Leisure Lakes Park, Florida

Thursday, June 28, 2007, Leisure Lakes Park, Homestead, Florida

There are still two hours until dark and I’ve found a gorgeous blue spot on the street map of Homestead. The blue spot is in the midst of a green rectangle labeled, “Leisure Lakes Park.” Sounds right up my alley.

As I weave through this town towards the blue spot I notice that the homes are shrinking. By the time I get to ground zero the houses are small and flat and their orifices are covered with bars and their lawns are surrounded by fences. (Even their front doors have elaborate bars.)

And then I see Valhalla: a blue lake – maybe 15 acres – amid large green lawns. The sign says “Leisure Lakes Park,” and there’s a busy pavilion with music blasting – a kind of exotic Zydeco with a thrumping (yes, “thrumping”) rhythm. And a refrain that repeats and repeats and repeats – all in Spanish.

In a green field is a fully-manned soccer competition – shouting and running and kicking. And everywhere are mothers and children and babies. All Hispanic.

The lake is populated with bizarre ducks. You know how at city parks there are tons of white ducks and then that one duck that is splotched with blacks and reds and speckles and other abnormalities? At Leisure Lakes Park all of the ducks are like that. Even their babies. I see several groups of newly-hatched ducklings – all with mottled coloring. Nowhere is there a plain white duck.

The lake has no anglers. Not even a sign of anglers. No errant fishing line, no lure packages, no worm containers. This lake must prohibit fishing, but there are no signs stating such. So I decide to wade right in – figuratively, that is. (The signs do say no swimming or boating.)

I park in a crowded lot, walk through scattered families (Cuban perhaps?), and become the only angler. The water is clear as a spring, and within seconds I see a shoreline bass about a foot long. He’s not interested in my finesse worm, so I switch to a Senko and he takes it.

A couple sitting the grass twenty feet away sees my accomplishment and one remarks, in English, “A fish!” That’s all I hear them say.

During the next two hours before the sun sets I catch two dozen bass, mostly the size of the first one, all along the shoreline shallows, and all on the Senko. All of these bass look the same: long and slender and pale green with no striking markings like I’m accustomed to seeing in other waters. They must be hatchery fish, and the hatchery truck must have dumped them earlier today. All of my fish have been approximately the same size – a giveaway that they’re from the hatchery.

There are also Peacock bass in this lake; I see them and can’t get them to bite. They’re various sizes, and the largest I see is about a pound. I throw every lure in the world at them, but no interest. I’ve never caught a Peacock, but I know what they are – from television, from magazines, and from visits to other Florida waters where experts have pointed them out to me. I’ll have to read up on them.

Just as the sun is beginning to set a man coasts up to me on his bicycle. He’s thin and harsh and scarred, has shiny black hair and mellow brown skin, and appears to be in his late twenties.

“Are you doing any good?” is his salutation with a smile and raised eyebrows in perfect and unaffected English.

We are soon embraced in a fishing conversation. He’s a bass angler too. He explains that no, these are not hatchery bass, and that the hatchery truck has never ever visited this 15-year-old lake that is a borrow pit used to build the housing development surrounding it. He says the lake looks shallow, but it’s deep in the middle. He never sees anyone fishing here, and had thought it fishless until seeing a little boy catch a fish. Then he began occasionally fishing here and even caught one fairly large bass on a Krocodile spoon fished out deep. He points to where the ledge is – a ledge he found while wading out to unhook a hung lure.

He’s never seen or heard of a Senko and I explain and demonstrate how it works. As we talk I get a strike and my rod really bends and my drag really burns and soon I bring in a large bass - over four pounds.

Before he pedals off, he tells me about another lake I need to try – a very deep lake where he got his diving certification. He says it’s out near the air base, it has huge bass, and it’s publicly accessible.

He leaves and I hear him talking with others – in Spanish – as he pedals off. The Zydeco beat continues its exotic rhythms as I walk back to the car among Leisure Lake’s regulars.