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Let's go fishing! Tight lines Captain Little Jim Fesperman Fulltime guide on Tampa Bay and Gulf Beaches P.S. if you're wondering about my name "Little Jim", I was named after my dad and his name is "Jim". I've always been called "Little Jim" by my family. Dad passed away a couple of years ago but I'm still "Little Jim" to everyone. "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault." ~ John Henry Cardinal Newman |
After serving with the U.S. Navy "Seabee's", I settled into the real estate business but almost always owned a boat and fished every chance I could. I continued honing my fishing skills with trips to the blue waters of Bimini and the Florida Keys and fishing for marlin and diving for lobsters in the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas. In the early 70's, I lived in the Old Northeast section of St. Petersburg. I and a select few other local fishermen had found a secret honey-hole that produced giant snook whenever it rained. If it rained - even in the middle of the night - I would get out of bed or leave work during the day and rush to our very special storm sewer culvert that emptied into Coffee Pot Bayou from Crescent Lake. Once the water began to flow, washing out frogs, snakes, rats, birds and lots of garbage, the Snook bite would turn-on and the action would be non-stop until the water flow would subside. I would then return home to clean the fish and then either go to bed or back to work. Sadly, a reporter happened to be driving by one afternoon when the action was hot and heavy. He wrote an article about our now not so secret honey hole……Fishing and the outdoors has always been such a big part of my life that the last time I got married my wife to be, said, "you currently fish, hunt, play golf and you want me to marry you. Pick two!!! I picked marriage and fishing. I'm a happy man……I retired from the real estate business several years ago and now spend my days sharing my love of our great outdoors with friends both old and new. |
School was out yesterday for the summer and, with not a minute to spare, my best friend Donny Parks and I were on our bikes balancing fishing rods and gigs as we peddled up 62 Ave N. with pb&j (peanut butter and jelly) sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and a nickel in our shorts to purchase a Coca-Cola at the bait shop. When the pavement ended, we turned left onto the dusty limestone road hoping that we would not meet a car coming the other way which would cover us in a thick cloud of white powder dust from the washed out road. The trip would only take us about 10 minutes from the house to the Weedon Island Bridge. Our day would begin when we dropped our bikes in the weeds beside Johnny Leverock's oyster shack. This one lane wooden bridge and the many mangrove islands surrounding it was our classroom for the summer. With no money to buy bait, we would catch our own fiddler crabs and mud minnows. We would fish for anything that would stretch our lines. When the tide would turn and race in or out, we would grab our gigs. Nothing was safe from our gigs - mullet, snook, reds, trout or what ever happen to venture beneath us as it was washed through with the strong tides. No kid ever had more fun or better summers than Donny and I. All that ended in 1959 when our family moved to Alaska for a couple of years….. Big, and I mean big, King Salmon 30 - 40lb + fish (but that's a story for another day). We returned to Florida in 1961. I then continued my love affair with the water, the fish in and around Tampa Bay and our sparkling beaches, dreaming of someday earning a living doing what I love. |
I grew-up around Tampa Bay with a dad and grandfather who also loved the outdoors. They freely shared their love of the outdoors with my brother and me. We were truly blessed with great parents and grandparents……Sure, the old timers didn't like the Snook to eat, because they prepared it the wrong way. They would scale it instead of filleting the fish and removing the soap tasting skin……Pop would take us fishing and camping all the time. Even our vacations would revolve around camping and fishing. I remember a vacation when we camped on the famous sand dunes of the Outer Banks near Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. We were catching fish during the day and fighting the swarms of mosquitoes at night. On another vacation, we took an old leaky wooden flat-bottom boat down the Homosassa River to an island camping and fishing away the week while battling mosquitoes all night long. But I think our best vacation was to the Florida Keys. This was pre-campground days…..We just drove in Pop's big, old Hudson until we found a place by one of the bridges we liked overlooking the water. We pitched our tents right there between the road and the water. We fished all day and fought the mosquitoes all night. |
The Captain |