Last visit to the cypress swamp

I haven't posted in a while because the fishing action has been somewhat less than stellar, especially in the salt.

I hadn't been up to Riverbend Park near Jupiter in a few weeks, so headed there yesterday.  I wanted to try a section of the cypress swamp I haven't fished in years, before I discovered how good the action can be on and around Cowpen Lake.

I went looking for a spot called West Lake and found it pretty easily.  My memory of it from my first visit several years ago was that it was rather shallow, with excellent water quality.   I remember not spending much time there fishing because the shallowness and water clarity showed me there weren't all that many fish swimming around in it.

Well, my memory turned out to be pretty good.  It's a lovely area, peaceful and full of wildlife of various kinds.  I did spot lots of small bluegill but saw no evidence of larger bass.  They may well have been there, but to find them you'd have to be there at dawn and dusk.  Since Riverbend doesn't open until dawn and closes at dusk, that's not going to happen.

After paddling around West Lake for an hour or so without much action, I headed over to Cowpen. The action was pretty good there until the early afternoon.  I caught nothing huge but was pulling in a number of bluegill, smaller bass and even a crappie, which I didn't realize inhabited that region.  For a while I switched from a micro popper to a much larger one, which might attract some of the two and three pound bass that I've caught in Cowpen.  I did get a couple of strikes.  I remember one cast toward a cluster of lily pads away from the shoreline that resulted in a nice bass zooming up toward the popper, missing it on the first try, then pursuing it a second time, only to miss it a second time as well.

By around 3 o'clock my arm and shoulder were getting weary from casting.   And since the action had slowed down quite a bit, I decided to move again, this time to the main Loxahatchee Canal.

Usually around this time of year, the amount of water in the sloughs that lead from the main Loxahatchee to the cypress swam becomes an issue.  By mid-March we're into the dry season of the year and the water level in the sloughs drops to the point that it becomes hard to paddle (or pedal) a kayak through them.  This year, there's actually still plenty of water in the sloughs, thanks to a wet rainy season in 2013 and a massive storm we had back in January.  However, I discovered yesterday that skeins of wooly aquatic weeds are rapidly growing up through the water column of the sloughs and choking the passageways.  It was a struggle to paddle back to the main Canal from Cowpen.  In a week or two, they will be impassable, even though they may contain sufficient depth to float a kayak.  These weeds, which I think are a form of algae, may die off again in the early fall.  I do know that they weren't there this past November, when I began making trips again to the cypress swamp area.  At any rate, yesterday was probably my last visit to Cowpen Lake for a while.

I spent the final hour of the trip on the main Canal.  I pedaled up past the wooden bridge, which marks the park's boundary, and then allowed the current to pull me downstream for a half mile or so.  I was back to throwing a micro popper by that point and allowing it to sink down a few feet below the surface.  But nothing came up from the depths for a closer look.

I've posted video about yesterday's trip on youtube:

http://youtu.be/1vUVJWa7wr8

Since I've announced it on my Facebook page, I might as well here as well.  I've just published another e-book on amazon.com.  This one has nothing to do with fishing at all.  It's called THE FLAME AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST:  TALES FOR YOUNG AND OLD.  It's an integrated collection of original fairy tales written in the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.  For the next few days it's available as a free download:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Flame-At-Edge-Forest-ebook/dp/B00IW87L9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395328109&sr=8-1&keywords=flame+at+the+edge+of+the+forest