Bully Netting

By: Capt. Joel Brandenburg

The best nightlife in Marathon! For those who don’t know, bully netting is the sport of shining a light at night down to the bottom of the ocean to spot lobster and catch them in a special bully netting net. Bully netting has been a sport that has been around for generations here in the Florida Keys. Lobster are nocturnal animals. They typically hide under a rock in the daytime and stay there all day. At night they move from point A to point B. They also migrate in large groups at night and sometimes you can find hundreds of them traveling nose to tail like a colony of ants.
That’s when it’s easy “pickens”. If you want to try bully netting in Marathon Florida Keys with Ana Banana fishing charters, here’s how it works, and this is how it works with most bully netting guides. We typically recommend going on a four- or six-hour bully netting trip. We like to take up to two people, but we will take a third person. Everybody participating in the sport of bully netting must have a Florida fishing license and separate lobster license. Here’s the out of state license requirement and cost: Non-Resident 3-Day Fishing License =$17.00 plus you must purchase a lobster license which is $25 plus a $5 annual donation fee. You go online and buy it from myfwc.com and your total license cost is $47.00.
This license allows you to harvest 6 lobster per person per day or night and a day is defined as within a 24hr period. Our bully netting boat is a fully equipped and Coast Guard Safety approved 16ft Carolina Skiff. With seating for up to 3people and the captain. Special bully netting lights on both port and starboard are attached. The average Caribbean or Floridian spiny lobster weighs one pound each.
For example, Poncho’s fuel dock and Marina sells full live lobster for around $10 per pound. You can buy your limit of full live lobster for six times $10 which equals $60 or you can go bully netting with us on a four hour trip for up to three people for $695.00 or a six hour trip for $895.00. Obviously, you are paying for the experience of going out and harvesting your own lobster from Mother Nature rather than buying them from a store. Bully netting is just like Fishing sometimes we nail them and sometimes they are tough to find.
The factors that typically determine a plentiful bully netting harvest is the time of year, the water clarity, the wind, the moon, etc. and I can go on and on with barometer, water, temperature, etc. When we take you out on a fishing charter, we have a No Fish No Pay policy. If you don’t catch fish, you don’t have to pay us.
On bullying charters, we also have a program that hopefully assures your satisfaction. We guarantee that you will leave the charter with at least one limit of lobster. If it’s a bad night and there’s three bull netters on board for example and nobody catches a lobster well guarantee you leave with a six-lobster limit.
This rarely happens in fact, it’s only happened once this year. Our no Fish no pay policy has only happened three times in 25 years, our goal is to make sure that everyone leaves happy and satisfied. Bully netting can be very fun. I compare it to bow fishing at night from an airboat or flounder gigging at night from a flats boat. Instead of using a gig or a spear or an arrow, we use a long-handled landing net, and the circular part of the net is bent at a 90° angle from the long handle like a capital letter “L”.
We are typically bully netting in 1 to 5 foot of water and the goal of the captain is to locate the lobster and position the bully netter to be straight up and down from the lobster underwater so the bully netter can quickly lower the net over the lobster and scoop the lobster up in a quick sweeping motion. Then once we get the lobster to the surface and into the boat, we dump the lobster out of the net and into a basket. We grab the lobster out of the basket and measure it with a lobster measuring device because there is a size limit on the lobster if it’s a keeper, we place it in the live well if it’s too small, we throw it back in the ocean. A lot of our bully netting business is based on repeat customers so that tells us that people love bully netting and so do we. It’s like hunting and fishing together.
For a bully netting charter or a fishing charter with Ana Banana fishing charters in Marathon Florida Keys, visit www.marathonkeyfishingcharters.com or call Capt. Joel or Jojo Brandenburg at office 305-395-4212 or cell 813–267–4401. Or come meet us in person at 1280 Ocean View Ave. Marathon Florida Keys or Ana Banana marina at 11699 Overseas Highway Marathon Florida Keys.