Chasing Florida’s river bass, part 1

By DH Steinour

Inspired by childhood memories of fishing in Pennsylvania, a soldier looks to the Sunshine State’s small-stream species as salve for his post-deployment scars.

I wanted to go home. I know they say you can never go home, but I was willing to try. Deployed over the holidays for the third time in five years, I was drained. I was over it. I wanted to be a teenager again, wandering down some green lane with cornflowers garnishing a fence row, spinning rod in hand and some Gitzits tubes and jigheads in my pocket. I wanted a lazy creek with smallmouth cruising the pebble beds and a kingfisher stuttering overhead. I was tired of sand and dust and crises and futility. I missed my wife and son. I missed them hourly. But I knew there was some mending I needed to do alone out on the water.

Stationed in Florida’s panhandle, 1,200 miles from my home creeks in rural Pennsylvania, I would have to improvise once I got back to the States. I decided to fish for Florida’s river bass, and I discovered Florida’s black bass slam: Catch a largemouth bass, a Choctaw bass, a shoal bass and a Suwannee bass all within a year. It sounded intriguing, chasing down three species I’d never caught before and exploring some of Florida’s spring creeks. It was a way to go home without flying north, a way to refresh and reflect.

I passed through Paris on my way back from the desert. It was a cold, rainy morning at Charles de Gaulle, but with a long layover I took an expensive cab into the City of Lights. Wandering the wet streets for a while, I found myself at Le Dôme café, a favorite haunt of Ernest Hemingway. There was an empty wicker chair on the patio, and I started to decompress over coffee. I wondered if Papa Hemingway, the patron saint of outdoor writers, sat there nearly a hundred years earlier and experienced the same problem as me: I could think only of fishing. I remembered reading that Ed Zern made his writer’s pilgrimage to Paris but he didn’t last there because he missed Pennsylvania’s limestone creeks too much and went home. I plotted a few fishing trips on a napkin and planned my Florida bass slam as a stodgy waiter freshened my coffee.

Choctaw bass

The Choctaw bass would be my first target. It was only recognized as a distinct species a few years ago, sharing many spotted bass characteristics. Their range is limited to the western panhandle, and some email exchanges with an enormously helpful Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist gave me some tips about where to find them. Upon arrival back in the States, I took some time to reconnect with my lovely wife and son before hitting the water. I had missed some firsts: his first Christmas, his first steps, his first birthday. Many times downrange I lay in my sleeping bag and wondered if being a good husband and father and being a good officer and troop were mutually exclusive. It was like balancing on a seesaw’s fulcrum while juggling steak knives.

But it was late March now, and one Saturday I petitioned my wife and slunk out to the truck, a rod in my hand and the baby in hers. I tossed in the kayak and motored up toward the Alabama border with a vague idea of a creek to try. I crossed a bridge and saw the low, sandy stream that the biologist recommended. There was a pull-off but no launch ramp, and I dumped the kayak off a cut bank. It was 0800 by then and the sun was well up, and I opted to paddle through the bridge pilings and have a look. Blowdowns sucked against the pilings, forming a chute of strong, clear water that I powered through, paddling and tossing a Brush Hog to woody pockets. I worked maybe a hundred yards upstream, passing a meandering spotted gar, until the creek widened and was too swift and shallow to proceed.

I drifted back through the chute and beached the kayak on a sandbar in the middle of the stream. There was a slow-moving pool against the west bank, and on the first cast a bass bit, jumped 2 feet out of the water and threw the hook. I cast back into this calm tub and soon hooked another acrobat that I landed. It wasn’t large, probably 10 inches, and it looked like a spotted bass with rows of black dots on its white belly. It had olive checkering on its back, its jawline didn’t extend past the eye, and it had a tooth patch inside its lip, setting it apart from largemouth bass. I was excited to check one off the bass slam list just an hour after starting, and I continued casting to that sandy pool.

I got my hands on three more Choctaw bass just out of that hole, including a solid fish that was pushing 16 inches. She kicked strong and confident even in defeat, and I was reminded that she was probably the queen of this stretch and I was only an alien passing through. I waded downstream and donated a couple of jigs to the rocky bottom and hooked the gar I met above the bridge. With the morning warming and the day’s mission accomplished, I dragged the kayak back onto the truck and set out for the Royal Café in Jay, Fla., where the buffet was piled with fried chicken, collard greens and bread pudding. I wasn’t in Pennsylvania, but it sure felt homey.

Shoal bass

Florida’s shoal bass population is shrinking. The Flint River in Georgia is home to a healthy population, but the Chipola River in the Apalachicola basin is just about the only place you can target them in Florida. Invasive spotted bass are hybridizing with shoalies, perhaps breeding out the pure strain in future decades.

My trip to the Chipola started in the wee hours of an April Saturday, chugging along I-10, I took the southbound exit and launched my kayak at the Peacock Bridge ramp with a McGriddle in my gut and pastels in the sky.

The water was high and stained and moving slowly. The sky blued as I drifted downstream and threw a grub at both green banks. Switching to a tube jig, I dragged it through swirling eddies and laydowns to no avail. I changed to a crawfish colored crankbait and lost it to the porous limestone riverbed. After an hour and a half with no bites, I paddled back up to the launch. It would have been nice to have a shuttle scheduled so I could drift the whole way down to another takeout, but that required money and planning. I left Peacock Bridge and drove farther south, through Altha, Fla., which flew more Confederate flags per capita than anyplace I had been in a while. I made it to Johnny Boy Landing, a wide bend in the spring-fed river with a shoal on the south side.

I readied my gear as a red Chevy Impala pulled up, parking way down the ramp at the water’s edge. A hunched character in overalls got out, hoping to chat. The old-timer squinted and pointed at the river bend and said, “Seventy years ago, me and Johnny Whiteside and Ed Moats throwed three sticks of dynamite into that hole off the ramp.”

They used to swim there, and the dynamite broke off all the sharp rocks on the bottom. The dynamite also killed “half a tub-full” of bream, stump knockers, bass and suckers. They didn’t know it would kill the fish.

He blew his nose in a kerchief and said as a kid he’d ride a horse to a hole downstream, find some shade, tie it up and limit out on bream and stump knockers. The bream had already spawned, he explained, but the stump knockers were fixin’ to bed down real soon. He bestowed a few more bits of wisdom and just like that, the Impala was throwing gravel as it reversed up the ramp. I was happy to talk with him, but it was nearly 1100 and I was anxious to get back on the water.

The water was fast on the shoal south of the bend, and it was tough holding position, so after a few casts I paddled upstream, tossing a Chigger Craw and a Senko at eddies and cover. I had a dink bite but nothing else. Famished, I drifted back to Johnny Boy Landing and hit the road, stopping at Dickey’s Barbecue at the junction. It was good, but don’t bother asking for the side Caesar salad. The girl looked confused when I ordered it, like she didn’t even know it was on the menu.

A couple of weekends later in May, I identified a launch farther down the Chipola that’s two miles upstream from Look and Tremble Rapids, the river’s best-known shoals. I parked beside a bridge at sunrise and clambered down some riprap to drop the kayak. As I shoved off, a healthy shoal bass of 16 inches sauntered over to get a look at me and soon drifted downstream. I took it as a bad omen.

The water was clear and swift, and I ran a spinnerbait on the drift to the rapids without a bite. Hearing the rush of the shoals behind me, I hit the west bank and wade-fished around the eddies and sprouts of eelgrass. The air was still cool with the sun peeking over the trees, and I switched to a tube jig below the rapids. Nothing. The shoals looked so fishy; similar water on the Susquehanna up north normally yields a handful of smallmouth bass.

The jagged limestone boulders creating the shoals chewed up my water shoes, and I eventually worked back upstream with a crawfish colored crankbait. One solid fish waddled up in pursuit of the crankbait without committing, and that was the extent of the morning’s action. I hit the launch a little before 1100. Running back up to Johnny Boy Landing, I saw a flotilla of inner tubes piloted by splashing kids, so that was a no-go. I kept driving up to Peacock Bridge, and thankfully there were only a few trucks and trailers in the lot.

I grabbed my shaky head rod when I parked because I had wondered about those bridge pilings, and sure enough, when I peered down the riprap I saw two shoalies finning in the shade. I pitched the shaky head worm upstream, expecting to spook them. Instead, they pivoted to the bait and wandered out of sight. My line started moving, and I set the hook. The fish was in a mood to fight, but I was so desperate to get my hands on a shoalie that I swung it onto the bank and raced to grab it. The shoal bass didn’t make it easy, but I got one. Of course I celebrated with lunch at Dickey’s, careful to order mac and cheese on the side instead of salad.

Continue to part 2 here

Originally appeared in Bassmaster Magazine 2018.

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