Day 4 was supposed to be the boat day.
Peacock bass. Clown knife fish. Urban jungle style.
But plans, like health, are fragile out here.
Luke started feeling rough the night before—legit sick. Not “too much sun” sick. Not “bad burrito” sick. The real deal. He looked like a guy who had lost a bar fight with a mosquito cloud. So he stayed back at the hotel, sleeping it off and sweating through the AC while Bret and Dave jumped on a guide boat with Captain Matthew Cavalieri of Matt’s Fishing Adventures.
Fishing canals connected to Lake Ida, they worked live shad along shorelines using the captain’s spinning setups—simple, clean, fishy.
Dave struck first with a pair of peacock bass and a surprise hybrid striped bass (Morone saxatilis × chrysops). Both Bret and Dave added more Florida bass to the running tally.
We also left Captain Matt with a few IFITSWIMS stickers—because if you’re guiding in Florida and your cooler doesn’t have a fish podcast logo slapped on it, are you even doing it right?
Post-trip, they refueled with tacos—because you don’t catch exotics in 90° canal water without following it up with salsa and regret—and then moved into full snakehead mode.
Back on their own spinning gear, Dave was throwing a topwater toad, Bret a frog, and they spent the rest of the afternoon prowling roadside ditches for that one angry bite. They got blow-ups, but no hookups—just the promise of violence and the splashes to prove it. Pure snakehead energy.
And then, just like that, the trip evaporated into airports and airplane seats.
Too much gear. Not enough sleep. Full phone memory. Gator dreams.
If Day 4 had a mood, it was “tired but not done.”