Fish in the Ditch

“Hey! Did you catch anything?” called the neighbor kid, peering over the front yard fence.

“Yeah, a few rat reds, but the wind was brutal,” I replied while carrying my gear towards the front door. The next words he uttered stopped me in my tracks: “There’s snook in the creek. We see them there all the time.”

This creek is a stormwater drainage ditch in St. Petersburg, Florida, and lined with mangroves, it runs through our neighborhood. I’d never really paid attention to where it drained into, but I dismissed him as a kid who probably saw a tilapia and thought it was a snook. Just in case, I gave him my cell number and told him to text me if he sees them again.

The very next day, I was at the bench tying up some flies for one of my buddies when I received a text from the kid. He was a block away and sitting there looking at snook in the creek. I grabbed the 6 weight leaning against the wall and bolted down the street. When I arrived on the scene, there were three 12 year olds, sitting on BMX bikes and staring into the creek from the bank. “They went over there by that tree!” exclaimed the neighbor kid, pointing across the ditch.

The water couldn’t be more than 8-12 inches deep and maybe 18 inches wide. Sure enough, there was the torpedo shape of a snook in the 30 inch range hanging out among the mangrove roots, and it wasn’t alone. I could make out several of the same size and shape shadows among the thick cover provided by the mangroves.

“He was over there chasing those baby fish and when he saw us, he took off!” said the kid.

I thanked him and went home to look into these creeks a bit more.

It didn’t take me long to locate this microscopic body of water located a block away from my house on Yellow Pages Maps (a favorite program I use to size up new fishing spots) to see how there could possibly be snook in this creek—good snook, hungry snook that were chasing finger mullet and juvenile tilapia.

Well, it turns out that these residential drainage ditches empty into Coffee Pot Bayou and the water levels rise and fall with the tide, but why were these fish a mile from the bayou?

The map also showed a major “ditch” a few blocks to the north of the one I was looking at that drained into the same place. I drive past it every day and can remember seeing high and low water as the tide dictates. If there were snook in this tiny ditch, then there had to be fish in the larger one too.

That next Saturday morning, I packed up my 8 weight, fly box and neighbor kid with his spinning outfit and a few Mirrolures and set out for “The Ditch”. The changing autumn weather was blustery and a strong breeze was blowing right into our face but the water temperature wasn’t too cold yet to affect the way fish would react to our offerings. We parked at the pharmacy on the corner just adjacent to the body of water and rigged up our gear.

The west end of the ditch was deeper than the rest and had a nice little tunnel that traveled under the road providing cover for the fish on this sun drenched afternoon. The tide was in so the water level was at its highest, and there were active finger mullet along the edges of the canal—which was good news! I tied on a 1/0 double bunny in white and brown and cast among the lively bait fish near the shore.

That’s when I heard it—the kid’s high pitched exclamation that everyone utters when in fishing bliss: “I got one!” followed by that noise the drag makes when a fish is heading for cover.

“Good job kiddo,” I muttered after he slid the 20 inch linesider back into the ditch.

As we moved east along the bank, the water level was getting shallower and murky. We spotted several fish in the 30 inch range, but only got a few follows and drive by’s and a lot of blow outs. Even the two cruising redfish rocketed off like bats out of hell when my black deceiver landed lightly on the water’s surface, presented ten feet ahead of the moving hump and the shadows following close behind.

Apparently, we weren’t the first idiots to fish this piece of water because, across the ditch, a full cast away, there was a drainage pipe where rain water exits with what looked like a five foot diameter hole where the rushing water had dug out. Also, the tree branches directly overhead from this hole were decorated like a Mirrolure Christmas tree….so cast into the wind while perched six feet above the shore line across the ditch and into this shoebox sized window flanked by hanging lures and leaders….riiiight. I quickly instructed the kid to give a nice sidearm cast with his Storm paddle tail soft plastic. He nailed it on the first shot and was rewarded with a huge hump of water, a thump, and a nice slot sized redfish…I like to think this one was technically MY fish since I told him where to put it.

Rob is a blogger and fly fisherman residing in St Petersburg, Florida. You can follow his continuing adventures at A Bad Backcast and other Inane Musings at http://rob-abadbackcastandotherinanemusings.blogspot.com/