Nothing is better than opening day for duck hunting! Friday November 20th was finally here and Mike Otto and David Daniels loaded up their Starcraft pop up camper and headed to Lake Toho on the beautiful Kissimmee lake chain. Mike, Dave and I were packed up and ready to do a camp/duck hunt in complete style right in the heart of the Florida marsh country.

We pulled into South Port Park campground and set up our camp and found that the reports of Ring-necked Duck sightings weren’t exactly numerous. In other words, we weren’t going to loose sleep with visions of huge flocks of ducks keeping the sun out of our eyes. We didn’t mind too much because we are mostly here to enjoy the camping, the campfires, cooking and also the non-stop jabbing at one another. read full story . . .

Ever since I was a kid growing up in Arkansas I have loved all types of fishing, so when I was about 10 and my mom and dad first took me offshore on a charter out of Panama City, I was the one who got hooked. Ever since that day I have taken every opportunity I could find to get offshore, which wasn’t particularly easy for a guy who lived most of his life up there in the middle somewhere.

Fast forward to about 8 years ago when my wife and I left everything we knew behind to follow a crazy dream in Florida and buy a marina. I was finally in the right place to really get into offshore fishing, unfortunately the time constraints of owning, operating and expanding a marina made my trips more infrequent than I would prefer. After several years of hard work we began getting offers to sell out that were too good to ignore and I began shopping for the right boat to take with us down the next road where life was leading us. read full story . . .

On an early fall morning I felt the presence of my father’s hand shaking me and telling me it was time to wake up. I looked up at my father with that sleepy daze and wondered why he was waking me up this early on a weekend. It was a different touch this time and he had a look on his face that meant only one thing, we were going fishing today. Some people say that they know what fast is, but until you see a young boy jump out of bed to get dressed go fishing with his father then you haven’t seen Mach 1 with a shirt on backwards in the dark. My father was never late to go fishing or hunting and if you were late you got left at home or at the boat ramp. It was a different ride in dad’s truck on the way to the boat ramp and it was a different day because these days were special, my father worked hard and time together meant a lot to me. Even if we didn’t catch fish, I would always learn something valuable that I would later pass onto my children, and that was a father’s love. The important thing was my father taking the time out of his busy life to be with me and the times he made me laugh or having the patience to teach me how to tie my first fishing knot on a hook. There are great memories of that huge fish that I lost at the boat; I can still see that big Largemouth Bass vanish into the dark waters of the lake as if they were one. read full story . . .