My December 2023 Flamingo vacation.. the good the bad and the ugly..

It started off bad… the night before scheduled departure my trusty yak hauler bit the dust..


Just as I’ve gotten back into Jacksonville from last business appointment I hear a loud pop and big metal parts banging… I pull over into vacant parking lot in downtown and call for a tow truck.. 30 minutes later I’ve been hauled home.. could have been a lot worse as it could have happened on the road to south Florida.

I spend the next three days looking at vehicles to replace iit as transmission shop can’t even look at it for two weeks…finally find one, spend two more days getting a rack ordered and installed.. on the road again.

It rains for about the first 8 hours of trip and then clears for a couple of hours then solid rain for 6 more hours..I never checked the weather as it is not going to change by looking.. make it to Chokoloskee, the west coast entrance into the Everglades after 3 hour nap at rest stop somewhere near Tallahassee and 27 hours from when I left home..wanted to check conditions as the weather system that blew through ahead of me was just short of a named tropical storm with straight line winds to 60 mph.



See this fellow in middle of road … never had seen one in that part of Florida in 25 years of living and fishing that area.. thinking this was going to be a great trip as sun is shinning..

Chokolloskee was flooded bad… from rains and storm surge of 3 feet which flooded the area.. roads were flooded and almost couldn’t get to ramp at chokosloskee island resort where I normally stay a day or two to fish on way back home each trip..



Old courthouse parking lot flooded.. One look at the water.. white capping mud and I decided I wouldn’t be stopping here to fish on the way home.. it was ugly.



Cut across Tamiami Traill (hwy 41) instead of the route shown, to get from west coast entrance to Everglades to Flamingo southern entrance.. more later

Looks like a rough start to a vacation. Hope it gets better. Stay safe.

Thank goodness it’s over.. I’m exhausted… glad to be home and resting… Will never vaca in Florida in months of Dec, Jan, Feb, usually windy and this time windy and cold..

Wowwwww. Rough start. It’ll get better when ya get into the fish. Can’t wait to see more.

The fishing was the worst I’ve ever experienced! 🤣 All but one day was windy, too windy for my taste.. took a chance and made a two mile paddle across open bay in the backcountry to a place I’d never been and winds picked up dramatically on the paddle there… to the point where instead of fishing for three hours after getting there.. was trying to figure out how much energy it would take to maintain a 1/2 mph paddling speed against the wind… which would have taken 4 hours to get back in the dark. Only fished a half hour and started back in.. luckily the wind let up and all ended well but I had already figured I was going to have to stay overnight on the water in a protected area.



The picture above was going there when wind first picked up… they aren’t big waves because the water is only a 4 or 5 deep..

Pictures are really really slow to load and can only take it for so long before giving up.

The best part of this trip was taking bird pictures... they were so beat up from the winds that they would be roosting in the same lee side of islands as I was hiding out.

easier than loading pictures again: https://texasfishingforum.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/14935108/1

Thought this was going to end my day of fishing.


Always good to be able to make it back in before dark.

That wasn't one of your better trips. But at least you got in a little fishing and made it back safely. Sorry to hear about the breakdown.

Now that I’ve had more time to think about it and fully rested, it wasn’t that bad. my usual motel I stay at had one last room for me as the place was packed during the holidays and I never make reservations ahead of time… met a really nice guy that asked if his kids were making too much noise.. I was outside my room smoking.. I told him.. nope.. they can laugh and scream as loud as they want.. as long as it drowned out the gun shots from the neighborhood.. come to find out he was from Washington DC and had stopped for one night before taking his family down to Key West the next day. He was from Slovenia, a diplomat, working at the embassy in DC.. this would be his third assignment.. for next four years.. his previous assignments were for four years in Beijing and 4 years in Moscow.. he must have read my mind as he said he wasn’t a spy.

The next night I’m out of my room to smoke and see a guy sleeping, passed out standing up.. eyes closed. I watched him a while before asking him if everything was ok.. he finally woke up, nodded, and left.. Didn’t understand how he kept his balance as he wasn’t leaning against building..


Super 8 in Florida City, near Homestead.

“The next night I’m out of my room to smoke and see a guy sleeping, passed out standing up.. eyes closed. I watched him a while before asking him if everything was ok.. he finally woke up, nodded, and left.. Didn’t understand how he kept his balance as he wasn’t leaning against building..”

Now THIS would have been a good picture. 🤣🤣🤣

Ok was just reading the ratings on the this place and one guy gave it a low rating because of all the hookers in the area..


Stopped off at the pier in Hollywood one night Dania beach pier… windy there too.



Stop in at the local circle k at 5:30 a.m for snacks and drinks one morning.. as I get to door I open it for a guy that is coming out with his hands full of beer.. hear lady screaming every f bomb names as he leaves, saying nothing.. I felt sorry for him until I find out he has just walked out with several six packs of beer and snacks.. Lady running store locks the door behind me.. Find out the guy regularly stops by and does his shopping then leaves without paying.. She always calls the police,.. he is always gone on foot by the time they get there.. She was especially mad this time because she said he was calling her every name in the book while grabbing his beer..Cops get there while I was there.. about 3 minutes.. it’s happening in a lot of places..

Wind. . . Rain. . . Wet Clothes. . . Robbers. . . Bears. . . Can’t say it wasn’t uneventful 😬😬😬

Met a guy one day that has the fishing disease bad.. semi retired from government job.. his brother a commercial fisherman. He had stopped by the Tamiami Trail to fish for bass/peacocks for the first time .. I was there to fish the bank as I didnt feel like fighting the winds.. this guy and his brother know Roland Martin pretty well.. He taught them how to catch monster shiners in the lake they fish further north .. dump pig pellets, come back in an hour, throw cast net.. Roland refers to him and his brother as the Shiner Brothers... and told them if you want to catch big bass, you gotta have big shiners.. I thought it was hilarious that Roland would say that. My new friend was using artificial baits this day.

I havent mentioned it but I fished for bass one morning with a friend I met last year at Flamingo... had been facebook friends with him for several years before meeting him in person on the water by accident last trip... he had said the fishing at Flamingo had been tough the last month and recommended we fish one of the nearby freshwater ponds for bass on his day off.. he works for Flamingo Adventures for several months of the year, then moves to other popular destinations during the different tourist seasons around the country. He told me he had caught an 8 lb bass in the pond last year and had seen some monster snook in it.. I took my graph with me just to get an idea how deep the place was.. he said it was 10/12 feet which would be very deep for that area... deeper than any of the channels within miles of flamingo that I normally fish. Couldnt believe when I found water 24 feet deep... didnt realize there was any water that depth anywhere in the everglades... I guarantee you not many fisherman know that...as hardly anyone fishes that lake.. usually just kayaker tourists out for a paddle.. did a little research and found out the Buttonwood Canal was dug out in the early 1900s.. wouldnt be surprised if they used the equipment to dig out this lake as the stuff I saw on my graph was eyeopening.. I will fish it again next time and mark some of the steep drop offs and rock piles.

cant get any pictures to load.. will try again later

Did catch some bass that morning throwing 5 inch swim bait.. my friend caught bass and a small peacock there.. will be my go to place out of the wind next time as my closest place to Flamingo for peacocks was almost two hours away..



I still can’t figure out what this was… only picture I have of my graph while fishing the freshwater lake.. thought it was an alien space ship. After seeing the video of aliens at Miami mall I am more convinced..

Truly an adventure!