The cool weather continues down here. But since the sun was going to be out all day, I figured, How cold could it get? Well, with a strong wind most of the day, pretty darn cold. I could have used a sweatshirt.
I hadn't been back to Riverbend Park since early December and wanted to give it a try. I like to fish what I call the "Cypress Swamp" area of the Park, which is comprised of a series of interconnected sloughs and ponds. To paddle a kayak or canoe back there, you need a sufficient cushion of water. At some point every year, usually in the spring, the sloughs turn to mud and pretty much dry up altogether, until the rains come again in the summer and fall.
With all the rain we've had lately, I figured there'd be plenty of water back there, and so proved to be the case yesterday. But with the radical drop in water temperature over the past ten days, there was no way to know if the bass would be biting until I started twitching a plastic worm in front of them.
I've had pretty good luck on one pond in particular back in the swamp, so I went there directly. There's a small cove or bay at the north end of this pond where I caught a five pound largemouth a year or so ago and many other smaller fish. When I pedaled my kayak into this cove yesterday I noticed an enormous alligator sunning itself on the bank. At first I thought it was two gators, it looked so big. But as I edged closer I could see that it was just one, but it was bigger than my twelve foot kayak. Had I made a commotion, it probably would have just slithered into the water and found another place to hang out. I think if gators were aggressive towards humans, they never would have been allowed to re-populate after they were nearly extirpated throughout Florida years ago. Still, with a gator that big, you never know. I'd earlier seen two baby gators whose mama I might be looking at. Gators are known to be onery when they have young in the vicinity. Besides, I felt like an intruder disturbing this critter's nap in the sun, and so left it in peace.
Out on the main pond I had to deal with the strong west wind. But I found some lee behind an island out in the middle. I also found fish. I caught a four pounder, then a three pounder by casting my plastic worm close to the island, then retrieving it slowly back to my kayak. This encouraged me to take out one of my fly rods and cast a popper toward the island and also toward the shallow shoreline of the pond nearby. Nothing rose to chomp on it. Cold weather usually discourages surface action, so I wasn't surprised.
For most of the rest of the day, I stuck with spinning tackle and a plastic worm. Eventually I worked my way to the south end of the pond and found fish in the slough that connects to the pond at that end. I was catching bass pretty regularly with the plastic worm. I switched to the fly rod one more time, but snipped off the small popper I had been throwing earlier and tied on a black streamer. I trolled it behind my kayak for a bit and hooked and boated one more bass.
Every time the wind came up, I regretted not wearing another layer of clothes. The air temperature was in the mid 60's, which isn't too bad, but with a fifteen mile per hour wind blowing across the water, it felt much colder. Had the sky been overcast, I wouldn't have lasted an hour or so out there. But with the sun and the good fishing action, I didn't head back to the launch site until four o'clock.
Here's a link to the video:
http://youtu.be/CLi7nmA2BVE
Some of the audio got blasted by wind-roar. Nothing I can do about that, as I'm using my point and shoot digital camera with a built-in microphone. Also, I'm holding the camera with one hand and trying to play the fish with the other. This can cause some disorienting video, as when I was holding the camera when a bass went under my kayak and my line got tangled in the pedal drive of my Hobie kayak.
See you on the water.
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