By Popular Demand

Without further ado I provide you with fishing the fatties of Florida.

YesYes, it was not the most fun fishing I have ever had; however, it was fishing, and you know what they say:

"Fishing is like sex; when its good its great, and when its bad, its still pretty good".

(I just read all of my old posts to be sure I wasnt covering old ground)

Here it is my happy readers (Grant), the Florida strain hog fishing experience...in mid August.

This was the smallest of the few we caught. He was also one of two caught on artificial bait. Jen, my better half (as far as she knows) did not want anything to do with the minnows in the on-board live well. I caught this one on a texas wieghted Zoom Trick Worm. The guide was tossing nothing but... Unless you count his brand new lipless crank from Strike King in sexy shad color. Of course he had to try it.

I'm already getting lost. The point is, even in Florida it is tough to catch bass sometimes. Those times happen to be mid August, when I was there paying over $80 an hour to be on the lake practicing my casting skills.

After casting for a while and catching one very large snapping turtle, wich the guide was very carefull with, we started to toss live bait. Of course we did not tell my wife.

We werent the only ones interested in the live bait. The local birds know the fishing boats and sit on the edge of the live wells and eat their fill. Our guide suggested we brush off the bird before he became ill of eating.

Speaking of fatties...once we began approaching the time limit on our charter, the guide had enough and pointed our vessel in the direction of lunker town. We rigged up multiple rods with live bait and met the bird at our next stop. There was no questioning the fact that our guide had been here before and knew we would catch some fish. And we did. Ok, Jen doesnt like live bait because it is nasty, I dont like it because it feels like cheating; whatever he reason, it was mute when we started catching pig after pig.

I was happy with a few of these but would have preffered to catch them on artificials. So, after fishing Florida in July, the moral of the story is:

You can fish Florida in the summer, and you can catch a decent fish or two, but....well...but nothing, thats it.

I came back to Jersey the following weekend and outfished that Florida F&@$ in an hour. The next post will describe my severe New Jersey Bass winings in detail, and contain many many pictures of some of the most talented Fisherman who have the last name of Pell in the Tri-State area of Philadelphia. (yes you math wizz, ther are only three of us). Which just reduces the amount of typing I have to do!

Thanks for taking the time.

:el