Thread: April

What a fantastic looking party, Paul. That pig and everything else sure looked good. Happy birthday!
Bob

Wow, you guys know how to have a good time. Happy Birthday, and happy Easter. Thanks for sharing.

I keep my spring fishing to longline trolling and just one rod in my hand. I have never done any spider rigging and will not, too much to go wrong and I am too old to deal with that and tangles. I catch all I want doing what I have done for crappie since 1979 when I started long lining.

Do enjoy reading the stories though, just a lot of rods out at one time is not my cup of tea, lol! Really also enjoy the pictures and family shots!

May God Bless!

Skip

Happy Birthday. Sounds like a great time. Food looked awesome. Quite the spread.

So we cleaned up the giant mess that was everywhere about the house. Parties generate such things. Then the girls left and we loaded up the boat and headed to the dump. Sure enough it was open Easter Morning and I said away….. I said away with you pig !

Then set off for a lake that has cypress trees everywhere.

Motored out and she was spotting baby alligators. I think she saw four but not sure how she sees them so quickly. They were pretty small. The water was still and calm with no wind and a bright hot Sun high above us. Cumulous clouds were just kind of floating along. Almost no one out there.

I set out the rods and started trolling. This time instead of riding her tube on the bow of the boat, she felt warm enough to ride it in the water.



Last year I was dragging the tube behind the boat as I fished, but it seemed a little too much like trolling her for alligators. Lashing the tube to the front of the boat has her right alongside the boat, and seems to me so much safer. She is part of the boat now. We still avoid areas where gators are guaranteed to be hanging out. Still some risk anytime, but kayakers go into some wild habitats and the gators do not pick them off, so…..not much difference to my eye.

We started catching fish right away, with one hitting the second lure cast out. Caught about ten little ones, then a medium hit and I pitched him into the live well. Then this one hit.



Nice fat fish, too. Ruler registers 15”. I really like getting the big ones and he bit my latest design. Screw Lock with tickler blade. Got it in fairly deep, too. Then about another ten small fish. We decided to release all of them.

It was hot, and so I pulled her aboard, reeled in and stowed the rods and headed for the cypress. She loves being back in that swampy stuff. The boat is 20’ long but slips back in there easily. I raise the engine and stand on the deck and run the TM to get back in there. We probed in and out and finally found a cool looking spot. We eased into an area between trees and I tied us up. The canopy above us offered shade and she was grinning.

I noticed that this small bird kind of flew close by to us. Usually birds only do that when they have a nest nearby. Sure enough they did. He was bright yellow and looked to me to be a finch. I told her he was a Golden Finch. Really pretty bird. Well he was flitting about doing his best to get our attention, and that was when I saw the female dive into a small hole in a tree limb. We were tied up to their tree limb. He continued to dance about so I moved us a little and we sat and ate some leftovers from the party. After a while we left and went back to trolling.

This time the fish were not as numerous, but still small. We went along for a while and finally decided to get some speed and cool off. Reeled everybody in and set off across the lake. Usually she refuses to drive but this time she seemed to enjoy it. She kept tapping the throttle slower and I kept tapping it faster. We motored around for a while and then decided we should head home before we got too sunburnt.

She said when I die she will buy a canoe so she can paddle through the cypress. I told her she would become a victim in that damn thing. Big toothy critter bump her out and drag her down into the murky depths to eat her. She says she has nightmares about alligators eating her, and I bet she does. Yet she wants to temp fate anyways. Having the tube in tight alongside the boat is a compromise type of situation. She gets most of what she wants and I can tolerate the risk. She would love to be dragged along way back behind the boat and have me go through lily pads and stay close in tight to shore. Not likely.

So the fish were hungry and scattered about the lake. I suspect the spawn is over now. The newest design of lure sure seems to be working very well. I plan to take her on the boat for high adventures this year. Last year we worked tough schedules and it was difficult to schedule such things. This year will be much different and we plan to go places.

We talked about going to the very beautiful Oklawaha River system. This is the major tributary to the St Johns River. It is long and slinky and chocked full of underwater obstacles. Not sure what to expect actually. I will be going slow and hope no one comes screaming by us. Holidays can be like that you know. Hopefully there will be plenty of beautiful scenery for us to enjoy, and lots of alligators for her to spot. I do not plan to take but a couple of rods and label this a discovery episode.

The river is kind of long, and it’s wide in some places and skinny in other spots. It has a Lake Oklawaha section, too. Back in the 70’s the Army Corps of Engineers was making a canal to run across the state. This was later cancelled after construction had already begun. They had built a large damn along the river and created Lake Rodman, which is a mecca for Bass Masters of all kinds. I hear that that lake sports large crappie as well. The lake’s formation involved flooding timber and the underwater obstructions are numerous.

Anyways while all this construction was taking place, a woman environmentalist- Marjorie Carr- was doing her level best to shut it all down. She petitioned the government and sued and such and stomped her feet and held her breath, but she got it shut down. When I first moved to Gainesville, I was obviously oblivious to all of this. Then she died and I conducted her funeral at the First Presbyterian Church. The place was packed and several high ranking officials spoke on her behalf.

They were handing out SAVE THE OKLAWHA bumper stickers to anyone that would take one. I being the weirdo of course put one in the back window of the hearse for her ride to the cemetery and the local newspaper printed a picture of that in their story on her services. Well she wanted to save this river and I guess she kind of did save it. Well most of it anyways.

The day the paper printed the story my boss got a phone call from a prominent judge. He was mad as a dickens about the picture. Demanded that my boss never do anything like that again. That was the first I knew about the other said of the coin. The side that did not want to save the Oklawaha. The side that was afraid they would tear down the damn and allow the river to regain it’s former majesty. They would lose their precious Lake Rodman.

If I had a vote, and I don’t, but if I did I would vote to return the river to it’s natural state. Houses would be flooded, millions lost in Bass Master revenues, and all manner of disruption would occur. However it would be the right thing to do. The river was deep and now it is shallow because of the damn.

So this river is waiting on us and today we go and see for ourselves what is there. I have never told my wife about the story I just shared. She will have to sit quietly while I recount it. Yes- High Adventure indeed. Not sure what kind of snacks to take, but the TM was recharged last night and is probably going to be very busy today. I will take some more pictures of she who must be obeyed and the things we see along the way. Wish I had taken a shot of that bird.







She needs to work on her form a little me thinks. Instead of holding the fish as far away as possible, she needs to project it closer to the camera. Cheat a little. That doesn’t look like a 15” fish about to be released…..does it ?

Cool story. I know about the Oklawaha river story and Rodman damn, but I never understood how opening the damn would make the river deeper. Same amount of water has to still run down the river, but maybe cause it's running slower, dono. I almost think that having the damn there made the river deeper. And as I live on Lake Griffin, which is part of that water system, I also worry about my canal not having any water in it if the damn is removed. I really have no idea if that would be true or not though. Great pics, yeah she needs to work on her form, a fish held close to the camera makes it look big for sure, I'm a pro. lol

Great story. Sounds like y'all had a great time. Very nice crappie

The weatherman said thunderstorms starting around 300 pm, so we got an early start. Cloud cover kept the bright Sun away. We drove about 40 minutes to get to our chosen Oklawaha River ramp, near Rodman Reservoir. It was an older ramp but in great condition, with only one boat trailer parked there. It was for a big boat and there were two cars next to it so I figured he was a guide.

We motored out through a skinny trail through dense vegetation and my sonar unit started showing words. There was one word that was everywhere on the screen and it was- TREES. So we stayed in the channel and proceeded in a Southerly route. I tried to stay between the channel markers but that was near impossible. The channel snaked pretty badly and the depths went from four feet to 16 and back pretty quickly.

Soon we were at the end of the road as the weeds were so thick that it bottlenecked the measley little trail. We turned around and went North for a while. That direction had us in more open water but with tons of TREES. We saw stumps sticking up everywhere. I told her those are the good stumps, the bad stumps are just under the surface. Looked like good fishing but we wanted scenery. We decided to go back to the truck and load up and try somewhere else.

At the ramp an old man was getting ready to launch his Jonboat. I spoke with him and he suggested a ramp not too far down the road. So off we went heading there. My wife navigated us right to it. It was a state park and the ramp looked kind of rough but doable. We launched and motored out. This was the real Oklawaha River. The one we wanted to see in the first place.

The river was about twenty yards wide for the most part. The water was flowing at a pretty good rate. I would estimate four MPH. Underwater obstructions were all along the route. I lowered my hand controlled TM and used the big motor to move us upstream. Of course I trimmed it out. I could see upwells of water on the surface and that indicates a log. The TM hit a couple of times and that alerted me to an issue. When we got to where it was obvious that a log was blocking our path, I would walk up front and use the TM to get us past. This worked fairly well.

We went upstream about two miles, occasionally striking objects. We were going slow obviously. The wife was all smiles. We saw a large owl perched in a tree above us just before he took flight. We saw herons and egrets and other birds. Lots of alligators. I mean lots of alligators. Most all were little guys laying atop of logs. They didn’t seem to care if were there or not, they didn’t move and we got very close due to current. Never seen gators that didn’t care about a boat getting within a few feet.

No one was out there. I figured there would be all sorts due to it being a Monday after a big holiday. We had the whole place to ourselves. I tied up to a fallen log and we ate our lunch. It was absolutely gorgeous. This was the Old Florida we had wanted to see all along.





After a while she wanted to go ashore and explore. It didn’t look like a very nice place to be. Spiders, snakes, gators, mud….. well there she goes.



She said there were mud burrows everywhere. I told her those were the homes of Toe Crabs. They clamp ahold of your toe and drag you down their burrow to eat you very slowly. She doesn’t believe in Toe Crabs. Hmmmmm.

We spotted an unusual flowers and took a picture as we went past. It was just kind of sitting there on the side.





(The picture is upside down due to software) Be careful as you turn upside down to view.


After a while we decided to head down stream. I chose to go upstream first in case we had an issue, as we could always drift back down to the truck. Starting the other way all you could do is call for help.

The river had us moving along at a pretty good rate. I used the TM to try to keep us in a bow forward alignment and to dodge obstacles. We saw a large alligator on the way back. He was laying across a log that was empty on the way up. Took a while but we finally got back to the ramp and loading the boat was easy enough.

It was about a 45 minute drive home. I am afraid she will want to go back there again. She was all smiles the entire time. She says she loves to creep around through the swamp and I believe her. If there had been a house on stilts out there she would have wanted to live there.

I had taken two rods but never cast out.

The river is gorgeous but treacherous. So many underwater obstructions that avoiding them is impossible. The TM got us through some tough spots but the speed of the river was taxing the batteries. We probably could have gone further upstream.

I was actually more nervous about the boat in the first place we stopped than I was in the river. No where near as many objects in that first spot, but still I had that feeling. I was surprised about that first spot as it looked pretty promising on-line. I see now where I made my mistake.

Now it will be her wanting a new adventure every weekend. Oh Boy……. gonna be hard to top that. I figure a trip up the Santa Fe River might be interesting. Maybe I can read a little about it before we setoff on a trip. I am kind of liking my dumb old lakes a little more. Anyways she is enjoying being off on weekends with me. For the first few years one or the other of us had to work, so we didn’t get much time to explore. We like parks and do some hiking. We like museums and flea markets. Maybe next weekend will be a trip over land or maybe the beach.

I am pretty tired after the past four days and have to get ready for work. She is in the living room watching TV and doing her exercises- jumping rope and such. The girl has no end to energy. All I do is feed her and she is good to go.