A Bad Fishing Day

As some of you may or may not know, I’m something of a fisherman. Every day, I check the almanac to see the tides and decide on the best time to hit the beach.

The best time to go is when the tide is rising. But there are other factors that can make the difference between a good fishing day and a bad one.

Today, for instance, the forces of nature were on full display: the ocean was super choppy and teeming with seaweed. Not good for fishing. But I decided to give it a shot anyway.

When the ocean is choppy — when it isn’t calm — it’s not good for fishing because the fish avoid the shoreline — they don’t want to get tossed around by the waves. And the seaweed floats on the surface in huge clumps that get caught up on your hook whenever you cast.

In fishing, casting means throwing the hook in the water. So instead of catching fish, you end up catching clumps of seaweed!

And to add insult to injury, the seaweed accumulates on the shore and feels icky under your feet and as it bakes in the hot Florida sun, it stinks to high heaven! It reeks!

I usually fish with a spoon, which is a smooth, silver, concave piece of metal with three hooks attached to the end. Concave means that something curves inward… like a bowl. So because of the spoon’s shape, as you reel it in, it glides over the surface of the water and shimmers in the sun, which makes it look like a small fish to the fish below the surface. But it doesn’t work when there’s a lot of seaweed floating around, as you can imagine.

By the way, in fishing, reeling means turning the little lever on the fishing rod and bringing the hook back. So when you catch a fish, you reel it in.

Now in Florida, you can’t go fishing without a fishing license. I just renewed mine and it came in the mail yesterday. The artwork on the card is by a famous Florida marine artist.
Isn’t that pretty?

So you always have to have your fishing license on you when you go fishing because you never know when a fish and wildlife officer is going to come around and ask you for it.

If you’re caught without one, they can fine you from $50 to $250, depending on whether it’s your first offense or not. I’ve never not had a fishing license, so my record — and my conscience — are clear. No matter where you live, you have to respect wildlife.

Look at the horrible situation we have in the Florida Everglades. That’s a huge wetland in the middle of the state, which also happens to be a national park.

Well, because some very irresponsible Florida residents decided the Burmese pythons they were keeping as pets had gotten too big and scary to keep in their homes, they just cut them loose in the Everglades.

Problem solved! Or was it? Well no… now the Everglades are overrun with ginormous pythons and they’re eating everything in sight.

As a solution, they’ve actually started paying hunters to go out and kill as many as they can, but the problem is that they’re breeding in such huge numbers that no matter how many the hunters take down, they don’t put as much as a dent in their population. It’s an out-and-out nightmare.

At this point, it won’t be long before the pythons run out of room in the Everglades and start moving into urban centers. Brrrr. I don’t even want to think about it!

So as you can see, today was not a good fishing day for me. Too choppy and too much seaweed. So after a couple more casts, I decided to call it a day and come back when the conditions are more favorable.