Sunshine State is an angler's paradise

Florida bills itself as the Fishing Capital of the World.

Drop a line into the water almost anywhere in the Sunshine State — with 7,700 lakes, 10,550 rivers and 2,276 miles of shoreline — and it won’t take long to agree.

Florida is renowned for its freshwater monster largemouth and exotic peacock bass. For the New England light tackle fisherman, Florida can be an angler’s paradise.

“Florida has larger bass and other fish than in New England,” fishing writer, TV personality and guide Jim Porter said in a classic understatement. “We live in a semitropical environment, which allows the fish to feed and grow year-round.”

Porter would know. He’s caught and released more than 110 bass weighing 10 pounds or more in his 23 years in Florida.

Porter has developed what he calls “The Four Great Truths of Fishing.”

Catching fish is easy — finding them is the hard part.

Dry lures catch darn few fish.

The harder you fish, it seems the luckier you get.

And finally, be safe. The scariest critter New England anglers are likely to encounter along our shores is a normally harmless snake. Not so in the Sunshine State’s wildlife-packed fishing holes.“First, don’t let small kids get near vegetated bank shorelines,” he said. “Gators like to lay in wait there. Also, summers are very hot — come from November to April, if possible.”

Regardless of the well-documented heat and sometimes crushing humidity, the fish are lively throughout the year and across the state.

Northern Florida

The 310- mile-long St. Johns River is Florida’s longest inland waterway, flowing lazily north — in and around Jacksonville. The headwaters of the St. Johns begin in the swamps just south of Melbourne and can range from 150 feet to more than three miles wide over various flood plains. It winds through natural lakes, including Lake George, which contains enough salt in it to allow Atlantic stingrays, mullet, blue crab and striped bass to thrive. Yet the salinity is low enough where the renowned Florida largemouth bass lurk in the relatively shallow waters near where fresh springs empty into the lake.

Blair’s Jungle Den (1820 Ormands Jungle Den Road in Astor, Fla.) is located right on the river, three and a half miles from Lake George. Informal and relaxed with the feel of a fishing camp, this motel is made for anglers. The Jungle Den isn’t for those seeking spa treatments or concierge-level amenities. This is a fisherman’s home base. Book a room at Blair’s Jungle Den and you get housekeeping, nearby laundry service and a TV — but, most important, boat ramp access.

Rates range from $49 to $69 a night for single rooms; efficiencies are $84 to $109 a night. (To book, call 386-749-2264 or go to blairs jungleden.com.)

The St. Johns River is so well-known for its fantastic largemouth fishing that it’s been dubbed “Florida’s Bass Factory,” but the stretch between Lake Harney and Lake Monroe also brings huge numbers of American shad, prompting those who know these waters to tempt the fish with spoons and small jigs from December through March.

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Eric Sharp: A <b>fishing</b> paradise

B AY CITY -- This past week has been a perfect illustration of why it's so great to be a Michigan angler in spring.

In six days, I've caught suckers on a piece of sponge, trout on a dry fly, walleyes on jigs, bluegills on waxworms, carp on corn and even a largemouth bass that took one of the bluegill lures.

I had been looking forward to the first carp-fishing session on the Saginaw River, where I had heard that the warm weather had triggered a great bite in March. But on this April day, the air temperature was 20-25 degrees lower.

Andy Sprinkle of White Lake, an American carper who has become an expert in English bank-fishing techniques, was going to give it a try along with Megan Thompson of Waterford, and they let me tag along.

They barely had set up their long European rods, bait-feeder reels, bank sticks and electronic bite alarms before catching a carp and a catfish, and it looked like it was going to be gangbusters. But when I arrived 3 hours later, they hadn't added another fish.

"It's hard to believe," Sprinkle said. "We haven't had another bite, not even from a perch or goby on a rod we baited with worms. Not even a freshwater drum (sheepshead), and this river is full of them.

"And we're not seeing anything moving. Normally you see carp thrashing and splashing all over, and we saw some when we first got here. But we haven't seen any more for hours."

Sprinkle was fishing a few miles downriver from the I-75 bridge on a broad stretch of river that normally is productive. But another hour passed before one of the bite alarms began screeching that a carp had taken a bait and was making a run.

Thompson grabbed the rod and soon landed a 9-pounder. That was followed a few minutes later by another carp and then a catfish in a flurry of activity that saw six carp from 5 to 15 pounds landed in 30 minutes.

At one point, we had a tripleheader going -- with all three of us fighting carp, but then the bite fell off as rapidly as it had begun.

"I just don't think there are that many fish here today," Sprinkle said. "And we aren't seeing the big (Saginaw) Bay carp yet. You can tell by the color that these are resident river fish. The bay fish are a lot paler, and they're usually bigger, too. But two or three weeks from now, the river will be full of them."

When I left, Thompson and Sprinkle had caught and released 11 carp, three catfish and a drum in 8 hours -- slow for the Saginaw but a lot of fun.

Catching bluegills: The bluegills were caught at a lake that shall remain nameless because it's too small to withstand much fishing pressure, especially if people decide to catch-and-keep.

I walked slowly along the shoreline and scanned the shallows with binoculars, because bluegills are extremely sensitive to vibrations on shore, or in a boat for that matter. The sun was bright and at a perfect angle to spot fish, but the shallows were barren.

So I rigged up a light 6-foot spinning rod with an acorn-size float 4 feet above a No. 10 hook baited with Berkley Gulp Alive artificial waxworms. The float was slipped onto the 4-pound monofilament main line just above a 4-foot, 4-pound fluorocarbon leader.

Lakes in spring often are at their clearest, and fluorocarbon helps bring more strikes in those conditions. And the artificial waxworms (when I can find them) last on the hook much longer than the real thing and come in several colors, although on this day I used natural white.

I casted to a spot where I knew the water was 7-8 feet deep. When the bobber didn't move in a couple of minutes, I reeled in and slid the float another 2 feet up the line. This time the bait was about 6 feet deep, and it was less than 30 seconds before something took the bobber down hard, a good indication that the fish (or at least those in a feeding mood) were hanging out near the bottom rather than suspending in midwater.

It was a fat male bluegill about 9 inches long, still wearing drab, prespawn colors. A month from now, this fish will make a nest in 2 or 3 feet of water and parade back and forth in front of it in an outfit of lemon yellow, powder blue and strawberry red that would be envied by a 17th-Century French duke.

The male gill coat of many colors is designed to wow the females and persuade them to lay eggs in the 2-foot depression he fans out of the bottom.

At that time, the gills also will be suckers for popping bugs and foam spiders cast near the nest with a fly rod, or small jigs ( 1/32 ounce) cast just beyond the nest with a spinning rod and worked back toward it.

On this day, I tried switching out the bare hook and waxworm for a small ice-fishing jig with a tiny, fluttering spoon attached at the eye, also tipped with a waxworm.

But while that combination has sometimes worked well, this day it was a lot less effective than the waxworm on a plain hook, another indication these fish were still eyeing the bait cautiously before biting.

Contact Eric Sharp: 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com . Order his book "Fishing Michigan" for $15.95 at www.freep.com/bookstore or by calling 800-245-5082.

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