Susan Cocking's Outdoors

Duck hunters, rejoice!

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has announced it will re-open the Everglades and Francis S. Taylor, Holey Land, and Rotenberger wildlife management areas to duck hunters and froggers at 1 a.m. Friday, November 14. The executive order, signed by Ken Haddad, prohibits vehicles, airboats and other public access, except by special permit.  The order says duck hunters and froggers may operate vessels, but they must stay at least 100 yards from any tree island or surrounding levee.  That's because prolonged high water levels are stressing out deer and concentrating them on high ground.  The general gun-vehicle season and the second general-gun walk season are cancelled.  Conservation Area 2A-- from the L-35B levee north to the east-west airboat trail -- remains open.  This is great news for duck hunters who were worried that keeping the Everglades closed for the upcoming migratory bird season would send hundreds of hunters over to the STAs, which are already in high demand.

A new resource for charter captains in this shaky economy......

        WANTED:  1,000 CAPTAINS

Charleston, SC  -  Charter boat captains across the country are being asked to sign-on with USOBE (Ultimate Source Of Boating Excursions).  “Our goal is to enlist 1,000 of the best operators in the US” said Don Campagna, spokesperson for the service.  “We are looking for both small (under 26’) and large boat captains to help fulfill the thousands of requests we anticipate when we launch our website November 1^st.”

     “This isn’t all about fishing either” he said.  “80% of the current charters are from people who just want to get out on the water.  They want to see dolphins, watch the sunset, go on a dinner cruise, or put their children in touch with the environment.”  Many of the clients are on vacation and are looking for an interesting family activity.  “USOBE is a great way for experienced captains to expand their business base” Campagna added.  USOBE will operate as a national clearing house for both operators and those interested in hiring them.

     Each operator will have their own web page and customers will be encouraged to write reviews and rate their experience.  Captains interested in finding out more are asked to visit www.captainssource.com or, you may call the Captain’s Line at (843)552-0711.  Those who respond most quickly will be given preference.       

Pronunciation notes:  USOBE   -   You-Sob-E

                              -  Come-Pan-Ya    

Yet more storm-related fallout

Florida's peak-of-hurricane-season storm continuum maintains its rippling effect across Florida.  The Fay-Gustav-Hanna-Ike show could be why:

--east-central Florida fishing guides have not come across giant spawning redfish usually encountered in August in the Indian River;

--the Cubera snapper were finicky at the 210-foot-deep wreck near the Key Largo whistle buoy when they should have been gulping up whole live lobster used for bait;

--pier fishing for snapper and grouper has been especially good lately.

--it is difficult to locate bass in suddenly-flooded Lake Okeechobee, but when you do, they are huge.

--and lastly, why I was unable to paddle the length of north Florida's Wacissa River recently.

On a Labor Day weekend trip to North Florida, I eagerly anticipated exploring a river I had never seen before -- the scenic, spring-fed Wacissa, which flows ten miles south from springs near the town for which it is named to terminate at Goose Pasture just off US 98 near Crawfordville.  I figured, that with the recent rainfall from Tropical Storm Fay, the river would be flowing rapidly so that all I would have to do was steer my light, inflatable kayak. I arranged a shuttle for my car with Bob Stakes, a canoe/kayak outfitter in Wacissa. 

I was right about the river's strong flow, but failed to extrapolate that it had also flooded Goose Pasture, and the bumpy, unimproved access road leading to the takeout.

Bob and I ended up making a 70-mile roundtrip in two SUVs and wading big puddles in the Goose Pasture access road, watching carefully for water moccassins,  only to find the water was too deep for us to ford safely in our cars.  Along the wet, rutted road, we encountered a woman who busted a brake line when she ran over a submerged log.  A man with her was in the process of calling a tow truck.

So we drove all the way back to Wacissa, where I launched my little craft at a county park, paddled about four miles downstream, got rattled by a passing thunderstorm, and returned to the put-in.  A promised "blue spring" about a mile downstream from the put-in turned out to be a gray, sediment-clouded plume of dark water. 

"It's really beautiful -- most of the time," a passing paddler assured me. 

Well, maybe when it dries up again.  With the way things are going this hurricane season, we could have a long wait.

More hurricane-related fallout

In addition to marching lobsters and schooling muttons, the close passage of a tropical system over South Florida has other interesting side-effects.

One week ago, scientists from Mote Marine's Tropical Research Lab on Summerland Key made a late-night trip out to Looe Key to document the annual coral spawn.  The scientists had timed their outing based on the full moon the week before, which coincided with the onset of Tropical Storm Fay.  The researchers were expecting that the mountainous star corals (and perhaps even the threatened branching corals  -- the staghorn and elkhorn) would start spewing tiny pink bundles that look like BBs containing eggs and sperm.  They planned to collect some of the spawn to grow out in the laboratory.

But nothing happened.  Well, almost nothing.  Even though the corals failed to do the wild thing that night, numerous  fluorescent palolo worms could be observed getting busy on the calm surface.  Lit a bright chartreuse by bioluminescence, the worms popped to the surface in Spaghetti-O formation, then dispersed into a murky cloud and disappeared.

Why is this important, you ask?  Palolo worms are a favorite food of tarpon.  The silver kings are so fond of the worms that they behave as if on an LSD trip -- flopping around acting like they took an hallucinogen and refusing all other offerings of food in the vicinity.  Fly fishermen who have observed tarpon in a palolo worm hatch say they behave as stupidly as deer in the rut, ignoring fishermen and boats and eagerly inhaling flies that look like their drug of choice.

I did not observe any tarpon on my dive that night.  But I had this pleasant thought:  maybe the resilience and plenitude of palolo worms is but one factor in the wonderful spring-summer tarpon season we have enjoyed this year.  The passage of a not-really-strong tropical storm managed to block the corals' natural urges, but not those of the worms.

In the interests of tarpon everywhere (and the anglers who love to pursue them), I would strongly encourage the palolo worms to continue getting fruitful and multiplying.

A strange bonefishery

On the final day of my vacation in Bonaire (one of the ABC islands of the Netherlands Antilles; the others are Aruba and Curacao), I got a chance to do some bonefishing.  This is an unusual fishery compared to what we are familiar with in South Florida and the Bahamas.  The only really good place to bonefish in Bonaire is on the Cargill salt flats.  Unfortunately, this is private property, and anglers can only enter with a permit from the company, or with a permitted guide such as Chris Morkos.  The salt flats are a vast, landlocked estuary where ocean water enters through a couple of sluice gates and is channelled into containment ponds to evaporate and be collected to make the salt you put in your margaritas.  It is impossible to fish from a boat; you park your vehicle and wade on the flats.  In a morning of fishing, I didn't see any bones at all.  But in the afternoon, I followed a channel from one of the sluice gates until it drained into a shallow flat.  Within the first five minutes of walking in the knee-deep water, I saw a tailer and got so nervous that I hit the fish with the fly.  For the next hour, I probably saw a dozen more tailers, but couldn't manage to plant my fly where they would readily eat it.  (Sometimes, when you hit a fish with a cast, you become gun-shy and then don't cast close enough!)  Whether I was using the right flies or not (tiny, dark salmon-like patterns), I wouldn't know because I never got anything even close to a take.  I remembered from a trip there about a decade ago that the bonefish like to eat small, black crabs.  And captain Jan Maizler of Bay Harbor, who goes there often, advises not to use anything with lead eyes.  Anyway, it was an interesting project and one I would like to try again.   

Mini-season

Returning from vacation in Bonaire -- (that's ANOTHER story!), I arrived back in South Florida just in time for lobster mini-season.  Local experts said they weren't expecting much, including some of my dive buddies who had been scouting their hotspots prior to the July 30 opening. But an informal check of dive boats around Biscayne Bay on opening day showed a lot of people were getting limits or close to them. 

I like to dive with Pompano Beach freediver extraordinaire Jim Higgins.  He can catch lobsters more quickly in 15-20 feet of water than two scuba divers working together.  (Ask Patti Hanley if you don't believe me!)  Anyway, I don't want to brag (MUCH) but Higgins and I went out about 5:30 am  today (the second day of mini-season) and while I can't discuss where we went, I can tell you we had  our limit of 24 by 7:30 a.m.

Higgins is very serious about lobster diving.  He makes a living from commercial fishing, including freediving for lobster. Also, as a veteran surfer, he knows the nearshore waters of Broward County better than most.  It is because of careful scouting and plotting locations on a GPS that he gets lobsters almost anytime.

In 2005, right after the passage of Hurricane Katrina through South Florida, Higgins correctly predicted when the lobsters would "march" off Broward County.  We went diving and intercepted gangs of them in extremely shallow water -- bumping slowly along the sandy bottom in single-file lines of 20 or more.  It's a rarely-seen phenomenon that usually occurs around cold fronts and low-pressure systems, of which Katrina definitely qualified.  I have a wonderful color photo of the event hanging up in my living room.

Every year during mini-season, it seems like South Florida suffers an above-average number of casualties.  Sometimes, people get run over by boats, but a lot of times the fatalities are divers who treat mini-season like teetotalers do New Year's Eve -- a  once-a-year derby -- and then they don't dive again till next year.  It seems like some of these tragedies could be avoided if divers -- especially those over 50 -- got regular medical check-ups and also went for regular check-out dives.  When you haven't dived in a long time, sometimes you forget important things -- like turning on the air; dealing with strong ocean currents; and maintaining proper buoyancy.   Keeping in shape is also a really good idea.

Let's hope for a good, safe regular harvest season, which opens Aug. 6 and runs through March 31.  Remember-- it's not a derby; you've got plenty of time.

Attack of the leaping sturgeons

About a month ago, I spent some time along the Suwannee River in north Florida where a popular summer pastime is to watch sturgeon leaping into the air.  These huge fish, which are federally protected and resemble alligators with fins, come from the Gulf into Big Bend and Panhandle rivers during the summer to spawn. Here is the latest mishap of man versus fish:

Milton

brothers struck by leaping sturgeon

            Two brothers from

Milton

are the latest victims to get clobbered by a leaping sturgeon.

            Sam, 43, and Chris Parish, 25, were enjoying a leisurely morning of bass fishing on the

Yellow River

June 28 until a leaping Gulf sturgeon, estimated 5 – 6 feet in length, came over the bow and hit both men in their faces and upper bodies.  They escaped the encounter with minor cuts, scrapes and bruises.  The sturgeon ended up back in the river.

            Neither brother required medical treatment.

            Sam ended up with a cut over his left eye and a cut to his right forearm.

            “My wife said I should have gotten stitches to the cut over my eye but I didn’t.  It did leave me with the perfect impression of a pectoral fin in my right arm but it went away after a while,” he said.

            Sam said he was in the boat’s rear seat and the collision knocked him out of his seat and against the outboard motor.

            “If it hadn’t been for the motor, I’d have ended up in the river,” he said.

            Chris was operating the 16-foot boat and took a glancing shot from the sturgeon to the head. 

            The brothers said an elderly couple who were bream fishing saw the sturgeon strike them and came to their assistance.

            The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the Gulf sturgeon population in

Northwest Florida

rivers in 2002 and 2004.  They placed the number of sturgeon in the

Yellow River

at 500 – 900 fish.  They estimated 2,000 sturgeon venture up the

Choctawhatchee

River

each spring.

            As scary as a single collision is on the Yellow or other Northwest Florida rivers, they pale in comparison to the number of collisions on the

Suwannee

River

.  In 2006 and ’07 one person was killed and 18 were injured on the

Suwannee

after being struck by the bony, armor-plated fish.

            Although a lot of suggestions have been offered, no one knows why sturgeons leap into the air.

            Gulf sturgeon can grow to 8 feet in length and weigh more than 200 pounds.  They are a protected species in

Florida

.

            To report sturgeon collisions, call 1-888-404-FWCC (3922).

            

Diving opportunities

Summer is the time of year when wimpy South Florida divers finally decide to get into the water following a nearly half-year hiatus.  There are literally hundreds of wrecks to explore throughout Miami-Dade and Broward waters.  Palm Beach County is the place to go if you're anxious to observe a sea turtle up close.  The Keys never fail to delight -- whether you take a plunge on big wrecks like the Spiegel Grove, Bibb, Duane or Augustus Busch  or one of the countless coral reefs from 20 to 90 feet deep.  Mini-season comes up July 30-31 when residents and visitors alike engage in hand-to-hand combat with recalcitrant crustaceans.  If lobster tackling is not your thing, you can always head north to the Big Bend area to pick up bay scallops.  That's like plucking berries off a tree rather than dragging meerkats out of holes.  In August, the coral spawns around the full moon and Key Largo is ground zero for the underwater voyeur.  Hint:  star corals are much more interesting to watch getting it on than the branching corals -- probably because there are more of them.  And if you really, really want a change of scenery, you could always head north to the inland caves near Gainesville and Tallahassee.  The water temperature is always right around a chilly 70 degrees, but it feels really refreshing when you emerge into 100-degree heat.  And you don't even need to take a shower!  Happy diving.  For us wimps, the season usually ends right around Halloween.   

The rescued bear.....part two

Celebrity bear moved to zoo

A 375-pound black bear that captured worldwide attention when a wildlife biologist rescued it from drowning during a capture attempt will spend the rest of its days in a zoo.

On July 7, less than two weeks after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) captured and relocated the bear for the third time, the animal turned up again in a residential area at

Horseshoe

Beach

in

Dixie

County

. The bear had traveled 110 miles from the spot where the FWC had released it in the

Osceola

National Forest

.

At first, the bear’s captors did not realize it was the same one that dashed into the water when hit with a tranquilizer dart at Alligator Point in June. The bear, known to the FWC as “Bear W007” probably would have drowned if FWC biologist Adam Warwick had not pulled the animal back to shore during the operation. A bystander’s photograph of the rescue ran in news media all over the world.

Tim Breault, director of the FWC’s Division of Habitat and Species Conservation, said three unsuccessful attempts to relocate the bear to keep it away from populated areas led officials to conclude the bear cannot remain in the wild.

“The bear has learned that populated areas are an easy source of food from garbage cans, barbecue grills, pet food and, in some cases, deliberate feeding by residents,” he said. “The potential threat to human safety from this bear is too great to allow it to continue to venture into populated areas. This is not a pleasant decision for us to have to make, but it is what happens when people feed bears or other wildlife.

“The only alternative was to euthanize the bear,” Breault said, so FWC officials contacted more than 20 zoos and other qualified facilities in a last-ditch effort to find a home for the animal and spare its life. All but one of the facilities said they could not take in such a large wild animal.

Wildlife Rescue and Rehab Inc. agreed to take the bear Wednesday morning. They have made arrangements to have the bear kept at the Hardee County Animal Refuge.

The FWC receives roughly 2,000 calls regarding bears each year. In cases where the bear does not demonstrate aggression and has wandered into a residential area for the first time, the FWC usually captures and relocates the animal to a remote area. In about half the cases, the relocated bear turns up in a residential area again, and in about a third of the cases, the bear visits populated areas repeatedly.

“These captures are potentially dangerous for the bear and for our staff,” Breault said, “but we try to give them a chance to remain in the wild before we have to make the decision to have them permanently removed or put them down.”

For more information about bears in

Florida

, and how to live safely in bear country, visit MyFWC.com/bear.

-30-

HPC/CR

Deja vu all over again

Watching the ABC television series, "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" gives me a certain sense of the familiar. I have never been to Japan, nor have I ever been a contestant on a game show.  But I bore witness to that country's perverse sense of humor nearly ten years ago when the ocean waters off Key Biscayne became a set for the grand finale of a very bizarre quiz show.

In "Trans America Ultra Quiz", Japanese contestants had to survive multiple rounds of traveling the U.S. and answering questions for a chance at a grand prize.  This grand prize was supposed to be a beautifully-decorated houseboat in South Florida.  After the final elimination round, the ecstatic winner sat in a studio watching the unveiling of his/her new home.  Then suddenly, it blew up.

Ha ha ha.

And that's what happened, sort of.  An unnamed barge, tricked out with cheesecloth and paint to look posh on the outside, was towed out to 70 feet of water off Key Biscayne.  A Homestead pyrotechnics company rigged some charges to make it look like it exploded.  But really it sank because of four holes drilled below the waterline.  It's now an artificial reef.

No word on what happened to the poor sap who "won" it.  He probably would have preferred to dress up in a bug suit and get stuck to a Velcro wall.