Spiders

[Luther]

I was sitting here thnking about this and I thought that I would share these stories with you.

One day Roger and I were fishing a lake with a lot of cypress trees around the edges, we had gotten into a patteren for catching bluegills that involved using a fly rod (casting) and a popper. We had caught quite a few and I made a cast but my popper never hit the water?? I followed my flyline up into the clear area between the trees and here was one of the garden spiders webs with my popper right in the middle. Well for those of you that don't know what a garden spider is (don't know why they call these monsters garden spiders???) they are a large spider when full grown and have the leg spread of a small tea plate. Here he was katy bar the door headed for my popper, Roger says "SET THE HOOK" I said ok but you got to lip him, the rest is not repeatable here or in mixed company. I got it back before the spider got to it. Now I need to tell you some people hate snakes, I absoultely cannot stand spiders especially that size. I spent the rest of day with one eye on the spiders and the other on the cypress roots.

Story number 2

I was down on the Peace river fishing along side of the old narrow gauge railroad trestle, Years ago when they built it they dredged a ditch for fill along the side of the rairoad tracks. The banks have been grown up with what we here in Florida call Maple Trees. These are probably some sort of Alders but they have a leaf shaped like a Maple. They are quite tall and form a canopy over this ditch. I noticed when I started in that there were some sort of spider that had made webs in the tops of these trees. These spiders are so dark red and fuzzy looking that they are black or visea versa, I cannot tell you which way it is these are not small spiders either. Well I had fished down this quite a good ways when all of a sudden something went down my neck!!! I hollered like a little girl and commenced to slapping and pulling my shirt off, good gosh almighty I'm going to die if that son of a___ bites me, Hell I'm going to die any way. I reached down and threw the trolling motor in high Go yonder NOW !!. After bouncing off the bank several times and clearing the deck of all rods and gear ect. with limbs I cleared the ditch and got my shirt off. I want to tell you that that was one expensive Maple leaf.


Story 3


This one really creeped me out.

Roger and I were out exploring in a area of Hardee county West of Avon Park . We had found some bear tracks on an old dirt road and were following them and came upon old orange grove that had been let go to ruin. The trees were not dead but had just barely had any leaves on them. The tracks had stopped and had went down into a ditch were the was a large culvert. I told Roger go down and look in there, bless his heart he blessed my family back 5 gererations. Any how we got to looking around and noticed that every row in the grove was infested with those garden spiders I had told you about. I don't mean 15-20 I mean thousands if not more in the 30 acres we were looking at. If a small sparrow were to fly down one of those rows he would never make it. I had the cold sweats, all I could think of is when I was a young boy my father would take me rabbit hunting at night in the groves and sometimes we would run into one of those small crab spider webs, no rabbits after that with all the slapping and whining I would make. No we didn't get to see any bears. Later I was telling my brother in law about this and he told me that as a young boy his father was a care taker for some groves in that area and that on the front of his tractor he had lashed a peice of pine, this was to knock down the webs before he got to them. He said that is wasn't uncommon when his father got to an end of the row for him to come out shaking his cap off and wiping the spiders off of his face with his hand. The tractor would have been by itself, I would have beat my self to death before i ever cleared the fist row.


Luther

[Spawn]

Nice stories man!

[Luther]

Nice stories man!

I said these were stories but they are the truth.

[dandeman]

I especially liked Story 2, it sounds like something I would do.

[BoarBuster]

Yes they are wonderful and I am not a fan of spiders either.