In the Media

Florida Waypoint: Good Old-School Panfishing on the St. Johns River, Florida Sportsman

As I made my way into the Highland Park Fish Camp tackle store, I stepped over a sleeping blonde Labrador and then stopped to watch three boys fishing for bass. An older couple sat in chairs, next to the pond, also watching the boys fish.

It wasn’t Mayberry, but it could have been. The rust was real, not faux patina. The fish and game mounts inside the store stood unapologetically. A skin mount of an impressive diamondback rattlesnake was framed and led you into the side of the store filled with white-tailed deer, ducks, a bobcat and largemouth bass. The largest bass, from a customer in 1977, had tipped the scales at 15.4 pounds. read more

Highland Park Fish Camp in DeLand, FOX 35 Orlando segment, July 17, 2025

Traces of Old Florida: Rustic Fish Camp Keeps Historic Traditions Alive, Florida Currents, June 1, 2024

Walking into the Highland Park Fish Camp store seems like stepping through a time portal into old Florida. Mounts of fish and other animals, old photos and fishing memorabilia cover the walls.

Years ago, fish camps dotted major Florida waterways. Few remain today.

“We have been family-owned since 1962,” seventh-generation Floridian Bryn Rawlins Adams says with pride. “We keep the place rustic with that old Florida look. We’re not fancy, but we like it that way.” read more

A Tour of Highland Park Fish Camp | Old Florida, Overland Florida You Tube post, Dec. 13, 2023

DeLand Resident Capt. Rick Rawlins, Longtime Freshwater Guide and Fish Camp Operator, Dies, Daytona Beach News-Journal, May 12, 2021

Capt. Bryn Rawlins will never forget the day her father, Capt. Rick Rawlins, showed up with a pontoon boat frame.

The bare-bones boat, as Bryn would learn, was the starting point of the houseboat the father and daughter would build to travel the length of the St. Johns River in 2015.

"I'm just so glad we got to do that because he'd always wanted to as a child," Bryn, 33, said Wednesday of their trip. read more

Along the St. Johns, a Slice of Old Florida, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2004

Had it been a century and a half earlier, the vessel that is slowly navigating this watery highway through central Florida in the middle of winter would have been an elegant steamer, not this small flat-bottomed johnboat, and its passengers would have been adventurous tourists, celebrities and hunters, who would have come by the thousands to see a tropical wilderness. Then, as now, the tannin-stained river would have twisted like a water snake along stretches of nearly impenetrable banks of cypress, live oaks and palms. read more