Florida

My cousin Mark and his big bass

Admittedly, a vacation to northern Florida has absolutely nothing to do with southern New England. I try to keep this blog about places that can be reached within a day’s drive of Boston. I went to Florida with my cousin and stayed at his house for a week. Because Florida is very far from MA I will not write extensively about it like I do fishing Narragansett and hiking in New Hampshire. I had a great time. I did a lot of fishing and one big day of hiking/biking. I plan on writing one quick paragraph about how the fish in Florida kicked my butt and a separate blog post about a state park near Gainesville. The park’s name is Paynes Prairie and it is a diamond in the rough.

I do plan on putting a few pictures of the trip below. My cousins do not have an email address but they do have a computer. This way they can see the pictures I took before I send them some by snail mail.

Fishing-

Dotty celebrating her big bass

Basically we fished four days in Florida. We were just south of Gainesville and two hours north of Orlando. We fished four days. Each day we put in a minimum of five hours but three of the days were more like eight or nine. We spent a lot of time using shiners. I had a few goals going into the trip. I knew there was no chance of reaching all of them, but any that I reached would really make my day. They were in no particular order

Catch a bowfin

Catch an alligator gar

Catch a monster bass (anything over 5 pounds)

Catch a red ear sunfish also known as a shellcracker

Catch a bass on any lure, just to say I caught a bass in FL on something other than bait.

Mark and Dotty with Dotty's five poundern

As I said the fish kicked my ass. The only goal I reached was catching a couple bass on plastic worms. I didn’t hook any big bass or mudfish. I had two gar hit my shiner. The first ran with it but the hook was not in its mouth. The other bit the shiner off leaving just the head on the hook. I didn’t catch any shellcrackers. I was told they are deep this time of year. I caught a few large pickerel. Five of which I would consider “quality” fish. Even though the actually catching was disappointing, I had a lot of fun. My cousin Mark and his wife Dotty did quite well. They both caught a five pound bass on shiners. Mark also caught a couple other bass around three pounds. We fished a river and two lakes in northern FL and took a trip to East Lake Toho in Kissimmee. The majority of big fish were caught in East Lake as were my two missed gar.

On the trip I saw seven gators. The air temp was a little chilly for gators. Many are not active this time of the year and hide in the mud. More on gators in the Paynes Prairie post.