Half way across the lake heading west, an island sits to the north of the channel. Many of my fishing hours have been spent drifting the grass to the south of the channel for redfish. Many of my hours were also spent trying to get the boat up on a plane and in the channel after we had fished all the way to low tide.
My dad told me stories about renting a small skiff at Slagle’s Ditch in the ‘30s and running all the way to the lake with a 5 hp air-cooled Mercury. Some of those trips meant paddling back because of motor trouble. I was always enthralled to hear him talk about those trips, and I wondered what it would have been like to have today’s equipment in those early years.
One particular day while my dad and I explored the south shore of the lake, we came upon a small creek. It was hard to see from the channel because it turned sharply at the entrance. We saw it and began idling over to it only to find the water was too shallow even at high tide.
We both eased out of the boat and pushed and pulled the boat through the shallow water, finding surprisingly deep water at the entrance to the creek. We had no depth finder – my dad would always take a rod and poke it in the water to find the depth. This small creek bottom was deeper than he could reach, so we started the engine.
It wound around to the south to a very small bay and then continued west. The mangroves hung over the water in a canopy fashion, and one or two larger trees lay across the path ahead. We made a decision to clear the way, knowing we would be here through the low tide before we could leave.
As we set up under the trees, we drifted some live shrimp under a float and allowed them to move back toward the undercut bank thirty feet behind the boat. Every time the float reached that bank, it went under as a fish took our shrimp. The take was redfish and snook in the ten-pound range. It was exciting to fight these fish in and out of the mangroves.
On many occasions when the winds howled and we could not fish any other place, we ended up in this creek. More often than not, we had to get out and push the boat into the creek. And on several occasions we had to wait an hour or two for the tide to come up far enough to get the boat out.
I mentioned earlier that I might never be able to fish this spot again. The reason is a closure of that entire area to any type of boat traffic. It seems this area is one of the last breeding areas for the American crocodile, and the National Park Service has taken steps to insure that the crocs are not encumbered, so to speak.
I remember those trips as treasures in my life and I keep those spots secret to this day. It just wouldn’t seem right to let someone else take my Dad’s spot.
Secret spots. We all have them. I wonder how many of us have one that we know holds fish but that we simply can’t get to any longer?
