The Southeast Florida outpost of Everglades City, Florida, has long been known for its drug-running past and as home to Everglades National Park, Big Cypress, and Ten Thousand Islands. For flyfishermen, the Everglades offers what is undoubtedly the finest mangrove-fishing north of the Caribbean, especially for redfish like this:

Or smaller snook like this:

But while taking photos of the snook above, a was, you know, kinda letting my mind wander, thinking about all the snook I was going to catch, and my kayak was just drifting along in the current. Until I finally bumped into a collection of mangroves, looked down, and saw this guy not ten feet away:

So there’s that. Regardless, while this is the winter season down here in Florida, temperatures felt pretty good to a guy visiting from Northern Colorado. The man in the first photo is Capt. Charles Wright, who runs a kayak-fishing operation called, oddly, Everglades Kayak Fishing. We didn’t see any tarpon yesterday–it’s a bit early for them–but there were plenty of redfish, snook, and small jacks around to keep any angler busy on a rising tide. Just keep an eye out for the gators.