TREASURE COAST BOATING
OUTDOORS
75
years as owner of Basin Seafood restaurant and
fish market in Port Salerno.
The message for recreational fishermen is: don’t
expect to stop by and pick up a few fillets to pass
off as something you caught.
“Spanish mackerel is all they catch here anymore,”
he says, a hint of his native New Jersey
lingering in his speech. “The grouper and other
stuff are pretty much gone from this area, between
the restrictions and the species getting cleaned
out. Most people only want swordfish and salmon
anyway. Once in awhile I get a local who asks for
Spanish mackerel.”
The blue crabs are a different story. If there’s
one species that has benefitted from runoff, it’s
the crabs, he says. “The females like salt water, so
they’re down here, but the males like the brackish
water so they’re up the river toward Palm City.
Believe it or not the drainage from the lake makes
crabbing better. I go out twice a week and by the
time I get back they’re all sold.”
A consolation this veteran of the industry can
offer to recreational fishermen is that the sea’s harvest
is both cyclical and unpredictable.
“Dolphin (mahi-mahi) is our biggest seller but it’s
been totally out of control this year,” he says. “Over
the winter they didn’t come into shore (off South
America), so the price is the highest it’s been since
we’ve been in business. People think we raise our
prices in winter, that we’re ripping them off, but we
don’t, because we still have a lot of local customers.”>>
ALISON O’LEARY
Twice a week, Basin Seafood Restaurant owner Donald Plant steps back into his rubber
boots and hauls crab traps, a catch that’s sold before he returns to the dock.
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