Deep Clear Lake, Florida

Friday, June 29, 2007, Deep Clear Lake, Homestead, Florida

That’s not the name of this lake; it doesn’t have a name. It’s a 25-acre borrow pit bordering vacant land on which some sort of new development will no doubt be built. Someone I met at another local pond told me about this lake – says it’s very deep and has huge bass.

This lake is a couple of miles from Homestead’s racetrack, and has no homes or buildings in the neighborhood – just vacant fields. A pair of earth-moving cranes sit alongside the lake, and 100-foot mounds of dug-out gray-white stuff border one side of the lake.

I park next to the cranes and walk the 20 feet to the edge of the lake and see that its shorelines drop vertically in a hurry. I also see a bunch of small Peacock bass and a couple of small largemouths. And a couple of 2-pound tilapia. I have over an hour until sunset and I anticipate that this is going to be one good hour!

But, as they say, the fishing is good but the catching is lousy. I throw everything at these fish but the kitchen refrigerator and there is not much interest. The water is clear as Jimmy Buffet’s empty glass, and so I know that the fish see my lures. I throw, in no particular order, a topwater popper, a topwater frog, a Rat-L-Trap, a topwater Spook, a Roadrunner, several versions of finesse worms, and a Senko. Nuttin honey. At least not much of nuttin. I do catch one big bluegill deep on a 3-inch finesse worm after getting continual bites on it. And I do catch one bass on the topwater frog – a bass scarcely 6 inches long. It always amazes me how such small bass can mouth such big lures. And I do catch one other bass – this one 10 inches – on a small piece of Berkely Gulp shrimp (which I purchased for general saltwater use).

If anyone else fishes here, there’s not much evidence. All I see on the ground is one small Mustad package. Shoreline anglers are famous for littering (I could make a living as a shoreline angler tracker) and around this lake are no other signs of their presence.

When you have an hour or so to fish a strange body of water and discover that there are lots of fish that you can’t figure out how to catch, you always think about it afterwards and determine what you’ll try next time. I’m going to throw a small Peacock bass imitator.