I'm in Florida. Huh.

The drive here was a long one, and awfully long one. There could be no clearer demonstration of distance traveled than doing it all in one day. I woke up in my dad's house in Connecticut and fell asleep in my grandparent's house in  Florida 23 hours later. I could physically feel how far we had just gone. But I mentally couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that it wasn't 10 degrees outside and that that much of the fish I was about to catch would be strange and very new to me. Waking up and watching sand hill cranes right outside the window was a hell of thing.

The first place we fished was the pond behind my grandparents house. We weren't really sure what to expect other than Florida strain black bass. I started fishing small nymph just to increase my odds of catching something interesting. Within a few casts I caught a bluegill. But it wasn't the run of the mill bluegill. These were coppernose bluegill, a southern strain.

The largemouth bass here are a different fish from our Northern bass too. They aren't tolerable of cold water, they grow faster,  and they seem to fish harder too. After the bite died at the pond and we said goodbye to my grandparents we headed further south,  to a large canal where we would find some new species of sunfish.

After sorting through some bluegills both Noah and I caught spotted sunfish, which are very hard to find outside of Florida.

 We were primarily fishing places where small cuts intersected the main canal. That's where most of the baitfish were, and predator fish were around to eat those baitfish. Eventually we found a cut that had a lot of life. Baitfish were periodically leaving a culvert, and when they did bass were there to eat them. Short lasting blitzes erupted in the grass and at the mouth of the culvert. A tarpon or two would roll occasional as well,  all juveniles, and the were hard to fool. I hooked one eventually but he spat the hook and made a good little air show right after.

yes

Eventually the sun was setting and we had to make our way to West Palm Beach where we would stay with my friend Sonny, who would show us some good peacock bass fishing the next day.