New Orleans to Punta Gorda

Bri and I flew to New Orleans to explore that city for 3 days and then drive across the Florida panhandle to explore coastline, fish and visit friends for another 5 days.

New Orleans is a place that I always want to return to and Bri had never been.  I really wanted to show her some of the things I had seen there and wander into a few new areas as well. Neither one of us had ever been to the Florida Panhandle....

First Stop:   New Orleans    -    French Quarter, The Marigny and Garden District 

Casting on Bourbon Street at 7 am. Photo credit Bri. 

We wandered the streets pretending to be artists. 

and wandered through the charm until we were hungry.

We ate oysters at a few different places in the French Quarter.  Felix's ended up being our favorite. 

Felix's has a less fancy atmosphere than both Acme and Bourbon House Oysters - which are right across the street. But we really liked both the size and quality of the oysters here. And the staff was great. 

Oysters coming in to the French Quarter.

 I got us lost trying to find a certain thrift/junk store in the Marigny and we stumbled into this art studio -
 -  Dr. Bob's art studio and shop 

One of Dr. Bob's paintings

A Dr. Bob decorated guitar.  He is kicking my ass at art. 

Glass decorations on top of a gate in the French Quarter.

The Mississippi rolls by behind the levee generally just out of sight - in the French Quarter.  I jogged off a portion of my debauchery along the river. I imagine back many years ago when the river was a more integral part of the French Quarter. 

St. Vincent's Infant Asylum in the Garden District.  Built 1864.  Margaret Haughery - the amazing woman who founded this place is very much worth reading about. 

A sign painter's shrine in the Garden District



Second Stop:            Destin and Panama City, Florida on the Panhandle.  

Bri put up with a lot of windy and cold inlet fishing. She was a really good sport about it. Probably the sun helped. 

We hired Jason Stacy of Shallow Water Expeditions and hit the Shell Island area of the St. Andrews Bay complex near Panama City - with both fly and spinning rods. We rolled out on a morning in sub 40 degree air. Check out Shallow Water Expeditions on Vimeo for some very nice videos. 

Really tough to actually hook and then land this fish .... if you have ever been around Sheepshead.  They shred bait or lures with a very hard set of teeth and are almost never hooked. I bet the ratio is about 20 hits to 1 fish in the boat.  Though Bri managed to land 2 on this trip.

Jason put me on some big redfish on fly.  I had no idea the panhandle could be this good in January and my sight fishing skills were really not up to the task. We saw a lot of dolphin and had a lot of fishing action. Bri hooked and lost 2 really really big redfish on spinning and could hardly hang onto the rod. 

Blind casting along the beach with an 8 weight rod and connecting. Shell Island is the 20 miles of undeveloped beach in the background. 

Bri with a small redfish. She actually outfished me. The objective of the trip was to put her on some saltwater fish as she has only done freshwater fishing.  

Releasing the big redfish of the day.  

A stop in Tallahassee to visit my cousin Ian and his wife Karen.  They can really eat  - and drink -  and are always up for a good time. Ian was a bit disappointed that Bri and I crashed right after dinner but us fish people have to get good sleep.

3rd Stop:  North Port and Punta Gorda, Florida

My best friends Luis and Deanna just moved to North Port, Florida only about 10 days prior..... 
And we descended on their new place for some DIY canoe and wade fishing.  Amazingly their new place was already totally set up to have guests. 

Heading out in the new canoe from Ponce park near Punta Gorda. 

The first fish of the day! Deanna snaps a photo as Luis hooks a sea trout in a residential canal. The trout were slow to get going and the bite did not start until noon. It was cold the whole time we were there by Florida standards - with mornings in the 40's. 

Getting out of the canoe to wade fish.  

Luis finding fish.  Seatrout aggressively feeding in a boat channel just off a flat on a rising tide.  Luis and I each had a really good day - with 20+  Seatrout landed each  - in a totally new area.  The sea trout seemed to love the cold weather. Other species were more elusive. Though there were a few mullet around and we did spot at least one huge basking redfish. 

Bigger Sea Trout. About as good as fishing ever gets. Standing in one place over sand and having a sea trout slam your lure every few casts....
We had seatrout going crazy for over an hour. Not a true trout at all - Sea Trout are in the Croaker family and very closely related to Redfish - and Gaspergou or Freshwater Drum for that matter. Though with their slender toothy appearance they look totally different than other groups of fish in that family.

Underwater shot of one of the Speckled Sea Trout.  With the head in profile you can see some resemblance to redfish. 

Bri's second Sheepshead of the trip. 

Headed into the mangroves for some snook fishing. And maybe see a laid up redfish as well. 

Another cool thing about Florida - the bird life and reptile life is off da hook.  Photo credit - Deanna 

Luis Campos - AKA "Snook Troll" - for his prowess at catching Snook under the Port Charlotte city bridges. Wading as deep as we are comfortable with. Skipping soft plastic lures under the mangroves and often into the branches. Funny the more fish you catch the deeper you are willing to go.  And in winter risk of gator or bull shark is very minimal. 

Connecting with some juvenile Snook in intimate mangrove creeks. 

Releasing a bass-sized Snook 

The great women  - Deanna and Bri - who sometimes come along on our fishing adventures.

General flats fishing assemblage for Florida. I cant say enough good about the lures in the left portion of this tackle box - the "Texas rigged" soft plastic lures.  Phil Knoll showed me his hybrid style of fishing on Long Island, NY back in 2006 and it is my go-to style for saltwater flats now.

My last fish of the trip. Wading the big wide open flats at Ponce De Leon Park I got a really pretty flounder.

                                                                             

What happens completely inside of a giant novelty $14.75 margarita falls well outside of the confines of that margarita.
We hope to return someday.

Well i guess now it is Goodbye. Gad dangit Florida why you gotta be like that. The water of West Bay gets the final word in this parting shot. If you look closely you can see Hernando De Soto and some other men in armor struggling through the palmettos along the shore there.

Inspectre Rides Into Winter Mist.

Welcome to another edition of Neil Whitacre's travel and fishing blog. 

I got a chance to get back to Iowa the beginning of this month. And experienced the continued thrill of now looking at my home state with the eyes of a foreigner. 

I changed the name of this blog from Conflicted...       to Seagull + Fry    to more accurately reflect my feelings on the urban fishing experience.  A lone gull flies poetically through the fog somewhere and swoops for the tossed fry. 

                                                Spawned out Salmon on Eagle Creek.

 That painterly looking pink area on the head there is either fungal or crayfish plucking zone. It was odd and slightly disconcerting to see crayfish still very active and working on salmon carcasses in September. For one, crayfish are not native to this part of the country and they are probably pretty effective egg eaters.

                      The Blue Angel at the back of Greenwood Cemetary in Muscatine, Iowa. 

 She used to have a hand with a rose in it. We used to go into this cemetary at midnight on Halloween and hope to see her drop the rose. Instead what would happen is we would get chased out by the cops.

                                        Bri took me on my first visit to Mount St. Helens. 

Photo is of the cool 3D display to illustrate the path of the boiling river wall of mud and rock and trees that poured down the mountain that day.

                   Another doll house. This one is inside the barn at a home I was inspecting. 

         I suspect it takes more than a facebook level attention span to craft something like this.

Chicken Turtle shell found in Iowa. 

 My brother found this shell doing land surveying work in far Southeastern Iowa. A couple hundred miles north of its typical range.  The reptile nerd in me was thrilled at this anomaly. I called the Herp lab at Iowa State and left a message.

Sometimes there is fishing.  Sometimes fishing is all there is.

Bri and I continued our annual tradition of hitting the Icebreaker merino wool sale in November. 

 This one has a tarpon head on it. A face on it only the screech of your drag could love. 

                    A very recent drawing --  Life is Funny.                       

By this we do not mean funny. We mean all emotions all at once.  All the time.

I have been doing a lot of home inspecting and not a ton of fishing.  Thats how life is right ? We are all so afraid of being poor that all of us get out there and work almost every single day.  We might all mostly squelch our real talents for fear of poverty but maybe sometimes we don't crush ourselves with fear all the way. We are still an animal creature somehow. Sometimes inspiration creeps out. Forces itself out into the light of day. Or is it panic....that sets in. The feeling that I wont get to catch another Steelhead before death and we run outside and go fishing. Who can say.

                                   Mansion on the Mississippi River bluff in Muscatine, Iowa. 

I see seagulls in the flat mowed grass in the park across from my condo in portland - hunting worms.  I used to see gulls at the park that I would fish at in the 1980's in Musactine, Iowa. I am always impressed at gulls strange inland flyways - and where they will stop for food.  Even if that means eating parking lot fries sometimes.

                                                                      King Missile. 

Death of a salmon.  Big carcass providing nutrients to their future young in these cold clear nutrient poor rivers. It would be so much easier to spawn at sea like everybody else ?  I have no idea what the baby salmon - or alevins are eating to grow to 8" and then leave freshwater.  Seems miraculous to me that these young fish gain nutrients in these cold clear rivers. Startling to find out how much the nitrogen and other nutrients in the dead fish plays a role in riparian tree growth as well.

Godspeed Vincent

In May of 2003 I took a road trip up the east coast from Miami to New York stopping 6 or 7 places along the coast to camp and fish.  It was an ill advised trip as I had $500 to my name at the time and somewhere in central Florida I lost my jeep muffler on a mud road and put it back on with bungees. But the trip overall was a great experience. I have a many distinct memories of landing different fish on that trip. One that stands out is casting to these little mangrove snapper and sheepshead in a tiny mud creek through the marsh grass from my kayak and catching a Spanish Mackerel ! An electric blue fish of deep wide open salt water - waaaaaaay back up into a brackish marsh creek.  It is really for these kinds of impossible surprises that I fish.

                                                  Taking in some Portland Trailblazers

                                   A hero Bluegill locks eyes with a Snapper in a drawing. 

                             How we live now.  All 440 square rad feet of our tiny condo. 


                                       

                                                         
                                                    A creature of halloween dance party. 

                                          Forrest Sprite beast is serious about some shit. 

I have never had anything but positive experiences with octopi - with the 3 experiences I've had.  But this drawing needed conflict. But I hope no young landlubbers get the wrong idea.

I bought some egg pattern flies and am getting new waders and will be back in the river soon. Right now Portland is in the middle of getting a ton of rain. We are at 10.3" for just December 1 to 12. The rivers are all blown out and ultra muddy. The eggs laid in the fall wobble down in between the rocks in the river bed. Circle of Life dude.

          Left to Right: My Mom !  My Brothers sons - Woodson and Major - Bri  - and My Dad 

I will catch up with you all via this blog - WITH some fishing next time - the early part of next year.

Happy Holidays.

Neil