FUN IN FLORIDA AT THE MEETING OF FRESH AND SALT
Crystal River like no other place on Earth
ON MY recent trip to Florida I visited a unique ecosystem.
Crystal River, on the Gulf coast north of Tampa Bay, has freshwater springs that daily pump 350 million US gallons – 1.3 billion litres – into the bay.
This freshwater attracts a huge number of manatees as the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico start to cool... but it’s not only manatees. Tarpon, a species quite at home in brackish, even freshwater, show up but amazingly ‘pure’ sea fish such as mangrove snappers and sheepshead appear in numbers.
Perhaps the ‘mangrove’ in the snapper gives the game away, as the tropical trees of the swamp convert sea water to fresh to thrive. Salt is absorbed into the leaves that turn yellow/orange then fall, much like deciduous trees in autumn.
Juvenile snappers and other species that grow up amid the roots may develop the ability to live in fresh water. The water is clear enough to make the most fastidious trout angler envious.
As for the fishing, my guide for the day was Captain Misty Kelly, daughter of Captain Jack of Key West tarpon fame. Our quarry was redfish, a species that has some kind of curse on me, and they took some finding until we hit on a tiny patch of reed stems, 12 miles out in the salty stuff. There were mullet leaping all around and every so often the giveaway tail of a ‘red’ disturbed the flat-calm, shallow water.
Using live shrimp it was virtually every throw a coconut, and on an ultra-light lure rod and 0.06mm braid it was great fun even if the biggest just nudged 20ins. We also had Spanish mackerel – in 2ft of water – and Misty managed a large puffer fish, much to her disgust.
On the way back we stopped in the fresh water and caught a load of snappers, released to grow bigger, and I had several casts for tarpon, having seen a big fish roll. An outstanding day in an incredible place.