Moore's Pond lies maybe half a mile to the north of the James

Darlington Mixson homestead making it about a mile and a 

quarter from our place, the Gilbert Mixson homestead.

It's across what is now highway 320 to the north. The

Jacob Wesley Feaster homestead property bordered it on

the east. See the area.



Anecdote I:

In times of flood conditions. (Yep, we used to have them!)

a slough crossed the road on the north side of Moore's Pond.

I think the water flowed from Moore's Pond to Ledwith Lake (and,

maybe, Fish Prarie). I know there was a lot of water. There were

also a lot of fish. I think the whole neighborhood would show 

up. You could get fish hand over fist with nets, lines...whatever.

We always came home with baskets full.

(Actually the slough still runs on occasion. Over the last year or

so, I've seen debris way up on the fence where it crosses NE 221st

St. Road (Marion County), extended from SE CR 10B (SE 175th Ave.)

(Alachua County). (Don't you just love the way they've come up 

with new names for all of our old roads?)



Anecdote II:

When Wayne and I were growing up, Moore's Pond was full of

alligators. The females would come up on  land on the westerly

side, build their nests in the sunny areas and lay their eggs

there.  Wayne and I would go there after the eggs hatched and

catch the little 'gators and take them home, put them in a tub

of water and play with them a while. God knows how we escaped

being eaten alive by mama 'gator.  God takes care of fools, 

drunks and little kids. We surely fit the first and last categories. 

He protected us for sure.



Anecdote III:

Wayne can tell you more on this than I can. When we were growing

up and Daddy was alive, Daddy rented land from the old Curtis &

Susie Robbins place from Susie. The property reached all the way

from 320 to Moore's Pond and from the Robbins place all the way 

east to the N/S property line across 320 from Mixson Road. Wayne 

tells me that when the prairie was flooded  he and Daddy would 

wade out in it and whack the fish, filling their baskets with them.

How they did this I don't know. 

I don't remember doing this myself. 



Anecdote IV:

My story on Moore's Pond (as told by Morris)...



The slough coming out of Moore's Pond flows to Ledwith Lake.

It is kind of a NW direction to me. Now, I don't know...I've

made the trip in a canoe when it was high water. We used to

go there, like James says, during the high water. Especially

during hurricanes and any other time they had lots of rain.

(The fish were) so plentiful that you could, like you say, 

dip them up with nets or anything else right out of there 

where the culvert goes under the road there and you could 

hear the fish...just dip 'em up...

The game warden heard about this and so he came by and told

everybody he was going to have to arrest anybody for...if they

were using a net to dip up the fish 'cause that was illegal

in Florida. (And probably anywhere else in fresh water fish).

And, so, we decided we'd just get us a 3 gang hook and just

drop it in there and you'd come up with a fish every time

you threw your hook in. Well, later on he came back and said

this was illegal...you had to have a bait on it and you

couldn't use but one hook, you couldn't use a 3 gang hook. So,

this stopped that for a while.

Well, that's the story on the flooded slough.



But, I used to go through the woods back there with my dad

and my mother too, and we went down to Moore's Pond and 

it was covered with hyacinths. But they had little narrow 

channels out through the hyacinths. And, we liked to go down 

there and fish with a spinner. Now, a spinner is about a 3 

foot line on the end of a pole with a spinner with a 3 gang 

hook with feathers on it and you'd work this in a figure 8 

in front of the boat and up beside the hyacinths. Well, when

you caught a fish, especially a trout or bass as they call

'em...a good sized one...you had to bring the pole straight

back. You couldn't lift it up. A big bass would not let

you...you couldn't lift him with the pole. We caught, you

know, some 7-8 pound bass this way. And, I can remember

Mama. She would just catch a big bass like that and just

hhhooollleeerrr...ooohhhh it was great!

And, also, one of the things that we did, we liked to go on

a cloudy day or either a drizzly rainy day in those channels

in through the hyacinths. These...this was the best time to

use a spinner...and it was a wonderful way of catching fish.

And, that's my Moore's Pond story.

(Thanks to Morris for this anecdote.)

jgm - 2 December 2008, 4 December 2008