campfire anthems

i’m alive. that is the most important sentence of this whole post. now to the story. i had a pretty fun adventure with travis and jack on friday night down in the englewood area. we left my apartment at 6:00 pm, right after work. travis said that we had to go some bass ackwards way through brandon to get to i-75, apparently there is only one bait shop to purchase live shrimp between home and our destination. i don’t buy it. after some shuffled tunes from the ipod, a quick bite from chic-fil-a, and a stop in gibsonton to get our live bait, we headed toward port charlotte and our sporting adventure.

jack and i told travis that we wouldn’t be on the water by sun down. travis informed us that we would be on the water by 8:30 pm, just as the sun tucked behind the horizon. * note: remember 8:30 * we got off one exit too early. not a big deal, we could still get to the public boat ramp from here. we made a detour and finally hit river road, where we initially wanted to be. take a left on indiana and a right by the checkers and we can almost smell the fish we were going to catch. the boat is finally in the water and we set off at 9:30 pm.

we maneuvered between the markers, under the bridge, and to the old, worn down, deteriorating bridge. while holding the boat in place, the current was very strong, travis lit the propane lantern and hung it from a rope. it was then jack’s job to jump from the boat onto a submerged platform, protruding roughly 5 feet above the water’s surface. he navigated the top of the broken bridge until he finally lowered the lantern and tied it off just above the water. once we had jack secured back in the boat, we pulled back around and dropped anchor. time to fish.

honestly, the whole night was pretty slow. we were on the hunt for snook and red fish. i was mainly looking for reds, because snook are out of season and i really wanted to fire up my grill. my grill will stay unlit. after about half an hour, i pulled in the first fish of the night. it was a pretty small snook, maybe 20 inches. after the release, i put another shrimp on my hook and cast again. almost immediately i hooked another snook. this one ended up being closer to the mid 20 inch range. jack also caught 2 snook here, while travis caught 4. not only did travis catch 4 snook in this spot, he caught the off consecutive casts. how impressive.

when we decided to move on, jack had to climb back up and get the lantern. it was my job to hold onto the platform and keep the boat in place while travis did whatever it was he was doing. once again with jack on board, we set off to fish the bridge. there was another boat there when we arrived and it seemed as though they were catching catfish. passing under the bridge we saw our spot. we idled and cut the engine. the snook were popping all over the place. travis got a hold of the trolling motor, only to find it didn’t work…turns out neither did anything else on the boat. it wouldn’t restart, and we we drifting. once again i held on, this time to a concrete wall we almost slammed into at the base of the bridge. somehow, 10 minutes later we were motoring along again. we decided to check out some of the residential docks since we missed our chance with the snook at the bridge. we debated for quite some time whether or not to actually stop at the docks and fish, since we had no way of knowing if the boat would start again or not and then we saw it.

there it was. this glorious light on the tip of one of the docks. in the light you could see fish swarming at the shrimp fluttering at the surface. there was maybe 50 snook in all. we cut the motor. i swear, no matter what we did or tried, or where we cast, these snook were not interested one bit. we spent roughly an hour here and didn’t catch one snook between us. jack caught 2 trout, as did myself, and travis had lost his previous luck. it was time to head home.

after we packed up the boat we got back on the highway. we went the back way so we could hit hwy 17 through arcadia and head back in through bartow. it would be an understated if i said we hit some fog on the way home. it was about 2:30 am, pitch black, and only about 10 feet of visibility ahead of the truck. it was bad. the windshied wipers and defrost in no way made the situation better. the wipers merely spread the water to the edge of the windshield on their first pass and right back into its original spot on the return pass. brilliant. at this point i feared for my life - travis slammed on his breaks at nearly every intersecting road, i don’t know why. things cleared up in arcadia, and when we hit wachula jack took over driving duties so travis (not a hanger-outer) could sleep in the back seat.

i got back to my place at 4:30 am and hit the shower. it felt nice to have the hot water pour over me. i had a great adventure with 2 pretty awesome guys friday night. i can’t wait until i can risk my life again in search for snook and red fish. maybe next time we will have more luck.