Velociworld

WELAKA

I want to make Acidman's Misty Mountain Hop but I may be tied up. I have customers down to the company fish camp in Welaka the 27th to the 30th, and might be committed for an extra day. A real shame if I can't make the scene.

The camp isn't too bad, though. It's actually a two-story corporate lodge on the St. John's River about fifteen miles south of Palatka. We have fishing guides who take you out for the bass. It's about a ten-minute boat ride to the locks that take you into the Rodman Reservoir, the bass capital of the world. The tree-huggers want to tear down the dam that creates the reservoir and restore the natural flow of the river, but that would turn the area from a multi-miilion dollar fishing mecca back into the blighted neckbone swamp it was before they built the dam. Tough call, but I think I'd leave the dam.

My biggest bass there was a lousy five pounder, but I've had customers in my boat pull in a fourteen pounder. THAT is a fish. I once had an alligator breach like a sub on emergency blow ten feet from my boat. He had a bass, about an eight-pounder, in his mouth. Bit it through the middle, snapped left to get the head portion, snapped right to get the tail portion, then hit the water on descent. Scared hell out of me. He was about twelve feet long. A mean beast.

We used to have a fishing lodge in Boca Grande as well, with a 32-foot Blackfin and some inshore boats. Boca's where the Bush fellows wet a hook every year. Some coworker asshats burned it down about three years ago whilst cooking breakfast at midnight while drunk. Bastards. This is tarpon country, but I never went in May when the tarps were running. I did bust 32 drum and snapper once, though, in a single day.

The Boca lodge was beautiful. It had a four star kitchen with a Greenbrier chef on call. The manager had the best job in the world. He'd run the Boca lodge from January to May, then take a month off, then run our Grand Teton Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming from July to November. After the Boca lodge burned we sold it off for condos, then sold the Grand Teton to the Vail Company. Shit.

So I'll be doing some fishing and drinking and ass-kissing, but with luck I can peel out and head north to the mountains. THAT'S where you want to be at the end of October.