N Florida Mike

Not this again …😣 It happened to me when I was 24.

I played little league, and loved it. It was by far my favorite sport, followed by football, and to a lesser degree, basketball. I had such a good experience in it that I played high School ball, and College. Then 16-17 years of softball after that. It isn’t as common as it was, for some reason. Soccer has become very popular, which I couldn’t stand…

Looks like an effective way. My method: It’s hard to explain , but I reach in through the mouth until I find where the point of the hook is . Then I push whatever is hooked ( usually the outer skin of the stomach), downward with my index finger along the hook until it pops out. I do this better with my hand than with pliers. Most of the time, the fish will swim off with little to no blood or damage. I’m careful, and have never hooked myself either. Talking hundreds of times.

Got this one and 3 others in 30 minutes out back. Caught them all on the june bug speed worm. Wind was blowing 20-25 right into my property…

Got one on a horny toad at one of our church ponds.

I have a lot of advantages for short trips more than most. My church has 4 ponds. I’m there 16 hours on the weekend at church and doing security. Fishing opportunities abound, but I have to watch out for the frisbee golfers( we have a course). The pond with the biggest bass runs along the edge of the course. They don’t care if you’re there first, they will throw the frisbees whether you are there or not. I catch fish in 3 of the 4 ponds there regularly. I drive all over NE Florida working . Since I am never “ on the clock” , I often try new or old ponds wherever I am on the route. I usually limit it to an hour at the most. Caught my PB runner up around lunchtime one day in one of those ponds. I live on a small lake, so I go out 2 out of 3 days and at least cast a few times. Out of all these options you’d think I’d do better !

On a positive note, I turn 65 this year . No more licenses for me in Florida after one last renewal. !!🤠

I have a dedicated finesse combo, which consists of a small spinning reel , medium light rod, 8 pound mono, and 1-2/0 hooks. I use a lot of baits which are often used as trailers for swimming jigs, chatter baits, etc. I use small senkos, zoom finesse worms, lucky strike worms, and creature baits such as baby brush hogs, speed craws, and several others. I usually use a split shot rig .

Yeah I’m in a slump. Had another fish just now that bit a horny toad. I nailed the hookset , the fish did not turn, and came off…😕

Got this fat bullhead on a zoom horny toad, of all things…

I had “one of those days” on Saturday. When more goes wrong than right . I had app 15 bites , and lost fish every way imaginable. I was able to get 5 in the boat, nothing to write home about in size. I lost 2 big fish, but that’s become par for the course for me lately. The 2nd pic is of the east side of our island. Caught 3 of the 5 there. Lost another 5 or so on the west side…

The last 2 options sound good for sure. My dad quit driving on his own initiative when he was in his early 80s. He drove just fine, but he had arthritis in both his ankles that made it painful. My mom drove until she was 92. My wife told me if she ever gets lost once, we take the keys away. She got lost trying to get to the doctor’s office. She eventually found her way home. It was a very difficult thing for me , but I took her keys away. She tried for a month to get me to give her the keys back. After that , she let it go. What seems very difficult doesn’t have to be. If you do the last 2 things you mentioned, it may give you clarity about what to do. When you know it’s right , do it.

I’m 5’11 1/2. My wife bought me a DNA test. She’s actually 40-50 % Native American. I’m 66% Celtic ( Scottish/ Irish/ welsh) 20% Scandinavian , 1% finnish. The rest is Southern European, and SW asian. I had a great granma that was French, but it didn’t show up in the test. My first cousin had hers done, and it was very similar to mine. Our family tradition was all Scots/Irish. I had no idea about all the rest of it…

Probably a copperhead ( nose). Bluegill. They will have multi colored gill plates, but especially copper color. This one I don’t see much color , but some are duller than others.

Sounds like you are a very generous person Katie. I would be nervous about liability if someone gets hurt or fakes it. It’s sad how sue- happy our country is now. I have a lot of friends that know they can fish at my house anytime. Most don’t though, not very often anyway. I did let some local kids fish at my house, but they disobeyed my rules - which were : Dont keep anything over 17 inches, and I had to be home for them to fish. It was 2 different groups- I saw one kid with an over sized bass. I gave him “ the look”. Him and his friend never returned. My daughter let the other group in , because they lied to her. For some reason, she also unlocked my fishing room, and gave them access ! when I got home, they were gone , but every one of my many combos were lying in various locations all over my back yard, most with bird nests . Nearly all my fishing stuff was strewn all over my property. One good thing - they didn’t steal anything! That group never returned again, so that was a blessing anyway!! I would cut down or stop most of the folks from accessing your property, unless you know them well. If anything, to prevent liability and give you peace of mind!

A Florida man walked into a store carrying a gator , so anything’s possible I reckon.

^^ This !

I got 2 packs of bama craw yum dingers, 2 Spools of 10 and 12 pound Trilene, and some Rage Menaces in green pumpkin…

Thanks to you Tennessee fans ( and Lsu fan Catt ) for being gracious and good sports to this Gator fan. We’ve all had our issues the last couple decades haven’t we? I can say I really enjoyed Tennessee the few times I’ve been there. The locals were super friendly, even though I got some slightly less than friendly glances while wearing my Camo Gator hat !😂

You’d think I would have done better because of where I live, but in recent years the best I’ve done is 15-16 pounds. That day ( really just 4 hours), I caught 3 four pounders, and a couple 2s. I really didn’t keep track of it back in the day.

We almost had y’all that last game..

We had planned to fish our favorite road lake on Saturday but it was just too windy. I went to see my brother in Gainesville instead, but had planned to fish my lake when I got home. The wind was howling south to north, which is the hardest wind direction to fish in my lake. So I stayed home again. Today the same line of storms that hit Mississippi came through. It cleared a little after 4, so I got my stuff together, and by the time I made it to the back door, it started pouring again. The same thing happened again, and the 3rd time I took my stuff outside and checked the weather again. Thunder storm due in 15 minutes! I looked at the sky and disagreed. So I finally got out. Thunderstorms did not come . Wind was much less. Fished the west shore close to home, and hit the hot spots on the east shore coming back . Got 1 on the yum dinger, and 2 on the Magnum uv speed worm, including the biggest one. The bite was slow. Strange for march here.

Sorry to get in late on this. Glad to hear the latest report! praying for you brother.

I saw one panther when I was around 10 years old, about halfway between Jacksonville and St Augustine. It jumped out of the brush and jumped right back in when it saw our car coming. This would have been around 1970, when they had nearly been hunted out. Around that time an older friend was hunting and someones dogs ran a big panther right by him. Most of the sightings then were in and around durbin swamp. A 600+ pound black bear run over by a semi in the same general area. Now Florida has millions more people , but more panthers than then. 16 got run over last year in Florida!