Freshwater Florida: January 2011

Florida Sinkhole Bass

With the lack of spring to summer rains here in south Florida, winter water levels are a bit down, causing foliage and such as aquatic vegetation to also be sparse in places with only large patches of cat-tails or Pussy-willows to make the breaks of your drop-off lines along Florida natural sinkholes. Sinkholes too are areas if which many a gravel to coral-rock quarry are often started in Florida, as this material is sought after in roadways to highways, along with landscaping needs found at various nursery's. To either end, Florida sinkholes offer a natural flow of clean, cold, clear water, in which Florida Largemouth bass and a variety of Pan fishes can grow to enormous sizes. My son, Edwin and I spend much time on Google maps in search of gravel pits to natural sinkholes to explore and fish. As of late, Edwin found a hum-dingier too which we have been mapping out for the last couple of days. Gin clear waters where one would swear it was but only two or three feet deep, only to drop the anchor in measuring and find it actually sixteen feet deep. Other places, our twenty-five foot anchor line hung straight down, never touching the bottom but you could see fish swimming along the bottom ; now that is some crystal clear water and deep too. Out of three days, mapping out the structure of this pond, it is ¼ of a mile long and 500 feet across, at its widest gap. Having crystal clear waters too, creates problems in presentations of ones lures and ones self too. You can see the fish, so in contrast, he can see you. Though more often than not, the bass and Pan fish alike seemed curious as they would approach our canoe, look and swim away, ignoring all that was presented to them but once we found the answer to this problem, it was a hot bass bite on a cold water winter day.