Since I did pretty well at Riverbend Park last week, I decided to go back there again today. Weather conditions were quite different. Last week, the sky was overcast all day and there was virtually no wind. Today it was bright and sunny and there was a pretty good breeze coming up from the southeast.
Today I managed to find my way back to Cowpen Lake without any wrong turns, for a change. I realize now that there are two quick left turns to take, once you pass under the first foot bridge on Old River Slough.
Last week it took me most of the day to realize that small surface poppers would catch fish. So today, that's what I started out with. However, the fish weren't interested. (Naturally.) Maybe they couldn't see the popper well, due to the somewhat wind-roiled surface of the lake. Or maybe (probably) there was a different reason altogether why they wouldn't hit anything on the surface.
I spent the first hour throwing small poppers with the fly rod and went back to it at various times of the day. But in fact I caught nothing on the fly rod at all, not even when I switched to a big, hairy streamer that is supposed to look like a bait fish.
Whenever I switched to spinning tackle I caught fish almost immediately. I used the same plastic fluke-worm that caught that five pound bass last Friday. No five pounders today but several fish in the 15-17 inch range.
Around three o'clock I spotted a large gator sunning himself along the shoreline of the small island in the middle of the lake. I picked up my camera and began shooting video of him and he definitely didn't like that. He turned toward me and slipped into the water, heading in my direction. I doubt he had hostile intent but I pedaled on out of there anyway, just in case. Later I had the unusual experience of hooking a turtle in the butt. I knew I had something heavy on the line when I first felt the tug. I thought I might have hooked a rock but it seemed to be trying to get away from me. Once I reeled it up to the surface I saw what it was. I was able to reach down with my pliers and pull the hook out easily. No doubt it was a less amusing experience for that turtle than it was for me.
I'm sure I would have caught more fish had I used spinning tackle all day. But I like the challenge of the fly rod. It's also fun to see a fish come up and swallow a popper you've been slowly twitching along the surface.
We'll be leaving Florida for a few weeks soon. For the moment, there's plenty of water back in the cypress swamp there at Riverbend Park. I'm sure I'll give it a try again when we return in January.
Had some good news this morning before I left the house. Got an email from audible.com alerting me that my audio book TRUSTING THE RIVER is now for sale on their website. I spent many hours recording, editing and mastering the tracks that make up this audio book. I'd never done anything quite like this before and not until this morning was I sure that all that effort didn't turn out to be a colossal waste of time. Audible has strict standards for audio that they put their name on and I doubted for a long time that I was going to be able to meet them. Audible allows a free first download for anyone interested in audio books. If you're an angler and like to listen to something fishing-related on your car stereo on the long drive to a fishing spot, give it a try.
Once again Blogger isn't going to accept the video file for this outing (perhaps the file is too big, since I processed it in HD), but it will be available on youtube: http://youtu.be/uObnBGyVHzQ
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