One Kind Favor...

When I first started fishing in Florida I would go wade-fishing with a buddy of mine. We'd tie a cooler decked out with pool-floaties to one of us and tow it through the water while we waded, about waist deep, casting around for fish. Aside from being both a spooky and inefficient way to try to catch fish, it's also pretty ineffective. I don't think we ever caught anything other than catfish and stingrays this way. After an incident involving a 12-foot alligator following us around while we tried to scurry out of the water in submerged, ankle-deep mud, we gave up wade fishing altogether and my buddy bought a canoe.

Certainly, Florida is the right kind of place for a guy who likes to sit around in a boat trying to pluck fish from the water, and north Florida has a ecology unique to the northern Gulf - the salt flats. From the first time I got in the Gulf of Mexico, I've been impressed, stunned even, with the amount of life that is constantly teaming through the waters here. Nowhere in the Gulf, however, has been more impressive and significant to me than St. Mark's lighthouse.



St. Marks lighthouse is at the end of a long road that runs through St. Marks nature preserve. The preserve itself is about a 30-minute drive outside of Tallahassee and is a wealth of natural Florida pine forest and wetland. It's a pretty great place to see indigenous Florida wildlife, too - I've seen bobcats, water moccasins, alligators and all kinds of birds doing their respective thing in the preserve, but mostly I've gone out there to hit the water.



The lighthouse itself is a rather squat structure, but Florida is flat enough that it serves as a prominent landmark from a long way off. The waters around the lighthouse are shallow, 1- to 6-feet depending on the tide, and they are just chocked full of all kinds of sea creatures. I've been scalloping here during the season and I've caught trout, redfish and flounder, too, along with more pinfish and catfish than I care to think about. The aforementioned alligator incident occurred here, and I've seen both dolphins and sea turtles out in the water almost every time I've been. Because it's both so full of fish and so close to Tallahassee, it's a fair bet that it'll be a pretty busy place almost any time you go. There's a boat ramp very near the lighthouse, so if you stick around the shore you're likely to see a steady stream of boats coming and going.



But despite the occasional traffic and over-large alligator, St. Mark's is a beautiful place to fish, hike, bird-watch or picnic. There's a visitor's center near the entrance that'll walk you though the local flora and fauna, and plenty of picnic tables and open BBQs strewn about the preserve. You'll be able to find a good photo-op about every ten feet here and I'd be surprised to hear of a person spending some time in the preserve without seeing something pretty breathtaking.

If you go, though, I'll ask you this one favor - Please don't feed the alligators that hang out near the lighthouse. Seriously. Don't.