Guys, i am going to be honest with you... I was so sad after catching almost nothing on most of the lakes in SC and GA, despite all the people trying too hard to provide some good memories for me.
And then we met with Keith and weather was awful in Florida. We had to leave Chokoloskee bridge an hour after we started fishing and fish were biting like crazy. We were probably about to catch some sharks or tarpons but another storm came and everything was ruined.
The same night we go to hotel and the captain calls to cancel our Keys charter which was one of the most important charters for the whole trip. When i heard that from Keith i felt like "I am done here. This trip will be the biggest disappointment of my life..." .
But then things started to improve and now it is at its peak!!!
I will try to go chronologically.
Catching mangrove snappers on our hotels dock, right after our Keys charter. We stayed only for a night in that hotel and i got at least 25 of these fish. Nothing significant but fun to catch!
The same night we go to Channel 5 bridge(we are not sure if we were on the right bridge). We used shrimp and live crab. Keith had a very big fish on his rod and i was the one close to the rod. So i tried to hook the line but the fish was so big ( and apparently i used a very tight drag ) , it snapped the line in 3 seconds. Sorry Keith
. Hey but, 10 lbs line for bridge fishing in the Keys? Are you kidding me?
I caught 2 snappers there and we headed back.
We headed to Miami but before that we stopped on Tamiami trail which has been recommended by lots of people. At first i got nothing but with Keith's teachings and awesome soft lure i got 2 LMB in 30 minutes. One of them was close to 2 pounds.
The next morning we are ready to go to fish canals of Miami for tropical fishes. And we fished Kendall Canal. Bite was too slow. Actually those Peacock Bass would run away from our lures, instead of going after them. Except at 1 spot. There was a shopping cart in the water and all the fishes around that shopping cart would bite it. I caught 3 fish, lost 2 of them. Keith wasn't so lucky that day.
Sorry , i make horrible pictures...
Thanks to God we fished for Peacock that day! Because our Peacock charter captain called us and told he wouldn't make it because of his technical issues. He said "i can put you on fishing for peacock or LMB. But those guys won't do the both in the same day". We knew that peacock wasn't very eager to bite. So going after peacocks for a whole day could be a waste of time and Everglades probably didn't have very good bass fishing. I told Keith "why don't we just go to legendary Okeechobee which is also very close to our destination Deland?".
And miracle happened and we found a locally famous charter captain to put us on fishing. This was probably the only Sunday he had free! We were so lucky.
We woke up at 04:30 and drove to that place and met the captain. We were on the water at 07:30 . We would use live shiners but the supplier didn't have as many of them as we would need. We could get only 3 dozen.
Guess what... We got 20-25 basssssssssssss and the average size was probably 2-3 pounds. I got a 7 pounder ! I have at least 80 photos of this fish taken. Because i probably won't catch something like that ever again. This was the best fishing of my life.
Tomorrow we will be on a houseboat for 4 days on St. John's River on a 44 ft houseboat, towing a bass boat behind us. We might have internet access. And after that we will meet Bobby Rice to fish his pond and have fish fry and we will try to give you update the next time we have internet service.
Thanks everyone.
Fatih and Keith
PS: We are having the times of our lives.
