When my son was playing ball spring training was down in Fort Meyers Florida. One year my dad and I went down for a couple weeks, my son would take us bass fishing on off days when he had time, you can catch bass everywhere in that state pretty much because it’s waterlogged!🤣 We seen people fishing seepholes behind Walmart, ditches along side of the road etc. One day he and a couple other ball players (including John Smolts, who was playing with the Red Sox at the time) took us to a golf course, not to play golf but to fish the water hazards etc🤣 We went through the guard gate not with clubs but with rods and tackle boxes. After catching tons of bass we ended up at a canal that skirted the 8th hole. My dad hooked a pretty good bass and my son was filming grandpa hauling it in when a HUGE gator came up out of nowhere and grabbed the bass and jerked the rod out of my dads hand. We told the coarse guys about it and showed them the video, they all said that was a big gator. A few days later we found out they called in an agency that captures problem critters. He ended up being 13’ long! My dad was literally feet from this thing when it popped out of the water to grab that fish! Amazing.
We drove “Alligator Alley” one day, unreal seeing hundreds of them lining the highway trying to get out on the warm pavement in the evenings, they would be lined all along the electric fencing keeping them from the highway.
