Gulf temperatures are approaching 90 degrees, there is a lot of rain and blackwater is pouring out of the Everglades. Couple that with a five foot new moon tide and you have flood conditions on the flats, and in places, with all the blackwater and heat, you have to question the relative levels of oxygen in the water. There is bait though, in very specific places, lots of it, but for the past few days we haven’t seen many reds or snook on them. Tarpon however, love this and there are lots of tadpoles rolling in all the right places. This is not unusual for the ‘Glades in the summer and it can change rapidly, already we’ve had a couple of rainless days here this week, if we get an off shore wind, things (salinity,) could change in a hurry bringing the snook back in.
After a couple of years of relative drought we need the water. Sheet flow in the Everglades means good nursery habitat for juvenile fish and maybe we can hope for an upturn in snook and tarpon numbers a few years down the road.
Gov. Charlie Crist, on behalf of the State of Florida has made an agreement with Big Sugar to buy back a significant portion of the land south of Okeechobee, if I understand it correctly, 187,000 acres, roughly half of all the Florida cane fields. The impact this would have if incorporated into the Everglades Restoration Plan would be phenomenal, it could become the cornerstone of the whole process, it would be a huge step toward restoring sheetwater to Shark River Slough and Florida Bay. See, www.riverscoalition.org