FLORIDA: Brownline South

It’s a driving game. The suburban sprawl is such in Southeast Florida that it extends all the way out to the berm of the Everglades. Spliced through it all is an intricate maze of manmade lakes and ponds and freshwater ditches plugged into the main engineered drainage canal system. The entire system is rife with species that aren’t supposed to be there based on the natural order of things. Which is kind of fitting for a manufactured ecosystem gone awry.

Peacocks, though, were introduced on purpose. Mostly to combat the proliferation of unwanted fishtank pets dumped into the system. They have thrived.

I started fly fishing for peacocks 10 years ago almost by accident. My buddy ZB’s Dad had a place out west where  he had hammered big largemouth on poppers.  I came out and we made some casts and hooked into something a little more explosive. We drove around the area finding waterfront we could walk.

I brownline in Florida because of access and economics. Salt is still king; it still takes precedence over any other possible thing when opportunity arises. But those opportunities come in the form of getting friends with boats to skip work or paying hundreds of dollars for guides. Not always possible to arrange around a work travel schedule.

A travel rod, a rental car, and accrued local knowledge remedy that. Whether 45 minutes or four hours are in the offing, there’s a place that can be hit that provides satisfaction. Satisfaction in bio-electric greens, blacks, blues, and oranges.