Being Sneaky In Florida - Part 1 (8/12-8/19)

[Latimeria]

Well, as it goes, I'm taking the family down to Florida for a little family reunion.  I was asked by my wife, and parents to not make this a fishing trip, but a family trip as they had a lot planned for us.  I agreed, but crossed my fingers behind my back when I said, "Not a fishing trip."

We got to the airport, and everything went smoothly.

Point Loma



Mission Bay



The only issue was the plane was loaded with sniffling snot nosed kids all going to Disneyland.  No chance I'm not getting sick after this non-stop flight.

Get to Orlando and it was a fiasco getting our rental car.  If you ever are told by Expedia to use NU car rentals.... run away.  Not worth it.

We finally start our hour-long ride north to the monstrous retirement community (The Villages).  We get there pretty late, but were warmly greeted by my folks who I haven't seen in a while.
Stories were shared and wine was had before hitting the sack.

I woke up in the morning and said I was going to take a quick walk to get my exercise in and I could see some stink eye from everyone.  They know that I know there are bodies of water nearby....  lol

I walked down to a pretty sterile looking retaining pond.  It looked like a bigger version of Santee Lakes and doing the same thing.  I heard something loud in the distance coming at me and saw what looked like a flying witch drop down on me!  It landed and started calling for its buddies.  He was definitely not scared of me!



In order to shorten this a bit, I'll skip all of the family fun and functions we were doing, but I pulled out my little pea-shooter and telescoping rod I hid in the suitcase.  She never saw it when I had the suitcase open on the bed and packing my clothes.  Glorious.

I had an hour before we were going to dinner, and I could get ready in a minute, so I grabbed the rod and MC swimbait and ran to see what was what.  You could tell this pond was put in recently.  No grass on the bottom, no nothing.  It was unusually cold and murky, but I saw a ton of rain bait swimming around.  Unfortunately I also lost a few MC's to this terrible crab that expanded the length of the lake.



Everything had to be off the bottom when fished and it wasn't a very deep lake.



The lake was low as they were also in a drought, but every cast I would get netting.  I saw 3 alligators from 8-10 feet in the other lake close by, but didn't see one here.  In any case, I didn't like walking into murky water to retrieve my swimbait back.  I didn't bring a whole lot of tackle.



EVERYWHERE!

I then saw what I thought were bluegill, but didn't have anything with me to target them.  I walked the entire length of the lake when I saw something chasing bait at the surface and it looked big!  It looked like a brown tail, but I never got a good eye on it.



I kept casting the chartreuse MC when I get slammed!  WTF?!?!?!  This is going to be interesting, but I had to get back asap to get ready for dinner.  Unfortunately, no head lamp and alligators around meant no sneaking out at night and trying to fish....

Had a fabulous dinner with the family and folks and it was one of many great meals that week.  They really have some good food there which was going to be expanding my waistline.  Well, It looks like I was going to visit their place that's getting renovated, and I KNOW there is some old growth swamp and ponds there, so I pre-packed the trunk with my gear so no one knew had a clue.

Bring on the SWAMP!

[jrodda]

I love how committed you are to keeping the fishing low key. But also disappointed no one wants you to fish!! Fun report so far. The netting sounds horrific but skunk off.

[Tim524]

Did they really think you were going to go all the way to Florida and not fish I can just see the grin on your face as you packed the stealthy equipment

[vdisney]

So far, so good...........looking forward to the rest of the reports

[Latimeria]

I love how committed you are to keeping the fishing low key. But also disappointed no one wants you to fish!!

So, inside details on why this is not a fishing trip.  The place we were going to stay wasn't completed in time, so we had to stay with my parents.  My mom (god bless her) has the ability to talk for a straight 24 hours without coming up for a breath (she doesn't have the ability to read the room).  Even though my wife loves her to death, needs me there to play blocker when needed.  If I was out fishing all the time, I would have cursed my wife and daughter to non-stop stories the entire time I would be gone fishing, so I had to choose my windows carefully to keep a happy wife.  She wasn't happy at first, but realized I was choosing the times (i.e hour before we would go out to dinner or early mornings) to minimize their stress, so it worked out better as the week went on.

The netting sounds horrific but skunk off.

That is the god damn dumbest stuff in the world and have no idea why it's there.  I don't think it's sod mesh, but could be.  Just weird as it's an animal and lure death trap.

[Latimeria]

Did they really think you were going to go all the way to Florida and not fish I can just see the grin on your face as you packed the stealthy equipment

Oh, I grinned like a 7-gill!  lol

[Pinoyfisher]

Hahaha, pretty funny first Florida no fishing post! I make it clear I'm going fishing any time there's a body of water nearby and my wife make's it clear if I can or cannot fish.