Another Glory Hole By Cliff Kunde:
We truly enjoy the cool winters of South Florida. The fishing changes and hunting season kicks into high gear. Any sane person begins to spend more time in the woods or waters where nobody is honking at them and fresh food is for the taking. The costs can be minimal and the rewards fantastic, especially if your wife is a good cook and is sporting enough to seek out the “Glory Holes” with you. She also shares her culinary delights with the world, right here in this publication under Gram’s Jams.
When I get the word for an item or have a fresh catch, she works it into a delightful evening around the diner table. This is the season for larger shrimp and her desire for a new twist on a local staple sent me scrambling for an old Glory Hole. Some of you probably know this hole or one like it; there are literally hundreds of them that get passed up by thousands of commuters each day. A prudent outdoorsmen constantly watches for game trails or water flowing for the best opportunities for success. The birds usually give away fishing spots where the bait is congregating or ponds and fences that cause game to alter their patterns.
This time, shrimp was the request and a trip to where we have been many times was in order. We used to frequent the little creek often when our son, Nick, was younger. He really enjoyed building a fire at sunset and setting up the adventure. We would bring medium weight spin gear and shrimp nets, a tarp for the ground and old moving blankets if it was cold enough to curl up. When the tide began to flow through this creek, the shrimp would show up on their migration. We would hand dip the shrimp and separate the big boys to cook over the fire, the rest were put in a bucket to flat line out in the current for fish.
It usually didn’t take long for a trout or snook to grace our stringer and mangrove snapps were available if you put a small weight on our lines and cast over to the holes. Those were some great evenings, BBQ shrimp a little wine, the kind you drink not the hum of mosquitos, not that they didn’t visit us each evening. Nick was just a small boy at the time, but he learned to clean shrimp pretty well in the dark. Every once in a while a croc would slide by to keep us on our toes. They never stuck around after a flashlight beam illuminated them for a minute or two. By 10ish it was time to go, we usually brought a bag of popcorn for the kid to snack on while motivating home, that boy could finish the corn and fall asleep faster than we could get home and we always had to carry him in. Now he is in the mid thirties and he could carry me in if I fell asleep in the back seat. We don’t visit that spot much lately, but the memories are still vivid.
The Glory Holes are still abundant and the gobs of folks that pass them by, never knowing what waits there is mind-boggling. The tackle shops won’t tell you about them. The people that know of them won’t tell you about them and they are on every map of the area you can read. Some folks are so focused on their own directions that they miss the whole world as they go by, think about it for 2017.