Fish I May, Fish I Might

By Steve Naas

Join an aging angler as he spends a lifetime traveling Florida fishing for "Big-uns". Using learned predatory skills and instincts he explores the state, hunting the waters for the giants that live below. From riding his bike to the nearest pond, to fishing the Keys , he spends over half a century trying to figure out his need to be on the water.

The son of an Everglades fishing guide, he fishes hundreds of bass tournaments at all levels before fulfilling his dreams of "pure" fishing. Find out what that means, while learning how important the memories really are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665515115

Book preview

© 2021 Steve Naas. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  01/28/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1512-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1513-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1511-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1     Picture Perfect

Chapter 2     Fish’in The Hood

Chapter 3     Daddy Day Care

Chapter 4     Partners In Bass

Chapter 5     Park Attendant

Chapter 6     Fishing With Piers

Chapter 7     Hunger Strike

Chapter 8     Fish’in For Big’uns

Chapter 9     Club Bass

Chapter 10   Bass Money

Chapter 11   Rainy Day Fish

Chapter 12   Bass Police

Chapter 13   Call Me A Hurst

Chapter 14   Fishy Changes

Chapter 15   Adjusting To Personality

Chapter 16   Money On The Water

Chapter 17   Touring Around

Chapter 18   I’m Being Lured

Chapter 19   Salt Added

Chapter 20   Salt Free

Chapter 21   Dear Family And Friends

Chapter 22   The Key Factor

Chapter 23   One Level Up

Chapter 24   Taking The Tour

Chapter 25   Open To Travel

Chapter 26   The Real Thing

Chapter 27   Rest And Re-Organize

Chapter 28   Wandering

Chapter 29   The Lowe Highs

Chapter 30   A New Lowe

Epilogue

About The Author

PROLOGUE

I don’t care if you heard I only think about fishing. It’s not true, I’ve had a very full personal life. The good lord blesses some of us that way. Two grown successful sons, a forty-year marriage and love from my friends and family, made sure it was topped out.

You gotta understand, when I’m out on the lake like this, it’s just a different world. Especially here on Lake Hernando. I’m really glad you could fish with me today and from the looks of the weather, there’s no way we can go wrong.

My old bones are a little chilly from the boat ride to Lake Van Ness, so if you don’t mind, drop that anchor in the back of the boat for me. This large point in the lily pads is the perfect place to stake out. In front of us there’s nine feet of water with a submerged grass bed. We’re going to be swimming shiners over the top of it, with a balloon tied four feet above them. This place has really been treating us right since the water levels came back up and right behind us is the spot I caught my biggest bass.

Let me have your hook so I can get you one of those eight-inch shiners, you had so much fun catching this morning. That was a good cast! They sometimes school right there. Just let it soak and enjoy the view.

I been fishing this lake for a long time but it’s not the only place I been fish’n. I’ve been an angler my whole life. I even had four hits coming out the birth canal. Yeah, I know that’s funny, but it represents a truth.

Wow! Asking what fishing means to me is a very deep question that could take a while to answer. You should be paying more attention to that bobber of yours, the shiner’s starting to talk.

No, that’s not stupid, shiners do talk, and they also predict the future. Man, do you have a lot to learn since we were last together. We’re going to be here till the shiners run out or the sun goes down, whichever comes first. Seeing how you asked, I’ll tell you my story. First, I still need to get my own shiner out. I’ll put it out the other end of the boat and we’ll have the whole point covered.

Watch your damn bobber while I talk.

CHAPTER ONE

PICTURE PERFECT

I really don’t have any memories of the event, but I still have the black and white photo memorializing it. Such a beautiful day in sunny South Florida. There I am, a blond skinny little kid, standing along the canal dug to build Hollywood Boulevard, the road that takes you out to the Everglades. It must’ve been my dad who took the picture because both mom and I are in it with his 1949 Ford in the background. Since moving from Indiana, just a few months prior, he was regularly coming here, because it was an easy place to bass fish. It was a shallow canal where you stood high on the bank. You could see bass beds spread out amongst the weeds and lily pads, during the spawning season. The rest of the year you could easily walk the banks and cast all the way across the canal. It was a pretty easy place to fish for a guy that didn’t have a boat.

It’s a small photo maybe 3 1/2 x 5, clearly dated 1956. Which makes me three at the time. I appear to be a pretty happy little guy. In it I am holding a giant, horribly mean, ugly, and scary looking mudfish that is at least 12 inches long. Now I know these fish to be dangerous, so I am holding it way up above on the line, away from its toothy mouth, so it won’t bite me.

At the time no one involved, in that photo, really knew how significant it was. Cute little kid, little fish, what meaning could there be? It will be many years before I realize what a life changing this event was. It was my first fish and it was the start of many more to come for decades. It was the birth of the fishing side of me.

My dad was a hard-working construction guy supporting a family of five. He had moved to south Florida for the construction boom of the early 50s. Extra money was hard to come by in those days, so he devised himself a plan to finance a boat. He would save soda bottles on construction sites and return them on the way home from work for the deposit (2-5 cents each). Putting this money in a special fund to buy marine quality plywood. It took him nearly two years but he was finally able to get the materials needed and started building his boat. Utilizing all his spare time for the next several months, dad sawed, glued, measured, nailed, sanded and painted his masterpiece of a yacht. I don’t really know if he felt proud but I’m sure he felt very accomplished, as we fished out of this boat for many years to come.

The first boat I fished out of was 10 feet long, 4 feet wide with sides about 16 inches deep. It was slightly narrower at the bow as it was at the stern. There was a front seat right at the very bow of the boat, which dad had raised up slightly, and one in the rear. He also had built his own custom tackle box to fit right on top of the front seat. You could set up nice and high. This engineering only allowed you to sit facing towards the back of the boat. I overcame this by simply letting my feet dangle over the bow and into the water most of the time.

Once launched and powered by dads 1954 Evinrude 7 1/2 hp outboard tiller motor, she proved what amazing qualities she really had. You see, when dad built the boat, he didn’t think it was necessary to put runners underneath it. The runners on a flat bottom boat are what keeps it tracking straight while running. This caused the boat to be very hard to steer. You had to slow down to make any turns at all. It would slide sideways, while continually going forward, if you tried to turn it while running full throttle. My dad did not see any of this as a problem. He simply learned to drive the boat the way it was, often driving sideways just to show off.

When actually fishing from the boat, dad propelled it by sculling with a single paddle. From the back, when I was with him, and from the bow when he was by himself. I didn’t understand sculling a boat at the time. But it’s the action of taking a paddle and wiggling it back-and-forth in the water at different angles causing propulsion. We fished countless hours together like this and it was during these times that I have my earliest fishing memories.

Grandpa came visiting and dad couldn’t wait to take him out in the new boat. I was lucky enough to go with them that day. We were heading out to Johnny’s Fish camp. It was basically a little store located next to a dam in a canal. A boat ramp was on the lower water level side heading into the Everglades. The difference between the two water levels was six or seven feet. As we made the turn off from Highway 27, onto a levee leading to the fish camp, it becomes apparent that the water is flowing. The dam is open allowing water into the Everglades.

As we draw closer to the dam you can see a giant whirlpool had formed on the high-level side with a big hole deep in the middle. Now this was probably the most violent thing I had seen in my life, to this point. No matter how hard I looked, I could not see into the bottom of that whirlpool. Lord only knows what would happen if you were to fall in. I asked my dad where it went but I’m still not sure I believed him. Asians are not stealing our water to fill-up their lakes and rivers.

I guess my dad knew the water would be moving and the fish would be biting. We had not been fishing for 20 minutes and we were already catching fish. My dad was throwing this sticky looking thing with propellers on each end. I thought it was cool to see the fish jump all over it. Me and grandpa both were casting plastic worms. I think my fish was bigger than his, but it didn’t really matter because dad must’ve caught 15. At lunch I had the best bologna sandwich ever and a sweet pickle. Dad had even brought sodas for me and grandpa. He had other drinks for himself. When we got home that night, before they cleaned the fish, I remember them taking a picture of me standing on the running boards of dad’s old green pick-up truck. A stringer of bass hanging all the way to the ground, even though I was lifting them as high as I could.

By this time I’m starting to learn some good basic fishing skills. Besides being able to drive dad’s crazy ass boat, after several trips of practice, I was starting to flyfish and cast push-button type reels. On one particular day, fly fishing in our favorite canal by Alligator Alley, I learned some valuable lessons about staying in the damn boat.

Facing forward while sitting on dad’s tackle box, with my feet dangling in the water, I was casting a rubber spider fly along the bank. Having already caught several bluegills, I was simply not prepared when that three-pound bass blew-up all over it. I instantly pulled on the line with my left hand and raised the rod high with my right just like my daddy taught me. Unfortunately, I also straightened out my body, sliding me completely off the box and into the creek. Feeling like alligator bait and knowing that death was near, my only thoughts were get my ass back in the boat. Of course my dad was right there to pull me out. After shaking off the water, I noticed that the line from the fly reel was floating. Grabbing the line I pulled up the fly rod. To my surprise the 3-pound bass was still there. It was one of the fish my family had that night for dinner. I was feeling kind of proud because dad gave me full credit for catching that fish, our biggest of the day. He said that it only proved Jesus really did walk on water.

Directly south of the tollbooth of Alligator Alley, on the Fort Lauderdale side, there is a small canal that runs along the levee for about five miles. This shallow and narrow canal was the source of many great fishing trips for dad and me. It was not a very well-known canal and you never saw anyone else fishing there. At the time Alligator Alley had not even been built and this was just another ditch at the edge of the Everglades.

After fishing on the canal for about 45 minutes, one clear and slightly breezy Sunday morning my father said to me. Just keep casting down the canal, we’ll drift in the wind here. I gotta take a nap, it was a long night and my aspirin ain’t kicked in yet. Wake me up if you catch one.

Well that was just fine with me. I had the whole place to myself. I could cast on both sides of the canal and I had my brand new Zebco 33 and 4 1/2 foot rod. My dad had let me use one of his wooden propeller baits. This one had a flat area on the bottom with a propellor in back. Having two hooks on it doubled my chances. I would take this bait twitch-twitch it across the surface, then let it lay still, then repeat.

It was about 30 minutes later when there was a giant explosion on my sitting bait. My father was immediately awakened simply by the sound of it. Although still a little groggy, he coached me through this fish as it pulled us around. After a pretty long fight with the drag ripping out and pole bent, I get it next to the boat and my dad netted my whopping six-pound bass.

In conversations with my father years later about this trip, he told me that he had bought that outfit the night before. It had 6-pound test line that came on it and he had never even checked the drag. All he did was take it out of the package and tie on the bait, a Dalton Special. It was after this that he used to say, When it comes to fishing, you could fall into this shit-house and come out with a pocket full of gold. I heard this line every time I out fished him for years to come.

On another adventure out to this little canal that same summer. In the month of August. We experienced something very strange that I have never really experienced since. It was hot early. There was no breeze at all, and the sun was bearing down. It was already noon and we hadn’t even had a fish look at a bait. I got tired of casting my new favorite bait, the Dalton Special. After taking a break, to bail out the sweat from the bottom of the boat, I dug through dad’s tackle box hunting the smallest thing I could find. I came across a 2-inch Rapala with itsy-bitsy hooks on it. My thought was at least I could catch a darn bluegill, and this was still cast-able with my Zebco 33.

To my surprise on the second cast a giant bass came up and sucked it in. It was a moment of chaos for me but the bass just swam around with the bait in it’s mouth. Then just opened its mouth, returning my bait to me. As we continued fishing, every 10 minutes or so, this would happen again. They would slowly come up below the bait and just barely kiss it. They were all big fish and after losing five or six of them it was easy to see why. The two hooks on that little bait were too tiny to ever get into a big bass’s hard mouth.

After watching me fail, five or six times, dad decided to try his luck with the little pole and tiny bait. He had a little better luck than I did, after losing two or three he finally landed a five pounder. All of this action went on for about 90 minutes. During which time he caught another five pounder while continually losing the bigger ones. Eventually one of those big fish broke the line and took our tiny bait home. Needless to say, it was the only bait we had like that and we didn’t have another hit the rest of the day.

Dad said that big bass took the bait home to show family and friends its