John Lloyd State Park, Florida

Thursday, June 28, 2007, John U. Lloyd State Park (Ft. Lauderdale)

The wind is up – really up – and the red flags are horizontal. So are the cranes that load the huge container ships across the canal on my left as I drive into this park.

Like Oleta, this park has hundreds of vacancies in its parking lots – only a dozen cars are here now. Also like Oleta, there are yellow butterflies. And on the ground are ground-hugging, six-petal yellow flowers the size of silver dollars. The same shade of yellow as the butterflies. And also like Oleta, there is a chameleon that lets me get very close – this one with a herringbone brown pattern on its spine.

The beach areas are no good for fishing today. The surf and the waves and the wind are all turbulent. And even if you could cast into that wind and surf, the turmoil has delivered a smorgasbord of flotsam and driftjunk – stuff that would foul every line cast into it. So I head to the boat launch area.

There are a few ramps in a small protected harbor and a canal running both directions. Only one truck and trailer are parked there. This is the area where I saw my first manatees during a business trip last year. I see none today, but I do catch a fish. Within a few minutes my rod bends and I reel in a 14-inch barracuda on a red finesse worm. After I toss him back I wipe my hands on a pancake-size leaf growing along this boardwalk trail along the canal.

I see schools of 3-inch pale green minnows, so I tie on a pale green Zoom fluke and give it a fishless try. I also see a school of a dozen or so 3-pounders swimming in circles – mullet I presume. They don’t look at my lures. Foot-long needlefish plow the surface, and I can get them to slash at a fast worm, but they don’t get hooked. Deep below I see a profound deep-green flash. I visit Florida waters seldomly, and now I remember one it the things that is always good: seeing a gigunda flash or a shadow down below that stops you alive in your tracks.

I depart this state park after an hour and hope for calm breezes that will allow beach fishing next time.