Day 3 was supposed to be a full-on Tamiami Trail assault… never mind that we already fished part of it yesterday.
But that’s how these trips go. Plans are vague. Ditches are endless. Fish don’t care what day it is.
We kicked things off early with a pile of Florida bass (Micropterus floridanus) at the first stop—finally, some commitment. Tarpon were rolling in the background, as casually as you like, but wouldn’t touch a thing. The kind of rejection you just have to nod at. Respect.
Bret landed a couple more Florida gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus) that morning, while Mayan cichlids, Oscars, and Jaguar cichlids stacked up further down the Trail as the ditch narrowed to little more than a soggy gutter. Didn’t matter. The fish were there.
It was weird and excellent.
Somewhere in that stretch, Bret and Dave ran into the world’s two smallest snook—a blink-and-you-miss-it moment that still counts. And on the way back east, Dave decided it was time to check a box: Florida gar on the fly.
He posted up on the roadside, traffic blasting by a few feet away, and started slinging casts into the ditch while cars did 80 behind him. At one point, he made a backcast directly in front of an 18-wheeler.
“I made a backcast in front of an 18-wheeler that I should not have.”
– Dave, later, on the podcast
(Somehow this isn’t even close to the sketchiest thing we’ve seen out here.)
But the plan worked.
Dave stuck a lump of a Florida gar—legit size, legit eat.
Before the gar, he landed Mayan cichlids, Jaguar cichlids, and Oscars (Astronotus ocellatus) on the fly. The full tropical medley, all within spitting distance of passing semis and gator-filled culverts.
Meanwhile, Luke got his first Florida gar on spinning gear—a rite of passage for any roadside ditch junkie.
No new weather, no new soundtrack. Just more sun, more gators, and more fish that shouldn’t be in the same body of water but are.
Long day. Cool fish. Perfect Florida.