Comfort Food

Is it odd to find a little clearing in a swamp with just enough room to park a van in, pitch a tent, and have a small fire start feeling like home? I began to feel that sort of affection for the little WMA campsite Noah and I stayed in on our 2018-19 trip and our 2020 trip only strengthened that. The sunsets every night and the sunrises every morning there were spectacular. The mist rising off the wet prairie softened the horizon line of sorts where the deep green, sparse pines became a solid mass and met the burn umber of the grasses. That mist gathered on the tent and, without fail, it was soaking wet when we put it away every morning except the one we decided to sleep in. Before the sun hit the pond next to camp, the gar rolled everywhere. As Noah is slower to get up than I, taking advantage of the gar and bass in the pond became habitual.

 I'd walk around the edge of the pond barefoot with my fly rod and a handful of flies and my camera in my pocket, maybe casting a time or two in the pond itself but really just aiming for the slough on the east end, where the gar and bass were more concentrated and seemingly more willing.

I was using the 10wt for this fishing, which was a little overkill, but I wasn't using rope flies, which tangle in a gar's teeth, so I was happy with a good lever to drive the hook home. I have caught numerous gar on my 5wt now but for casting a long distance and retrieving and absolutely jamming the fish when they take a diver or gurgler, I'd prefer an 8 and I didn't have one. The 10wt did what I asked of it though. It is my go-to rod size for predatory species, believe it or not. I think a 10wt fly rod is one of the most versatile tools in fishing.

Lepisosteus platyrhincus, Florida gar

After spending almost three whole days doing quite a bit of micro fishing and targeting reef fish species that don't respond to active presentations much,  Noah and I wanted a change of pace. Small snook, juvenile tarpon, and largemouth bass in narrow freshwater environments were to be our targets, though other fish were a sure bet as well. We'd fished this water before, even on this trip, so it would be comfortable territory and for me much more exciting than targeting reef fish had been. Active presentations and abundant fish that would be willing to take the right fly presented the right way would be a great reprieve from abundant fish that were, on the whole, not willing to eat any artificial presented any way. The added excitement of these being very engaging species made me even more excited. Tarpon would be hard to find, we had found snook in this system before but not yet on this trip, and though bass, including some specimens over the magical 10 pound mark, were everywhere, we'd found them to be very discerning on our 2018-19 trip. I started out fishing a black an purple gurgler, an everything fly, and everything is what I got. I caught a number of small bass and some sunfish on my way down river before I found a more interesting fish. I hit the fly on a leafy bottomed bit of bank water and, stripping it out, watched a brownish colored, elongated fish come full tilt up to slam it. Either I missed or it missed, but it came back on the next cast, and I got a good look at it before I missed again. It was a bigmouth sleeper. Not a fish I completely expected to hit a gurgler, but it really wasn't that surprising once you've gotten to know the species. Having a photo of it with the foam topwater fly in its maw would have been nice though. Less excitingly but still an absolute pleasure, I landed a sleeper just down river subsurface.

Gobiomorus dormitor, bigmouth sleeper

We worked the roll dam hole for a little while as it had proven time and time again to be a fish magnet. Noah caught a spectacularly colored male bluegill and I caught some oversized spotted sunfish, but there just didn't seem to be any larger predators there this time.

L. macrochirus purpurescens, Coppernose bluegill (rank under debate)

Lepomis punctatus, spotted sunfish

We made our way back upriver to search parts unknown, areas we'd pinpointed using satellite imagery that could hold snook and Tarpon. On the way though, I was prepared to make casts to likely bass holding spots. I really wanted to catch one over a foot long as I hadn't yet here and that really was quite a low bar. After covering a bit of ground without any hookups, I dropped the gurgler next to a a small point and a decent bass gulped it down with a most satisfactory pop. The battle was not unexciting, I'm firmly convinced Micropterus floridanus (under debate) have northern largemouth, Micropterus salmoides, well beat in the fighting ring. Smallmouth though, are still king... that's my black bass and probably always will be. That said, floridanus is, until I catch other black bass species, firmly at number two. These fish do pull. This one wasn't quite slob status but it was still a quality fish, especially given our prior experience on this water.

Noah made a quick stop at the van as we passed the kayak launch, and while he was preoccupied with that I bothered some gar hiding under a shade tree. They were very willing to eat the gurgler but I had a harder time hooking them from the kayak than I had while on the back of the pond in the morning. I got annoyed enough to start working upstream before Noah had gotten done, but not that far. He caught up to me right as I spotted a small, shiny, dark animal moving around up on the bank. I assumed initially it must be a snake struggling with a captured fish, but instead it turned out to be a vermiculated sailfin, well above the waterline and trying to get back in. I hypothesized that a bird had likely caught it, but upon fining it completely armored and impossible to swallow or break into, had left it there. I did the same, these are invasive fish and it's death would not be a bad thing. 

Around the corner, now fishing a buzz toad, Noah had a good blowup and hooked into another quality bass. It was starting to feel that we'd cracked the code on these bass. 

We headed up a long canal arm, a straightened slough basically, at the end of which we knew was a spillway. The whole way up though the water looked great and indeed proved to be so. My first fish of note was a large coppernose bluegill, a studly gorgeous male perfectly capable of eating the same size two gurgler I'd been using the whole time.  

The bass continued to chew as well, though neither Noah nor myself caught another the size of each of our first.good ones. We did each see an absolute behemoth though, a fish every bit of fifteen pounds, so incredulously large looking in the water that it had to be something else. But it was a bass, the largest I had ever seen in person. 

As we made our way to the upper end of the canal, we came into a stretch that was loaded with Mayan cichlids. I caught the first on the gurgler, making Mayan cichlids only the second cichlid I've caught on the surface, behind butterfly peacock bass. After it was clear that there were a bunch of them around and we'd be able to get enough for a meal, we decided to keep a bunch for dinner. Mayan cichlids are my favorite freshwater fish to eat of the number of species I have taken.

Cichlasoma urophthalmus

When we did get to the spillway that was our main objective, it didn't take many casts to prove that what we hoped was true was true. Spillways are tarpon and snook magnets. I retrieved the gurgler about five feet from where my third cast fell and then let it sit for a moment. While it was still a 15lb tarpon came up and smoked it. I whiffed completely. Now excited, Noah and I peppered that spillway for a while, to no avail. So we made our way back downriver, taking time to catch as many cichlids as we could. I also stopped, cast at, and missed the largest bowfin I had ever seen. That was an unpleasant experience. We deemed this stretch of water worth a return visit and headed back to camp to fry up some fish. Fried panfish is a comfort food for me these days. Fried panfish are reliable, they always get the job done. There are certain experiences that make these budget fishing/camping trips worthwhile over a more luxurious alternative. These are some of those thing...

...comfort food and sunsets. Living in the swamp is pretty enjoyable. 

Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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