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| Sunrise at Launch |
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| Big Stick Lake Launch, YANKY 72 |
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| Big Stick Lake East Bank, Looking Northward. |
We slid YANKY 72 down the east bank by hand, and set off fishing. The fishing wasn't spectacular, but the morning was. We caught six or seven bass, mostly small ones we call "dinks". I had several bites that came up empty. Those bites felt more like gar than bass. When a bass takes a rubber worm or a stickbait, there is a certain tug you can feel, and they will start swimming with the bait. A largemouth bass eats by engulfing it's prey whole. As they strike it, they flare their mouths open, creating a vacuum that sucks whatever it is they've eaten whole into their mouth. They'll eat anything but plants" bugs, worms, small snakes, fish, lizards, even mice. You sort of have to figure out what they're eating to catvh them on a given day. A gar, on the other hand, has a long mouth and razor sharp teeth. They grab their prey and then shake the dickens out of it to tear them to shreds. I can't say which is worse, but we don't fish for gar, so when we feel them herky jerky tearing at our bait, distinctively different from a bass, we either wait till hopefully they drop it, realizing it's unsavory rubber, or they pull it off the hook straightaway and we have to retrieve and rebait the hook.
We were about 1/3 of the way down the south bank, working the lake in clockwise motion, when from the far west end of the lake I saw a large bird, low to the water, headed straight toward us. I could tell it was big, it's wing flaps were long, graceful, and looked powerful. At first I thought maybe it was a great blue heron, but as it made its way to us, I knew it was a bald eagle. It lifted higher as it neared. We could tell it was a juvenile, it's feathers a mix of light and dark browns. But juvenile though it was, it is still a majestic and awesome sight. And just to make our day better, the large raptor circled to its right, paralleled the south bank, then arced higher, and perched on top of giant power line post. It sat there watching us and us it for the rest of the time we were on Big Stick.
Not a minute later, another pair of deer, spooked by the two old Marines approaching in YANKY 72, bounded away from the lake, their flashing tails trademarking their departure. Eight deer in one day at Babcock-Webb is the most we've seen in one day. Add a juvenile bald eagle airshow, you've got a pretty good day, all things considered: sunrise, sunshine, temperature in the 70's, a light breeze, Marine buddies of 40 years, wildlife, and a few fish, even if they were dinks.
We worked the north bank, headed back to the boat launch. We'd been on Big Stick about an hour and a half by then. The wind was blowing, not a stiff breeze, but enough so Captain Dale had to work our rear mounted trolling motor a little harder. About 2/3 of the back along the north bank, as we sat about 20 yards off the bank, casting to the edge of the reeds that border much of Big Stick, I saw something bright and white. It was unmistakable, a gator's skull. We pulled up to the bank and Dale jumped ashore. He found some of the gator's bony skeleton there. It was probably a seven footer or so, although other than a mostly intact head, the rest was scattered all over. Dale found its head and lower jaw, grabbed it, and came back aboard.
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| Bleached Remains of a 7' Gator |
By the time the adventure of the gator's skull was over, the fishing on Big Stick had pretty much slowed down. We recovered the boat, and moved to a lake we call "Bee Hive Lake". We call it that because there's a beekeeper who stores their hives there when they're not being (no pun intended) used in a farm somewhere, pollinating the farmer's crops, and collecting the beekeeper's honey. We caught another three or four bass there on Bee Hive Lake, and by 11:15 were on our way back to I-75, a nice morning adventure spent fishing and in touch with wild Florida. If I told you I had any complaints, I'd be lying.
