ALLIGATOR TALES

Prayers for the little boy and his family out in Orlando.

I was in Orlando, somewhere about 1994.

I took my fishing gear. Left the hotel and got on a tour bus with two rods and a tackle box. I had the driver stop and drop me off in a secluded area between stops. I stepped off into the lagoon, casting a spinnerbait.

“There should be some big ones in here” I thought to myself.

The lagoon narrowed, and I found myself up to my chest in swamp water.

It was about that time it dawned on me that I was wade fishing in the Alligator Capital of the World.
Unwise.

I headed for shallower water.
I casted my lure, and caught a fish.

At this point in the story I usually might tell you that as I was reeling in the fish, I saw the swirl of a tail, and suddenly a 20 foot gator was heading straight for me, his jaws wide open, and I would be gator food if weren’t for the aboriginal looking fellow who swung down from the trees doing a Tarzan yell and armed with nothing but a knife fashioned from an old Florida license plate and a lost Frisbee, wrassled, killed, cleaned, cooked, and ate of the gators flesh right there on the spot, offering me the prized “alligator cheeks” and a tasty remoulade and a Jax beer to go with.

But the reality is that as I reeled the fish in one of those tour busses that dropped me off came by and stopped, and people took pictures of me, the idiot wade fishing in the Alligator Capital of the World, fighting the fish. I tried to drag it out as long as I could and when I pulled my prize from the water it was only about 6 inches long,  and I held it high while everyone on the tour bus cheered.

And I got the hell out of that swamp.