Jacksonville FL area

[N Florida Mike]

Anyone fishing the jax. area?

[FloridaFishinFool]

Mike I moved out of there years ago, but I was wondering where San Jose lake is located? Can you give me some coordinates or street locations. I tried looking it up on google with no luck.

[N Florida Mike]

  Its    on the south side off old kings rd s. In the powers ave Area.I don't think its name is on any map.I grew up on Marianna rd, which runs along it on the other side.Been fishing it for 41 years now.

[AK-Jax86]

Check out a Facebook group I created for use locals called Jacksonville Bass Anglers search for it and send a request I will accept it. There's about 400 of us and we use it to show our catches, gather information, buy sell or trade fishing stuff, gain fishing partners, etc. 

[FloridaFishinFool]

11 hours ago, mike barnett said:

  Its    on the south side off old kings rd s. In the powers ave Area.I don't think its name is on any map.I grew up on Marianna rd, which runs along it on the other side.Been fishing it for 41 years now.

So its that long lake with the island in it? Google satellite looks like it is surrounded by houses all the way around. Is there public access to this lake? Here is the google image of where I think you are talking about:

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2420537,-81.6141174,700m/data=!3m1!1e3
 

I grew up across the river in Orange Park and I never knew of this lake. I grew up fishing the St. Johns River and small ponds in the area. The only real lake I knew about was off of Wells Road on what use to be a cattle ranch but is now all developed. The lake is now clogged up with grass and weeds. But there is still some good ponds in the area to fish.

I now live in central Florida and still have a fondness for the St. Johns river, but I tell you true, the river down here is far superior to how it is up there in north Florida in my opinion. Up there in Orange Park it is over 3 miles wide and fish scattered out wide all over the place. Down here it is usually less than 100 feet wide in a lot of places. Up there fish were harder to hunt down especially for a kid without a boat. Now that I have a boat fishing the river down here I can easily cover the entire width of the river. And there is virtually no development along the river down here. All natural. I love the differences!

When I was a kid growing up in the Jacksonville area, some of the men in my Orange Park neighborhood who had bass boats- and my dad too- liked to head South down highway 17 and head into the Ocala National Forest to seek out some untouched lakes in the backwoods. Or, they would go to Kingsley lake and others around Ocala/Gainesville area. I remember those days as some of the best bass fishing times.

It was a shame as a kid growing up one block from the St. Johns river that I had to give up fishing it by the early 1980's. It became too polluted for any of us to fish it or enjoy the river up there any longer. The blue crabs we caught were missing legs and had black ends on the stumps, and fish were coming up with fins eaten down probably by chemicals and other in the water and had black cancerous looking sores on them. It just became too poisonous to enjoy back then.

The river flows north all the way up through nearly 2/3's of the state for 310 miles collecting everything that ran into it along the way so by the time the water reached Jacksonville it was rancid. I think those paper mills in Palatka were some of the biggest offenders. But all along that river were thousands of cattle ranches letting all that cow dung get washed into the river, and even some polluters along the river let their raw sewage flow into it at one time. It got so bad that as the water flowed by Orange Park it had a tan brownish slimey foam floating on the surface and then when it made its right turn east to the ocean by downtown Jacksonville the river channel narrowed up there and all that surface foam concentrated and piled up and the winds would pick it up off the river and blow that foul stuff all over downtown. 

Today it is much better thanks to now decades of hard work in cleaning up the river.

But it is a shame I had to turn my back from it as a kid and find some other places to fish. I think this is why many of the bass fishermen in Orange Park also refused to put their boats into the river back then and headed South and Southwest for clean fishing lakes.

Today down here in central Florida about the only pollution I have to worry about around here is all the cattle along the river. There are few fences down this way and the cattle free range a lot and swim back and forth across the river and sometimes I have to stop in the middle of the river and wait for the cows to crossover. But most of the river polluters are now north of me and flows right to Jacksonville away from me down here and I like it this way a whole lot better than being on the receiving end up there! And besides, I think the bass fishing down here is a whole lot better too!

But you know, the pro bass fishermen have their tournaments halfway up the river in Palatka area sometimes I suppose because the river is more navigable up there since it is dredged from the docks in Sanford all the way up the river to Jacksonville, it is dredged to commercial navigation traffic standards of the Coast Guard, but on the part of the river I use, I make sure it is all well South of the docks in Sanford at Lake Monroe. I fish on untouched natural river that is not dredged which means it can be super shallow and impassable in many places due to sandbars, etc. or just too shallow for fiberglass boats and bass tournaments to operate thank god. Most of what we see out here are airboats, aluminum boats, canoes, and kayaks mostly. Maybe this is why I never see any pro bass tournaments around these parts because their boats draft too deeply and so they hit the river further north?

But that's OK with me! I like having the river all to myself here!

So tell me Mike, what's your story with the river up there? I see you fish a small lake just mere minutes from the river- virtually a stone's throw away from it. What's the story??? Bass are easier to locate and catch in confined waters like that small San Jose lake, but finding a bass in the river up there in the Jacksonville area could take all day!

If you ever fish the river down here you might do what I did- move! 

[N Florida Mike]

8 hours ago, AK-Jax86 said:

Check out a Facebook group I created for use locals called Jacksonville Bass Anglers search for it and send a request I will accept it. There's about 400 of us and we use it to show our catches, gather information, buy sell or trade fishing stuff, gain fishing partners, etc. 

Thanks.I'd love to but I can't get on Facebook for the time being due to a password problem.

[N Florida Mike]

7 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

As its \ lak  with the island in it? Google satellite looks like it is surrounded by houses all the way around. Is there public access to this lake? Here is the google image of where I think you are talking about:

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2420537,-81.6141174,700m/data=!3m1!1e3
 

I grew up across the river in Orange Park and I never knew of this lake. I grew up fishing the St. Johns River and small ponds in the area. The only real lake I knew about was off of Wells Road on what use to be a cattle ranch but is now all developed. The lake is now clogged up with grass and weeds. But there is still some good ponds in the area to fish.

I now live in central Florida and still have a fondness for the St. Johns river, but I tell you true, the river down here is far superior to how it is up there in north Florida in my opinion. Up there in Orange Park it is over 3 miles wide and fish scattered out wide all over the place. Down here it is usually less than 100 feet wide in a lot of places. Up there fish were harder to hunt down especially for a kid without a boat. Now that I have a boat fishing the river down here I can easily cover the entire width of the river. And there is virtually no development along the river down here. All natural. I love the differences!

When I was a kid growing up in the Jacksonville area, some of the men in my Orange Park neighborhood who had bass boats- and my dad too- liked to head South down highway 17 and head into the Ocala National Forest to seek out some untouched lakes in the backwoods. Or, they would go to Kingsley lake and others around Ocala/Gainesville area. I remember those days as some of the best bass fishing times.

It was a shame as a kid growing up one block from the St. Johns river that I had to give up fishing it by the early 1980's. It became too polluted for any of us to fish it or enjoy the river up there any longer. The blue crabs we caught were missing legs and had black ends on the stumps, and fish were coming up with fins eaten down probably by chemicals and other in the water and had black cancerous looking sores on them. It just became too poisonous to enjoy back then.

The river flows north all the way up through nearly 2/3's of the state for 310 miles collecting everything that ran into it along the way so by the time the water reached Jacksonville it was rancid. I think those paper mills in Palatka were some of the biggest offenders. But all along that river were thousands of cattle ranches letting all that cow dung get washed into the river, and even some polluters along the river let their raw sewage flow into it at one time. It got so bad that as the water flowed by Orange Park it had a tan brownish slimey foam floating on the surface and then when it made its right turn east to the ocean by downtown Jacksonville the river channel narrowed up there and all that surface foam concentrated and piled up and the winds would pick it up off the river and blow that foul stuff all over downtown. 

Today it is much better thanks to now decades of hard work in cleaning up the river.

But it is a shame I had to turn my back from it as a kid and find some other places to fish. I think this is why many of the bass fishermen in Orange Park also refused to put their boats into the river back then and headed South and Southwest for clean fishing lakes.

Today down here in central Florida about the only pollution I have to worry about around here is all the cattle along the river. There are few fences down this way and the cattle free range a lot and swim back and forth across the river and sometimes I have to stop in the middle of the river and wait for the cows to crossover. But most of the river polluters are now north of me and flows right to Jacksonville away from me down here and I like it this way a whole lot better than being on the receiving end up there! And besides, I think the bass fishing down here is a whole lot better too!

But you know, the pro bass fishermen have their tournaments halfway up the river in Palatka area sometimes I suppose because the river is more navigable up there since it is dredged from the docks in Sanford all the way up the river to Jacksonville, it is dredged to commercial navigation traffic standards of the Coast Guard, but on the part of the river I use, I make sure it is all well South of the docks in Sanford at Lake Monroe. I fish on untouched natural river that is not dredged which means it can be super shallow and impassable in many places due to sandbars, etc. or just too shallow for fiberglass boats and bass tournaments to operate thank god. Most of what we see out here are airboats, aluminum boats, canoes, and kayaks mostly. Maybe this is why I never see any pro bass tournaments around these parts because their boats draft too deeply and so they hit the river further north?

But that's OK with me! I like having the river all to myself here!

So tell me Mike, what's your story with the river up there? I see you fish a small lake just mere minutes from the river- virtually a stone's throw away from it. What's the story??? Bass are easier to locate and catch in confined waters like that small San Jose lake, but finding a bass in the river up there in the Jacksonville area could take all day!

If you ever fish the river down here you might do what I did- move!

[N Florida Mike]

Yeah that's the lake.It has no public access .Most people don't even know it's there.I started fishing on it when I was 14.Its always been a great bass lake.The record bass is 13 and a half.I fished it nearly every day as a teen.I also used to fish the river a lot esp.70s and 80s in mandarin,julington creek,orangedale and picolata.Used to wade fish a lot back then too in those areas( not julington for wading).Fished a lot for big bream then too.I never really thought much about the pollution then.We used to catch a few that had sores on them.I only fished on your side of the river a few times-won a tournament in Drs lake once.I really enjoyed the wild quality those areas had then.The owls would start near dusk and about that time the gators would come out.Development has changed the lifestyle for sure.I have not fished the river now for a long time .Fished Julington a few times and haven't done good like I did in the 70s.I'd fish it more but have some serious family restraints that keeps me home a lot.I used to fish tournaments all over N FL. at many of the popular lakes of the area.I used to fish Georges lake a lot in Putnam county( not lake George although I fished it in a tournament once)I was surprised that you mentioned the "Scrub" lakes in the ocala forest.I fished (and hunted)there a lot until a few years ago.I liked that area so much that I sold my bass boat and bought a 12 foot Jon boat so I could launch in those backwoods ponds.My favorite is Crooked lake.Used to camp run a trot line,fry up the catfish and sit around the fire and pick banjo.Then get up in the morning and go bass fishing.Hopefully will be able to again soon.Hey thanks for the post!