The day before at Halfmoon a couple guys pulled up in their aluminum boat with a bucketful of thick bluegills and shellcrackers. The hefty panfish had succumbed to crickets, somewhere on the other side.

Some of the lakes have hard sand bottoms, making for good wading.

Since the little campers joined us, we stay in the official campgrounds which give them places to run around and ride their bikes. In fact, Sam learned to ride a two-wheeler at Lake Dorr, a quiet, laid-back site at the edge of the forest near Altoona. For a place to camp where you can enjoy hanging around the campground and see only a handful of people, this is it. Fishing is good right off the dock and there’s a beach for swimming with the gators. The whole lake is excellent for bass and there is a boat ramp to get you to them. However, don’t eat your catch. The mercury level is high enough to read the temperature off a bass’s lateral line.

I learned a valuable lesson fishing Lake Dorr for the first time years ago. As I hammered the promising grasses and cypress coves of the shoreline with popping bug, a friend who had never fished and didn’t know any better just dragged an artificial worm behind the johnboat. While I couldn’t raise a nibble, she kept ignorantly hauling in bass. Now when fly fishing, I always let an artificial worm follow me around.

Alexander Springs is another convenient camping spot, busier and less quaint than Lake Dorr with paved driveways and a large bathroom facility because it’s at the spring. Given the proximity of the two, it’s nice to camp at Lake Dorr and visit Alexander. Unfortunately, your Lake Dorr camping fee doesn’t get you in any other fee areas since many of these have been granted to private concessionaires.

Exploring by car is a nice thing to do, just seeing where the roads will lead. Many times I passed a small sign for Redwater Lake, always on the way to somewhere else. I couldn’t resist any longer and swung up the dirt road. It turned out to be bouncy and pretty long, but the tannic, cypress rimmed lake at its end was well worth the time. I waded out fly fishing and had a good time casting into enticing lily pad and grass patches; but for any extensive fishing better bring a boat.

The comprehensive way to travel is with a forest or county map. That aerial view helps you decide which roads you want to explore. With 600 lakes and ponds it’s tough to know where to start fishing. I recommend eliminating the ones that have dried up. After that decide if you prefer to fish from a boat, on foot or from a pier.

Twenty of the lakes have boat ramps, some only for 4-wheel-drivers, others for everyone. Rangers should be able to guide visitors to suitable lakes and advise of current conditions. Topographical maps are available. After a long period of drought, it’s best to choose deep lakes so you don’t wind up fishing a puddle from yesterday’s cloudburst.

There are about 40 main fishing lakes. A fisherman cannot help looking at their topo maps with greedy eyes. Just to mention two that excited me, Farles Lake near Altoona, shaped like a cross between a cartoon chicken and a one legged horse, is splattered with nooks, necks, crannies and coves. The head, chest and stomach all drop off to 20 feet deep while the hoof reaches 10. Grasshopper, looking like an evil clown or road killed Donald Duck, drops off rapidly to 20 feet at the end coves with vast wadable shallows in the middle. Both these lakes are clear.

Mark Benson and I chose the 90-acre Farles for a dawn attack. We slid the canoe into a perfect pine tree mirror.

“I can’t believe we’re in Florida,” Mark summed up his feelings. “This is drop dead gorgeous.”

Mark tossed an 11 cm Rapala while I started out with squirrel tail jig, which normally gets every species. Rapala, however, got the variety pack this morning. Using the surface twitch method, he immediately missed a hit, a common result when fishing topwater slow. Then he got a warmouth. I got small bluegills on the jig while Mark started scoring bass in a productive cove of widely scattered lily pads. Giving in to Rapala, I used my preferred method of retrieving underwater and got a big copperhead bluegill for starters. This particular morning, slow twitch prevailed with the bass.

We had this clear lake to ourselves and once away from the road, there was no sign of humanity. It was just a delight to be there.