“Let’s wait till around 6:30,” kayak bass guide Rod Salser had told me on the phone as we arranged for a morning of bass fishing on Lake Okeechobee. “I don’t like to launch in the dark on the lake.”
I knew exactly what he inferred, even though he politely avoided the word “alligator.”
I had driven eight hours to see what had become of my old stomping grounds in the southern end of the Indian River Lagoon following more than a year of highly publicized, highly destructive freshwater discharges from the big lake. I thought it might be instructive to take a look at the source of contention. I’d lived just 30 miles from the most famous bass pond in the world for almost three decades, but stuck to saltwater and a few smaller bass venues. It was good to have someone knowledgeable show me around — 700 square miles of water can be a bit intimidating in figuring out where to start.
The northwest wind was already stirring as we shoved the kayaks in the water and adjusted the MirageDrives. Salser handed me one of the skirted Gatorbait bass jigs he designs, a purple leadhead decorated with a sparkly brown and purple rubber skirt and giant weedguard. A plastic craw completed the rig. It fluttered nicely in the dark water as I towed it next to the kayak, but even so, I had no idea what the bass could find attractive about the weird-looking contraption.
We didn’t have far to go to find out.
“We’re going to start out fishing the sticks,” Salser explained as we eased up on small patches of bare branches and reeds protruding above the shallow water 200 yards from the sand launch. “Run the jig through the middle of the sticks and along the edges at different angles. If you feel a thump, wait until you feel a headshake – otherwise, you’re going to set the hook on a lot of snags.”
Holding off on the hookset is something I have to re-learn every time I switch from saltwater species to bass. The refresher course didn’t take long. Three or four casts in, I felt a subtle bump and the line swam off to the right. Sticks don’t move, so I set the hook. The little 2-pounder jumped off as I tried to wedge my thumb around its lip. Even so, the first bite of the day on a new venue is always a confidence-builder. We released 2- to 5-pound bass steadily until the wind blew out the bite.
After two days of fishing Indian River Lagoon sand flats virtually alone, the thing that stood out most on Lake O was the amount of life and activity.
The big lake stood at 13.5 feet above sea level — about average. Around me, life appeared normal. No sign of the toxic blue-green algae that kept people out of the downsteam saltwater estuaries after it was released from the lake. Alligators watched from a respectful distance, while great blue herons, reluctant to fly into the gale, posed on mounds of bright green floating vegetation, daring any fish, frog or snake to venture within range of their sharp beaks.
Despite rough conditions and dreary, threatening skies, sleek bass boats buzzed by all morning, slipping past pontoon boats. A small convoy of paddlers struggled back toward the launch, their progress slowed as much by the buckets of live shiners they dragged as the wind. Anglers’ heads and fishing rods comically poked above the sea of grass in all directions around the shallow lake. A good Samaritan in an overloaded 10-foot johnboat with a smoking, stammering 2-stroke outboard chugged alongside to make sure we were okay in the sloppy conditions. His transom almost swamped, he looked more in need of rescue than us.
“Crappieheads,” Salser joked, referring to the thousands of Northerners who make the annual Okeechobee pilgrimage to stuff coolers with tiny crappie fillets. “Besides the crappie guys, the FLW bass tournament is in town this weekend, so there’s an extra 200 boats out here pre-fishing. The motels and restaurants are busy. Everything is good.”
Lake Okeechobee must have been an under-utilized paddling and fishing utopia prior to the massive hurricane that devastated communities on the south shoreline and killed an estimated 2,500 residents in 1928. Following the storm, Army engineers began work on a 30-foot-high, 140-mile dike that enclosed the entire lake. Prior to the construction, excess water during the rainy season slipped placidly over the southern rim to replenish the Everglades and Florida Bay. The natural spillway resulted in a relatively stable lake level in which the habitat and fish must have flourished.
The dike blocked the natural overflow, and converted the shallow, marshy lake into an irrigation reservoir utilized by giant sugar plantations that took root to the south. Lake levels rose and fell sharply (during my years there, the lake fluctuated from nine feet above sea level all the way to 19), and pollution from expanding towns, citrus groves and cattle ranches as far north as Orlando funneled down the Kissimmee River watershed to mix with nutrient-overloaded water back-pumped from the sugar farms. Lake Okeechobee was often referred to as the world’s largest retention pond.
Maintaining the lake’s economy and health while eliminating or redirecting polluted freshwater releases that kill downstream saltwater estuaries is the most contentious environmental challenge facing state and federal water managers and legislators. Scientists contend that re-establishing the natural spillway through the Everglades is the only long-term solution (legislation is making its way through the Florida House and Senate to purchase land; a larger purchase fell through a decade ago), but the governor and Big Agriculture’s army of lobbyists – 64 to be exact – are fighting to maintain the status quo. The war between estuary advocates and agricultural interests has been waged for almost a century. The only assured outcome is that there won’t be an outcome anytime soon.
