HONEYMOON!!!!!

Alice and I went took our honeymoon trip to Florida to go fishing and also visit my Grandma and her Grandpa. We got to her Grandpa's house in New Smyrna beach first and had a nice dinner. We walked to the beach that night and felt the softest sand in the world! It was like walking on warm snow powder. The next day we drove to my Grandmas house and did a little bit of fishing in a pond behind her house. I caught one nice Largemouth and a couple of small ones. The next day Alice caught a pretty good one on a spinnerbait.

Finally we made our way across the state to Pine Island. It has the coolest little towns i have ever been to. Matlacha was a great little place that is an old fishing village. Saint James city(i don't know why they call it a city) was another spiffy small town. The entire island is surrounded by mangroves and creeks...perfect kayak fishing area.

We got a site at a KOA campground to park our trailer and it ended up being on a small pond. Needless to say i fished it as soon as we were set up. I had a few hard hits on a spit'n image but none that got hooked. I decided to wake up early the next day because i was so excited about the potential big bass i missed. I got up around 6 and started fishing immediately. I had a couple hits but again no hooksets. About 45 mins of fishing i finally hooked one on the spit'n image. It started to scream drag! I thought "This is going to be the biggest bass I've ever caught!" It took several good runs and i finally got it to shore..."what the hell is that??" I was 100% certain it was a freshwater pond but i had no clue what kind of fish it was. After looking for a bit i thought...mangrove snapper? Nah. Its freshwater. But it was! A 22" mangrove snapper in a landlocked freshwater pond. Later I found out that people have caught snook, tarpon, sheepshead, and mangrove snapper all in this little pond the size of a football field. Crazy! I also learned that it is not uncommon for certain saltwater fish to adapt to fresh if they are hatched in it. (Thanks for the info Cory Routh)


Over the next 3 days my new wife and I fished the west side of pine island and got on some good fish. It is unreal how full of fish the area is! The mullet there must be on steroids because they were the size of small torpedoes and jumping everywhere all the time! I'm talking about 4lb+ mullet! Altogether it was extremely fun and fairly productive. We found some nice creeks and cuts in the mangroves and caught snook, trout, ladyfish, puppy drum, and catfish. On the 2nd day Alice saw a 5-6' long shark in about 2' of water and took off after it to get a better look! FEARLESS! What a trooper :)

Pine island is an amazing place to fish and the people there are great! I think I know where i want to live for a while. I have to start working towards that...

AMAZING HONEYMOON! BEST WIFE EVER!!!