A weedless soft-plastic bait lured this bass out of the hydrilla on a Central Florida pond.

Sure, I realize that for a satisfying, soul-cleansing angling experience, you can head for the wilderness.

But for ridiculously good fishing that is the fisherman’s version of discovering pirate treasure, look for some incidental effects of civilization: sometimes structure, sometimes water flow machinery, sometimes just good old junk.

The possibilities are as varied as the human ability to alter our environment. If aesthetics rates well below results on your fishing priority scale, the quest for the real jackpot may start at your back door. But your wildest fishing dream may not stack up to the reality of a lake I found in downtown Orlando.

As a 12-year-old in ’62 Orlando, I mostly fished four nearby lakes. Equipped with the normal fascination with any tap transmitted from an artificial worm, the focus of my universe diminished to the end of my line that I might avert the disaster of never seeing the mystery tugger. All my modest skills enlisted in this emergency. But familiarity breeds contempt and that was about to change.

I never had tried Lake Lucerne. Long ago it may have honored its clear Swiss namesake. Old photographs show a round lake dotted with white sails and people fishing. By my advent it had Orange Avenue through its middle, the ugliest water in a town of distinctly urban water and NO FISHING signs. An older kid I sometimes fished with told me he went there one night and snatched bass, blind casting a treble hook.

Next dawn found my bike hidden behind a garbage can and me huddled in a concrete culvert crawling a black worm through surface scum over the 12-foot-wide aquaduct leading into the open lake, my former concept of “possible” shattered. The sight of me riding back home nearly caused a couple traffic accidents. Or maybe it was the nine bass averaging three pounds on my stringer.

Two spots were paranormal. At the culvert I could cast a worm from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. on a summer night and never go strikeless. It was impossible to drag it through that grey-green soup unmolested and difficult not to land a bass when every tossed worm was inhaled by a new challenger. You could even hear them splashing back under the road. The usual size was three pounds and the maximum was four. They were the stoutest, strongest bass I’ve ever seen, sporting a distinct hump of muscle atop their heads as if it simply had no place else to grow; possibly a result of the vast populations of shad, shiners and bluegills also crammed in there. It became my fishing lab, an opportunity to test techniques on bass. Since missed strikes no longer mattered, I would play with the fish, hold the line tight to see if they would hang on, maybe hook themselves; test the percentages of letting them run compared to setting the hook immediately; correlate that with type of strike. Since the water was opaque, my imagination simply had to run riot.

Across the street from the Orlando Utilities building lay a city block of shoreline distinguished by gaseous bubbling. Here the action was almost constant but less amazing because the area was greater. And they were less picky. Bass and big specks would alternate on tandem spinners.

What civilization gives it can take away. After about a decade, the unwanted East-West Expressway stomped through the bubble stretch and the fill was dumped in the culvert. The unique circumstances were changed and the bonanza ended.

Losing Fishing Nirvana sends you on a quest for another one because you know it’s possible. These days, though, give me aesthetics over results. My favorite lake is remote, unspoiled and not particularly fishy; and that’s just how I like it. Jack, apparently ruined by Lake Lucerne, will fish all day in a latrine if that’s where they’re biting. He recently took me on a tour of urban discovery and reminded me that catching lots of fish can be lots of fun—no matter what you’re looking at.

Central Orlando has about sixty real lakes. New opportunities abound in this land of trashed water and overcrowding. On the perimeter, urban sprawl contributes roadside swales, golf course ponds, ditches and all manner of puddles from drained wetlands, each of which has its own unique characteristics.

We began our 2000 Streetwise Fishing Quest in an appropriately bizarre manner: fly fishing a swale in a place called Dr. Philips for Russian amurs. The question in our minds as we drove there: “Will they rise naturally to our black gnats or must we send Wonderbread upon the waters and afix breadballs?” When we arrived, the St. Augustine grass was dotted with magnolia petals. The stiff wind blew one onto the pond, where it floated like a fairy gondola until a large fish sucked it in.

“Match the hatch,” Jack shrugged.

“Put the petal to the metal,” I counterpunched.

Jack’s son Scott, eager for his first Russian fish, tied on a white popper.