With my buddies 50th this week, we still had one more surprise to pull off. The party. His wife wanted it to be a surprise and so myself and his cousin had the job of keeping him out of the house all day. Not a seemingly difficult task as He wanted to show his cousin around the area and suggested himself that we go out and hike St.Marks for bit and see what we could drag up.
Not having any significant rainfall here in quite some time now, the water levels were very low but we still found a few spots to wet a line. However with the lower water levels the swamp puppies were in abundance.
At one spot I hooked a nice trout, and across the creek was a gator just floating about. He was approximately 200’ away till I hooked up. Once the trout started head shaking at the surface that gator spun around set a direct path towards me. I managed to get the trout in, dehooked and released as he was approaching. With the gator now 40’ away, and still coming closer, I threw a couple rocks towards him in an attempt to slow him down. Thankfully that tactic worked, and He stopped immediately and just floated there for the remaining time we were around.
Leaving there, we went and waded around the flats a bit but didn’t find anything of interest. Still needing to burn more time, we figured lunch would reenergize us all, so off to Tropical Trader Shrimp Company.
We pull up in the parking lot and see these two very cool rides.
Then it was off to Bald Point for some more exploration.
With more time to kill, we ended our lil adventure with a smoke and a beer at Civic brewing in Sopchoppy before heading back home to a yard full of friends and family waiting to surprise my friend and us.
His wife has worked extremely hard to pull off one amazing surprise after another this week and I’m very grateful that myself and my family have had the pleasure to have been a part of it.