Category: Warmwater

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Florida Canals

The highest point in Florida is Britton Hill at 345 feet above sea level, way up in Walton County in the Panhandle.  The average elevation in Houston is 80 feet above sea level, so 345 feet is pretty high. I suspect I’d have to worry about altitude sickness. Florida’s mean elevation is 100 feet.  The low point is the Atlantic Ocean which is, oddly enough, at sea level.

What that means–and I know this from recent experience with our own Hurricane Harvey–when it rains in Florida the water doesn’t necessarily drain. It sits. If it rains fast enough (and in Florida sometimes I’m guessing it rains fast enough) it piles up. To get stuff to drain you have to spend a lot of money on drainage improvements.  I bet in Denver they don’t have to spend a lot of money on drainage improvements. We do here in Houston. I bet they do in Florida.

So there is the South Florida Water Management District.  It oversees 2100 miles of freshwater and brackish canals in south Florida.  Then there are secondary canals run by cities and counties and water control districts. In South Florida there are a lot of canals that exist to move water in flat land where water don’t move.

In 1984 florida introduced peacock bass into the southern canals, both to create a game fishery and to add an aggressive fish that could control the other weird fish, and there’s some weird fish. According to the internet there are

Peacock Bass (photo from Wikipedia), baby tarpon, largemouth bass, grass carp, tilapia, snook,

oscars (from Wikipedia), jaguar guapote, Mayan cichlid, black acacia, clown knife fish,

snakehead (from Wikipedia). I have heard estimates that as many as 80 species live in the canals. Folk have to dump their aquariums somewhere.

Snakehead make excellent eating, but it may be an urban myth that you can’t catch and release.

It is somewhat of a thing in Florida to traipse or kayak along the canals to fly fish for exotics. In July Kris and I saw a presentation at Texas Flyfishers of Houston (which is sort of like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or the Texas Rangers of Arlington), by Jim Gray of the Austin Fly Fishers, on fishing the canals.  We walked out not intrigued so much as disgusted.  These were some ugly fish.

People fish these canals like I fish for black bass, with 6-8 weights and streamers, and I thought that maybe next week in West Palm we would look for a canal to fish. I chickened out and hired a guide.  I still thought maybe we would squeeze in an hour or so, and I asked the guide about them.  “Fire ants” he said, “moccasins” he said. “Be careful.”

Now honestly, I’ve been bit enough by fire ants to know their misery and its limits, and I have just as good a chance of moccasins hereabouts as I might have in Florida. Still, they’re ugly fish. We’re fishing salt water.

 

 

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Damon’s 7 Lakes

Crappie spawn when the water hits a bit below 60, but pre-spawn they go onto the flats in a feeding frenzy.  I’ve hit the frenzy twice, years ago, once at Lake Raven in Huntsville State Park and once on a farm pond, and it’s unforgettable.  After the hard freezes last week the Houston temperature has climbed back into the high 60s, and I thought I might catch the frenzy.  I didn’t, There were no crappie in the shallows so I fished for bass.

Damon’s 7 Lakes is a cluster of private lakes in Brazoria County about an hour from our house. Brazoria County was part of the original William B. Travis land grant, and pre-Civil War it was the richest county in Texas.  It’s wealth was slave based, producing sugar and cotton off slave plantations.  A  great-great grandfather and grandmother, William Hamilton Todd and Martha Ann Mangrum Todd, are buried nearby in the Confederate Cemetery in Alvin. I don’t know why he ended up in Alvin (since he didn’t get there until 1880 or so), and his son, my grandmother’s father, left for the Oklahoma land rush after the 1900 Galveston flood.  At least I think that’s when he left.

The community of Damon sports the highest point in the county, rising 144 feet above sea level. There’s no significant temperature change because of the higher elevation, so there are no trout streams.

We’ve been going to Damon for five or six years now, and I think Kris is a little bored.  She spent the day birding.  I like it though.  I like to cast and there’s no good reason not to when bass fishing.  Cast and cast and cast.  Cast 20 feet, cast 60 feet, boom one out there or not.  As long as there’s structure you’ve got as much chance at a fish on one cast as any other.

Even better though is that on the way to Damon’s, only a few miles out of the way, is Pena’s Donut Heaven.

I know that Mr. Pena is a retired Houston firefighter, and I know that he is a donut genius.  I had the red cake donut with the cream, the maple and bacon, and the blueberry with sprinkles.

On the way home, only a half-hour out of the way, is Killen’s Barbeque.  Mr. Killen is a meat genius. I had never seen Killen’s without a line down the street, but it was close to 3 when we got there.  Kris ordered the fried chicken, which seemed like apostasy, but it was pretty good.

And my brisket sandwich was certainly good.

I fished my 7 weight, a Loomis Asquith (presumably named after something, but I can’t figure out what) with a Tibor Back Country reel.  I had a winter redfish line on, because that’s my usual saltwater rod, and I was fishing an olive meat wagon.  Caught three bass, two small and one ok.  We fished about an hour.

Probably not my last Texas fish in this project, but it’s my first state, Texas.