From the main river channel, cabbage palms obscure the view of fishy backwaters.

When the manager of my local grocery, bald as the Dali Lama and wiser, told me the exact hole and time of day the stripers were going to be busting schools of bait in the St. Johns River, I put it right up there with “Yes, the milk is fresh,” and “We’ll be getting some more old-fashioned peanut butter in soon.”

When he said it was almost right at the ramp, I pointed out that description can be true for a guy like him with a motorboat yet untrue for me and Jack with a canoe. “Paddles are not propellers,” I added. He said yes, he knew that and the description still stood, it was just that close. If we put in around dawn, by eight thirty we’d be back on shore filleting stripers.

For me, a hot tip couldn’t come from a stronger source than this feeder of the multitudes, icon of Norman Rockwell’s America Kojak look-alike grocery man. As surely as if he had stuffed me in a cannon with some Quaker Puffed Rice and fired me there as a marketing stunt, I had to go. Jack was skeptical but I assured him this was a sure thing. Of course you know we were the first people at the Lemon Bluff ramp, sliding in the canoe in the dark, just to be on the safe side of time.

From now on I’ll be sniffing the milk, stocking up on peanut butter and totaling my own bill. Granted it was fantastic, silently gliding along out there on that unique, quintessentially Florida stretch of the river all by ourselves. The cabbage palm-lined shore was enchanted by morning vapors emerging from the flat surface like aroma from a grilling cheeseburger. It wasn’t until the sun started burning off the novelty that Jack began saying things like, “He said it wasn’t far, even by canoe, right?”

We were aiming for a place just beyond some power lines that were supposed to be just upstream from the ramp. After an hour’s hard paddling, having convinced ourselves we were going the right way, we became consumed with the fabled wires, straining to see them around each bend.

“Does this guy have it in for you for any reason?” Jack asked. “You didn’t demand a refund on some melted ice cream or something?”

“Nothing I can think of,” I said, racking my brain. “Well, there was that time I found a live rat in my Cheerios and returned them, but that was a long time ago.”

We kept dipping and pushing. At least we knew if we reached Lake Harney, some three or four miles away, we could turn around and go home. Our consolation was the return leg would be downstream.

Like a parking space close to the store on Sunday afternoon, finally the power lines stretched across the sky, though we didn’t quite trust our eyes. The striper dining room was supposed to be just down from that so we mentally prepared ourselves for another grueling ordeal. The power lines, like the ordeal, turned out to be real and we never slowed down, constantly ready for action, three spinning lines each, tied to Shad Raps, spoons and jigs so we had every possible situation covered. By the time we were supposed to be on shore happily filleting our catch, we still hadn’t seen any bait, much less feeding schools of stripers. Worse, the trip back would be a battle to avoid capsizing, as the speed boats had finally awakened to steal our Hiawathan experience.

If you can’t snatch victory from the smell of your feet, or something like that, then you’re not on the St. John’s River. Familiar with the area from years ago, Jack had an idea.

Surprisingly, Lemon Bluff was not named after a local used car salesman. There actually are bluffs, berms and what you might even call a rocky cliff on this unique part of the river. We trolled Shad Rap and Beetle Spin lures back to the natural cliff we had passed, about 20 feet high looming over a deep hole, catching a bass and speck along the way, regularly having to turn 90 degrees into the swells of everything from bass to cigarette boats. Only one boater attempted to show us some consideration and he made it worse by stopping too late and pushing a huge swell at us. Our backs were getting sore from sitting endlessly on our tiny perches and I was curious to see how we were going to salvage the day.