one. Inshore
Tom Rowland: every day. Fly or drive or boat, I guess.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Sorry. Say that again?
Tom Rowland: Fly, drive, or boat in your situation. Yes. Fly.
Carter Smith-Wellman: I'm a go fly.
Tom Rowland: Favorite athlete of all time?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Tiger Woods.
Tom Rowland: Oh, I thought you were gonna say Ted Williams. Destination you'd like to visit for fishing?
Carter Smith-Wellman: The Yucatan.
Tom Rowland: US Virgin Islands or British Virgin Islands?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Oh, come on, US.
Tom Rowland: It's a softball. A movie that makes you laugh. Yeah.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Stepbrothers.
Tom Rowland: What is your most productive time of the day?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Right now.
Tom Rowland: Which is morning? Yep.
Carter Smith-Wellman: Yeah. Ten I'd say 10AM nine, 10AM.
Tom Rowland: One thing that you've changed your mind on in the last few years?
Carter Smith-Wellman: How quickly nature can really recover if you let it. Don't be as pessimistic as some of the people out there are.
Tom Rowland: Best piece of advice you remember being given?
Carter Smith-Wellman: You don't dream big enough and you're not a little bit scared, you're not dreaming big enough. I would say that's it.
Tom Rowland: I love it. Who told you that?
Carter Smith-Wellman: It was in a song.
Tom Rowland: K. That counts.
Carter Smith-Wellman: That's what my childhood.
Tom Rowland: What's your standard order at a coffee shop?
Carter Smith-Wellman: I gotta go cold brew, cream, one pump of caramel. Not two or three. One.
Tom Rowland: Okay. An underground or unknown place on your island that tourists would never find but they would enjoy?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Shell Island. Offshore keg.
Tom Rowland: K. Tell me about it.
Carter Smith-Wellman: That's where I catch my bonefish. It's incredible. So when they did, when they dredged all the industrial stuff and they cut through the corals and they cut through the sand, the one good thing they did is they dumped it all on this little little island, and they built up this island. And it's probably one of the most incredible islands I've ever seen. On one side, you've got hundreds of permit tailing every day in the corals because when they dredged it up, it's half coral, half sand. So they put all the corals on the back edge facing the deep water, and you've got these coral flats and these huge drop offs. And these permit will live in those drop offs, come up on the coral flat. You have hundreds of jacks. We caught 15 pound horse size in the middle of the day. Yeah. And then you walk across the island five, ten minutes, and you're at my favorite bonefish spot where, as I said, if I see those pits as happening there, 1000% that's bonefish, and I know it. And you're gonna get on a bone. So, like, two days ago, we went, caught a 15 pound permit on one side, came back, caught a a five and a half six pound bonefish on the other. I don't know many places that you can do that.
Tom Rowland: Sounds awesome. That's definitely a
Carter Smith-Wellman: place too.
Tom Rowland: Definitely a place that that I wanna go. Favorite cheat meal?
Carter Smith-Wellman: Lasagna.
Tom Rowland: Lasagna. Yeah. And then in your opinion, what is is your best catch or your catch of a lifetime?
Carter Smith-Wellman: I gotta say it's the the eight pound bonefish on the Rapala. I got I still got her. She's retired. She's pretty beat up. She's lost her bill. Yeah. That's this is a new one. This is one that's you know, you can see the color difference. Right? Mhmm. Yep. So this is this thing is this thing's caught probably every single fish out here at least 20 species, but it's gotta be the it's gotta be the first the first big bonefish on the Rapala for me. That's a a memory I will never forget.
Tom Rowland: I love it. I love it. Well, Carter, this has been fantastic, man. You're really, really great at this, and you gave us so much, interesting information about where you're living in Saint Croix and the history, and then the Bonefish conversation was fantastic. So I'll make sure that Mike Larkin, hears this when when it comes out. And, I'm gonna see you soon, man. I don't know when, but I'm gonna come. Yeah.
Carter Smith-Wellman: I really am. I'm gonna come.
Tom Rowland: I I, I mean, you did a great job. It was a place that was on my radar anyway just because I think it would be a great place to bring my wife. But now that you have island. Yeah. I've seen the pictures and everything. And but now that you have, outlined the fishing, I may come for a week and then then she can come meet me for a second week. I don't know.
Carter Smith-Wellman: That sounds good. Yeah. That sounds sounds good. Just let me know. We'll, we'll get that calendar cleared, and we'll, we'll get you on, we'll get you on those slams.
Tom Rowland: Alright.
Carter Smith-Wellman: See see if we can't get that 10 pounder. Let's see if we can't find that 10 pounder. We've seen a few running around, but she still eluded us so far, but they're out there.
Tom Rowland: Okay. It sounds awesome. I'm I'm definitely gonna have to, to try to catch one of your permit too because that's that's Oh, yeah. Ultimately, that's my favorite. But, anyway alright, Carter. Thanks so much for joining us. And, if you, are interested in following him, definitely go to his Instagram and his YouTube. And I think, I'm I'm gonna check out your YouTube. I already have you on Instagram, but, the YouTube, definitely gonna check that out. Alright. Thanks. We'll be back next week with another guest like Carter and, help you to get better at fishing. Alright. That's it. See you.
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