Drove out to the Everglades yesterday to a place called the Harold E. Campbell Public Use Area. It's five miles east of Rt. 27 in an area of the Everglades called the "Holey <sic> Lands," since it was once used as a target practice area for the Air Force. The terrain is apparently full of holes where bombs were dropped. Google Maps confirmed the boat ramp mentioned in the online description of the place that I read. Since it was five miles off the main drag, I thought there was a chance it didn't get much angler pressure. The fishing would be in a canal that runs parallal to the access road from Rt. 27. Since I hadn't been able to get to that other canal a week ago or so, which is on the opposite side of Rt. 27, I thought I'd give this place a try.
Actually, to get to the Campbell area you have to go slightly past the Brown's Farm canal, which is the one I failed to get to a week ago. This time as I approached the turn-off to Brown's Farm, I slowed down to take a look at the gate and fencing in front of the water control facility. Well, yesterday the gate was open and I could have driven straight in. I realized it's possible last week I'd driven by it so fast (I hadn't slowed down and pulled off onto the shoulder) that I hadn't seen that the gate was actually open then, too. Maybe it was. Maybe I'd seen the fencing and gate and since they looked closed, I'd just driven right by. But I was pretty sure I'd do well at the place I'd set as my destination for the day (Campbell) and also, I worried about driving through those open gates now only to find that they were closed later in the day when I tried to get out. Could that actually happen? Yes, definitely it could. So I merged back onto Rt. 27, made a U-turn a little past the Palm Beach County line and then turned off at the access road back to the Campbell Area.
The road was in good shape but was raised a couple feet above the land on either side of it. If I came to a barrier, I'd have a tough time making a U-turn back to Rt. 27 with my trailer. I'd have to uncouple the trailer from the hitch on the Subaru, spin the trailer around 180 degrees by hand and then re-couple it to my vehicle. As I learned last week at Black Creek, you never know what you're gonna find when you arrive at some destination you've never been to before.
Well, no problems yesterday. I found the parking area and boat ramp at the end of the five mile road. The place even had a bathroom. There was one SUV with an empty boat trailer parked in the lot. I'd have no problem getting Kita (what I call my banana-yellow Hobie Pro Angler) into the water here. But as I looked around from the bottom of the boat ramp, I couldn't tell how to get from there to the canal that ran beside the road I had just driven back to this place. The ramp put you into a big rectangle of water. From where I stood, I couldn't see if the rectangle of water in front of me led to an outlet to the canal. Behind me was another large body of water. Maybe that led to the canal. I could probably fish either of these two bodies of water, but the shorelines looked rather barren and I wasn't seeing any fish breaking the surface of either one.
I took out my iPhone and let Google Maps load up. Once it did, it showed where I stood in relation to these two big rectangular ponds. It looked like you got to the canal I was looking for at the far right end of the one directly in front of me. That corner of the pond was about half a mile away and if there was an outlet way down there, I couldn't see it.
Nevertheless, that's the way I started pedaling, once I got Kita off-loaded from the trailer and all my gear in it. I already wasn't all that happy about having to travel half a mile before I could even start fishing. I still had a clouser minnow tied on my Sage Largemouth rod from my last trip. I threw that out and let troll as I pedaled out 25 feet or so from the shoreline. I'd pause to cast it toward the shallow water every so often along the bank and didn't pedal at quite top speed, to give the clouser a chance to lure a fish.
As I approached the far end of the water rectangle I confirmed there was indeed an outlet that must lead to the canal. The shorelines I was passing had relatively little cover. And there really wasn't much spatterdock or submerged weeds in the shallows. Every now and then I'd startle a gator resting in the narrow strip of grass just back from the waterline. I still wasn't seeing much surface activity.
Once I got in the canal proper I switched from the Sage to my 7 weight rod with the sink tip line. I started out casting one of my bright green Sqwirm Worms.
I guess when I decided to try this place I had figured an Everglades canal was an Everglades canal - they're all full of fish, right? Apparently not. I spent about two hours working both banks of this canal. I caught one small Largemouth bass and had a couple of "soft" bites. This wasn't the action I was looking for.
I began to think I ought to try somewhere else. I'd done pretty well at the Rt. 27 Canal a couple weeks ago. It was about 10 miles south on Rt. 27, in the same direction I'd have to take later on to drive home.
By around 12:15 it was clear I wasn't catching much in this present spot. So I pedaled back to the ramp, loaded up, and drove south to the same ramp I'd launched from a couple weeks ago.
I had the place to myself. By then (around 1:15), the wind had come up a bit. It was blowing south to north up the canal. I headed north and cast my Tiny Green Popper (size 10) to the west bank. Earlier, I'd thought the heat might to be too much by mid-afternoon. But between the breeze and passing puffy clouds that blocked out the sun, the weather wasn't too bad. Also I'd brought a lot of water with me.
I started picking up fish pretty quickly and the action continued in fits and starts until I called it quits around 4:45. I'd estimate I brought around 30 fish to hand, mostly LM, but also Bluegill and even a gar that snapped its long snout down on the the TGP. Biggest LM was around 15-16 inches, a few in the 12 inch class. The BG were mostly pretty small. Several times I'd sense a strike, pull the rod back quickly and yank the poor fish clear out of the water. One I even smacked into the side of my kayak. These fish were tearing up my TGPs. As an experiment I tried both the Sqwirm Worm and the next size larger popper I had with me in bright green. They did attract fish but the action slowed way down. I could catch fish every few casts on the TGP, or once every 10-15 minutes with something else.
At one point I was hauling a small BG back to the boat when it was attacked violently by two larger fish - LM, I'm pretty sure. These bigger fish swirled at it several times but couldn't quite swallow it.
Thinking about it now, what I could have done was transfer one of these little BG I was catching on the the fly rod to a 3.0 hook on my spin rod and let the fish swim around out there and see what it would bring up. I bet the biggest fish in that canal (and maybe some gators, too, unfortunately) would be interested in a distressed BG swimming around. Next time I'm there, I may try that: catch "bait" on the fly rod, then use it to attract larger fish on the spin rod.
I could have fished the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening and kept catching more bass, etc. But I felt I'd already done well enough for one day.
I pulled Kita out of the water around 5 p.m. and a little more than an hour later I was home. That spot seems further from here than it actually is. The drive is pretty much all highway - no stopping and starting at myriad traffic lights, as when I have to pass through towns like Jupiter or Stuart on my way to inshore (salt water) destinations.
I noticed yesterday that the water level in that canal is way down from what it must have been a couple months ago. The low water gives fish fewer places to hide. I was finding them under spatterdock pads every few feet. Whenever there'd be a bit of a clear space back to the bank, I would cast back there and almost every time something would dart out and try to grab my fly. Even some of the larger bass I caught were hanging out beneath those "parasols."
Not long after I got there I had pulled off amongst the spatterdock to untangle my line. I'd nearly run over a couple bass sheltering there. They didn't spook at my presence. So once I fixed my line, I dropped my fly right down on top of them. They both exploded on it - and missed. I dropped it on them a second time and caught one of the two. It was that kind of day.
Maybe with the water level up early in the year, that spot wouldn't fish so well. But earlier in the year, I can fish and do well at the cypress swamp up at Riverbend. When the level in the sloughs up there gets too low, I can switch to this canal. Both places are about equidistance, in terms of driving. But at Riverbend I've got the double kayak-portage issue, to get back to the cypress swamp, where at this canal, I'm casting and catching fish five minutes after I put in.
What a place for fishing!
Didn't shoot any new video yesterday, but the video I shot a couple weeks back shows you what it's like out there: http://youtu.be/d1UWDo8Y2Ic
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