Some other spots between seven mile and the smaller bridges further south had lots of smaller mangroves, saw lots of mac's but didn't get any. Blow fish were out in strong force no matter what time of day and regardless of which bridge. Saturday was very productive, some nice size mangroves off the sea wall near Tom's (live shrimp) one small Hog (but a keeper!) some off season smaller gags (live shrimp and cut ballyhoo). I had to take pics on my wife's cell phone as the memory card wasn't loading into my camera (paid for a 4g memory card that doesn't work
) anyways, I'll load them up when I learn how to get them transferred. Otherwise I may have to settle for frozen vacuum sealed pics and some fillets! Also went snorkeling in the same areas and near Duck Key, was blown away by how many mangroves and gags there are EVERYWHERE! WHY AREN'T THE BIG MANGROVES BITING? Sure caught at least a dozen small ones. Monday was channel five day, all kinds of blow fish, (one individual that I threw back was instantly consumed by a very big shark that was right there...thought it was a tarpon but nope, he swam around long enough to see him, looked like a Bull) throughout the weekend I caught a handful of gag's mostly on the channel five bridge, (yes threw them all back, but one guy kept his, it wasn't even 18" 
) also caught a small shark, lost a decent cuda (cut my fluorocarbon line) , and LOTS of grunts like every day. I did get two mangroves on a gotcha jig, as well as two lizard fish (ugly bastards!) off the same jig. All in all, lots of action, various stuff biting if you don't mind catching stuff like grunts and blow fish and out of season gags. Still, the weather was amazing, not too hot, not at all cold, very little wind, sun out every day. Absolutely the best moon rise last night on the channel five bridge. I love that place. Still came home with nine or ten really decent fish. VERY bummed out they closed off the Nile Bridge, anyone know why?
The bulls are always in the keys but get closer to bridges more frequently when it gets cold. The reason why they did that to Niles bridge is because the bridge was not maintained and a part of it collapsed, so they decided to cut away a section prevent an accident. Unfortunately for us that bridge is not part of the Florida Trail.
