BASS · 24. January 2016

Lost in the Everglades

During December 2015 I got the chance to escape the cold, depressing winter weather of Switzerland and spent two weeks in the Sunshine State better known as Florida. Since it was a family vacation I couldn't completely focus on fishing but I took every chance to wet a line. We stood in a house in Cape Coral with direct access to the canal system, close to the sea. Sure there would be nice saltwater fishing with the right tackle but I wanted to catch some largemouth bass! Long before this trip I contacted Anthony Hunt aka 5oz for a guiding on Lake Okeechobee. I learned about him over the internet and thought he might be cool to fish with. So a few days after my arrival in Florida we fixed a date and I already started dreaming of all the big, fat bass I would catch on this day. Since nobody in my family, except me, is really crazy about fishing I had to organize myself a car and hotel to realize this trip. Full of hope to catch some giants I didn't care too much about all the extra costs (which btw. minimized my sneaker budget drastically) for this adventure. I found myself at 3am on the freeway towards Miami. The evening before Anthony recommended to change the location from Okeechobee to a canal system in the Everglades. So I was driving on the freeway, supposed to meet my guide at a boat ramp of one the recreations spots along the street. That's where this adventure started to get frustrating for the first time because I couldn't find our meeting point. the GPS whch came with my rental, for an extra charge of course, suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere, telling me that I reached my destination. Said recreation area wasn't in sight at all. The friendly guy at the next gas station couldn't help me neither so I kept driving up and down with the hope to stumble across Anthony by chance. I didn't have his number to contact him and a bassboat wasn't in sight neither. After over an hour of meaningless driving I remembered the only option I had left, activate data roaming on my smartphone to text my guide on facebook and also to find our meeting point with the help of google maps. Thanks to my swiss phone contract, this were a few minutes of very prices internet fun but it was the only shot I had to finally get some bass! Fortunately, Anthony was still around the ramp where we were supposed to meet about 1.5 hours ago. Finally on the water, we didn't lose any more time and started throwing big weightless worms into the heavy cover. Soon I got the first bites and brought a few smaller bass into the boat. I even caught a pike, something I didn't expect at all in Florida.

The vast vegetation gave me the opportunity to try out a technique I had only seen in videos before, Punching. With Anthony's instructions I quickly learned the basics and even missed a few bites at least. The reason I wanted to fish with a guide was to expand my bassfishing knowledge and with mr. 5oz I found a guy that definitely taught me a few things which help me to understand the bass a little more.

The bass themselves didn't seem to want me learning, despite two times changing the canal we couldn't find the right way to convince a big mama or her little sister, cousin whatever to inhale our lures... With a 2 pounder I caught the biggest fish of the day, not really what I was looking for but still better than nothing. Again I remembered why we call it fishing and not catching. Some days the bass just don't want to play...

Tired and a little disappointed of this strange day I had to find my hotel and something to eat. The holiday traffic combined with an exhausted me made this simple task another tiring adventure. Finally arrived at the hotel, a dilapidated complex with strange people walking around, the bed had a magical attraction to me. The next day I visited the closest BassPro to get me some Highrollers for my next trip to the amazon before I drove back to my family. Gone was my big chance to catch a trophy bass and the whole experience wasn't really a piece of cake. On the other hand I still learned something, got to fish on a bassboat and all that under the sun while it was freezing cold back home. Truly not the result I was hoping for, I'd rather show you some nice fishpics instead of writing all the things that went wrong, but I guess it was just not meant to be this time. Thanks to Anthony Hunt for an interesting day on the water and the amazing sub :) Hit him up if you want to experience some bassfishing in Florida, I'm sure he can organize something cool for you. http://anthonyhuntfishing.com Following a few impressions of the fishing in our backyard, from time to time I got some action on small jigs or topwater. After I caught the first puffer fish my father, brother and his homie joined me with some frozen bait and got a few contacts as well. Good times!