If It Swims

Bret and Justin hit Lake Grapevine on a mission: add rungs, claim glory, and maybe land something weird in the process.

What actually happened?

• Bret brought the KastKing baitfeeder setup, same as always
• Rigged up with parmesan cheese on a hair rig (yes, really—yes, intentionally)
• And proceeded to fail gloriously, catching two channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) instead of carp.
  (Still counts as fishing. Definitely not progress.)

Meanwhile, Justin hooked into two smallmouth buffalo (Ictiobus bubalus)—both just shy of what he needed to hit Rung 1 on the Carp Ladder. Close, but buffalo don’t give out easy wins.

No new rungs. No new glory. But plenty of bait shame and lessons learned.

Because that’s how it goes when you chase carp in public lakes with cheese products and hope. One day you’re climbing. The next, you’re explaining to a stranger why your tackle smells like an Italian deli.

The Carp Ladder doesn’t hand out victories.
You earn them—with stubbornness, sunburn, and the occasional dairy-based disaster.

In a public pond somewhere in Carrollton, TX, under the unrelenting honk of way too many ducks and geese, Bret and Denise took a swing at the only climbing system that matters:
The Carp Ladder.

Armed with spinning rods and 3000 series KastKing baitfeeder reels, they slung bait into water so bird-slick it practically quacked. Denise kept it old-school and effective—corn for Rung 1, bread for Rung 2—and stuck two common carp (Cyprinus carpio) like it was a backyard clinic.

Bret landed his two as well (rungs logged, fish confirmed, style intact), then added bonus bycatch to the mix:

• A channel catfish so small it looked like it swam out of a bait tank
• And a black bullhead (Ameiurus melas) with a gut so full of chum it probably shouldn’t have floated

It was hot, in that classic April-in-Texas kind of way—baking sun, but not full hellfire yet. A good day to sling bait and sweat while geese yell at you for trespassing on their suburban sludge kingdom.

They wrapped it up the only way you should after a day spent chucking bait in bird water:
cold beers at 3 Nations Brewing.
Because if your hands don’t smell like chum and your face doesn’t feel a little sunburnt, did you even go fishing?

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.”

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.

We’re not exactly sure what time Dave got in from Austin. He was supposed to arrive late the night before, but his airport experience wasn’t any smoother than ours. We finally all crossed paths at the hotel breakfast buffet—where the three of us did our patriotic duty by attempting to singlehandedly spike the GDP of coffee-producing nations.

After roughly two gallons of caffeine, we loaded up and drove west on Alligator Alley, light spinning gear in hand, ready for another mixed-bag blitz.

Only… the fish weren’t.

The morning bite was quiet. We picked off a few Mayan cichlids, and Dave and Bret each pulled a spotted sunfish (Lepomis punctatus), with Bret getting his on a fly rod just to flex. And then—because Florida is allergic to predictability—Bret somehow landed a pleco (Pterygoplichthys sp.) on a jig. A full-blown armored catfish. Not snagged. A legit eat. The kind of thing you might tell someone at a bar, and they’d slowly back away from you.

As we pushed further west, the fishing got even tougher. Long stretches of sun-glared water with no takes, no signs, no action. Just gar-shaped silhouettes turning up their noses and sunfish that had clearly read ahead in the script.

So, we made a call.

We dropped south to Highway 41 and started working our way back east. And almost immediately, the switch flipped.

Fish. Everywhere.

More Mayans. A surge of Florida gar—though Bret was the only one to actually land one. The rest just cruised by like toothy ghosts, teasing, following, vanishing.

Luke and Bret each picked up a surprise ladyfish (Elops saurus) in a ditch we didn’t even realize had salt in it. Because of course it did. It’s Florida—everything is brackish, especially the rules.

Dave closed strong with a perfect Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus)—the same fish you used to stare at in your dentist’s office as a kid, now eating jigs under a stretch of mangroves like it belonged there..

The bite was back on, but so were the gators.

They were everywhere again. Big ones. Watching.

One particularly bold beast tried to grab a hooked Mayan at the bank. We took the hint and backed off. This isn’t a show. We’re not here to feed reptiles, no matter how many teeth they bring to the table.

By sunset, the cooler weather had burned off, the water was glass, and the day had gone full IFITSWIMS:

• One hard-earned species list.
• One unexplainable armored catfish.
• A few dodged gator incidents.
• And the knowledge that some ditches contain secrets. Salty, scaled secrets.

Straight Off the Plane, Straight Into the Glades

After a full serving of airport nonsense—weather delays, shifting plans, and whatever it is airlines do when they forget how time works—Luke and Bret touched down in South Florida around 11AM. Originally, they were supposed to be boots-on-the-ground the night before at 10PM. Instead, they landed jet-lagged and fish-starved, with zero interest in checking into a hotel.

Taco Bell. Gas station coffee. First cast by noon.

They veered off 41, rolled down a dusty side road, and started chucking tiny soft plastics on light spinning gear. Think crappie-sized swimbaits behind jig heads—simple, twitchy, and just deadly enough.

And the fish wasted no time.

Mayan cichlids (Mayaheros urophthalmus) were hyper-aggressive—so much so that when a few massive Florida bass showed up in one of the ditches, they couldn’t even get a clean shot at a bait. The Mayans were faster, meaner, and absolutely everywhere.

Double-ups on warmouth (Lepomis gulosus). Double-ups on Mayans. The kind of numbers day that makes you forget you’ve been awake since the night before at DFW..

Then, out of nowhere, Bret stuck a walking catfish (Clarias batrachus)—because of course he did. A literal invasive air-breather showed up like it got lost on its way to a roadside puddle. The only thing missing was a soundtrack cue.

Big alligators kept a close watch.
The sun never let up—not a single cloud, not a hint of wind, just full-beam, skin-toasting stillness.
A couple of birders wandered by, quietly counting feathers while soft plastics were getting hammered five feet away.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, National Park officers stopped by for a license check (they were polite, and yes, everything was in order).

All of it soundtracked by the static punch of The Shark, a South Florida alt-rock station that runs on Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and just enough late-’90s angst to glue it all together. A perfect blend of Bret and Luke’s musical leanings—and somehow, the perfect score for ditch fishing on no sleep.

The luggage was still baking in the rental. The hotel was just a name on a reservation screen.