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Hooray for Turtle Turds!
On New Year’s Day we were anchored south of the Ocean Reef Club off Key Largo and chumming hard. We had caught several nice mangrove, mutton, yellowtail, lane snapper and porgies on the shallow patches inside of Hawk’s channel, when a scene out of Caddy Shack occurred where what appeared to be a solid human turd floated slowly through our chum-slick on the tide. The boat owner suggested we take our lines out of the water until it passed. None of us required urging to comply. Thereafter we continued fishing for another hour when yet another, slightly smaller turd floated by. For the last three weeks we have seen strong west winds blow dirty water out of the Gulf of Mexico. Also, the Key Largo sewer authority has been connecting Ocean Reef Club’s sewer system to the relatively new Key Largo tertiary sewage treatment center. For many years going back and many years to come a sewer pipe off Key Biscayne otherwise known as the shit hole, has and will release billions of gallons of partially treated sewage from Miami into the Gulf Stream. I wondered if any could have been responsible for what I was seeing. Either way it…
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Center of the Universe Pond
At Center Pond, native brook trout is what’s for supper. After a 5 mile hike up the mountain we put up our camp and took to the lake in the two canoes. If Center Pond was out West in the dessert canyon country it would be considered a box canyon covered by a large shallow lake. The lake ranges from 15 to five feet deep. At the stream entry end of the lake it is deeper and full of rocks. At the drainage end it’s shallow and the bottom is silted in. The mountain tops rise up on three sides and the wind swirls up the center of the lake, making it tricky sometimes to throw and see a dry fly. Dry fly fishing is best in the still of the morning and when it calms in the afternoon. Native brook trout feed on dry flies like a size 16 Hornberg or Adams or on nymphs and leaches like the famous bead head nymph or black woolly bugger leach fly that we purchased along with our fishing licenses at Two Rivers Canoe and Tackle in Millinocket. The water in Center Pond is the color of old dried blood from cedar…
