Dakota
Well-known member
Airboats only game in town during drought
By Byron Stout
Originally posted on July 11, 2007
Outside Lake Okeechobee’s Rim Canal in the Bare Beach channel, bass boats appear like a miniature naval flotilla, all lined up with no place to go. They are confined to the area between channel markers, the only place they can safely maneuver without risking ruin to the expensive propellers and lower units of their high-powered outboard motors.
But no such constraints bind Capt. Terry Garrels. With rudder stick in hand, he coaxes a roar from his 500-cubic-inch Cadillac engine and flies out of the channel toward hundreds of large birds silhouetted on a distant flat.
Garrels pilots an airboat — the quintessentially Florida hybridization of boat and plane that is the only conveyance available on many drought-stricken waters.
What waters remain, however, are magnets for wildlife, including some very unusual sights.
As the distance between the airboat and large birds narrows, the flock quickly prove to be white pelicans — normally true snowbirds, uncommonly seen in mid-summer. Many birds in the flock take lumbering flight, black-fringed wings beating mightily to separate 5-foot bodies from the skinny water in which they basked.
According to Mark Kraus of Florida Audubon, the book on white pelicans says non-breeding flocks sometimes remain in Florida year-round, rather than joining adults in the Midwest. But it is hard to imagine the 150 regal birds in this group are mere juveniles.
Circling back toward the Clewiston ship channel, the skimming airboat surprises school after school of fat tilapia that push their own wakes in all directions. To the south, where the formerly flooded marsh called the East Wall looms, a family of otters humps across the mud in the awkward bounds of fisheaters out of water.
On down toward Coot Bay, just off the flat, a fisheater in water presents another odd sight. A bald eagle stands with stubby legs immersed in goofy imitation of an egret, of which there are uncountable hundreds.
Two dozen spoonbills swish along the nearby shallows, roseate wings like cotton candy in the morning light. While at the other end of the morbidity spectrum, a gang of black vultures worries the grisly skull and back plates that are all they’ve left of a long dead young gator, sunshine streaming eerily through its eye sockets.
Garrels loves to tell alligator stories as he idles along the Big O’s Rim Canal, recounting an 11-foot monster his tourists of the day once saw making breakfast of a 7-footer. In another spot he predicts his rumbling engine will inspire a counter bellow from another big bull gator, which delivers a water-boiling growl as promised.
On Lake Trafford near Immokalee, airboat tours are so regular that many shorebirds seem to take no notice. There a big female gator also takes airboat umbrage on cue, deer bounce white-tailed up the banks, and feral hogs grub among cattails along the shore.
Trafford is so low, traditional boats cannot even be launched. Even the airboats at Lake Trafford Marina & Campground had trouble leaving their home canal, before it was recently dredged.
Farther south, in the Big Cypress National Preserve near Ochopee, manager Debbie Kennedy said airboat riders have good chances of seeing alligators, otters, turtles and wading birds within the 285 privately owned acres at Wooten’s Everglades Airboat Tour.
Wooten’s has been offering airboat rides since 1953, and if the company pilots don’t happen upon creatures in the wild, there are plenty to see back in the animal sanctuary. Native animals include endangered North American crocodiles and Florida panthers Kennedy said are descended from stock maintained at the zoo for 30 years.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 11026/1075
By Byron Stout
Originally posted on July 11, 2007
Outside Lake Okeechobee’s Rim Canal in the Bare Beach channel, bass boats appear like a miniature naval flotilla, all lined up with no place to go. They are confined to the area between channel markers, the only place they can safely maneuver without risking ruin to the expensive propellers and lower units of their high-powered outboard motors.
But no such constraints bind Capt. Terry Garrels. With rudder stick in hand, he coaxes a roar from his 500-cubic-inch Cadillac engine and flies out of the channel toward hundreds of large birds silhouetted on a distant flat.
Garrels pilots an airboat — the quintessentially Florida hybridization of boat and plane that is the only conveyance available on many drought-stricken waters.
What waters remain, however, are magnets for wildlife, including some very unusual sights.
As the distance between the airboat and large birds narrows, the flock quickly prove to be white pelicans — normally true snowbirds, uncommonly seen in mid-summer. Many birds in the flock take lumbering flight, black-fringed wings beating mightily to separate 5-foot bodies from the skinny water in which they basked.
According to Mark Kraus of Florida Audubon, the book on white pelicans says non-breeding flocks sometimes remain in Florida year-round, rather than joining adults in the Midwest. But it is hard to imagine the 150 regal birds in this group are mere juveniles.
Circling back toward the Clewiston ship channel, the skimming airboat surprises school after school of fat tilapia that push their own wakes in all directions. To the south, where the formerly flooded marsh called the East Wall looms, a family of otters humps across the mud in the awkward bounds of fisheaters out of water.
On down toward Coot Bay, just off the flat, a fisheater in water presents another odd sight. A bald eagle stands with stubby legs immersed in goofy imitation of an egret, of which there are uncountable hundreds.
Two dozen spoonbills swish along the nearby shallows, roseate wings like cotton candy in the morning light. While at the other end of the morbidity spectrum, a gang of black vultures worries the grisly skull and back plates that are all they’ve left of a long dead young gator, sunshine streaming eerily through its eye sockets.
Garrels loves to tell alligator stories as he idles along the Big O’s Rim Canal, recounting an 11-foot monster his tourists of the day once saw making breakfast of a 7-footer. In another spot he predicts his rumbling engine will inspire a counter bellow from another big bull gator, which delivers a water-boiling growl as promised.
On Lake Trafford near Immokalee, airboat tours are so regular that many shorebirds seem to take no notice. There a big female gator also takes airboat umbrage on cue, deer bounce white-tailed up the banks, and feral hogs grub among cattails along the shore.
Trafford is so low, traditional boats cannot even be launched. Even the airboats at Lake Trafford Marina & Campground had trouble leaving their home canal, before it was recently dredged.
Farther south, in the Big Cypress National Preserve near Ochopee, manager Debbie Kennedy said airboat riders have good chances of seeing alligators, otters, turtles and wading birds within the 285 privately owned acres at Wooten’s Everglades Airboat Tour.
Wooten’s has been offering airboat rides since 1953, and if the company pilots don’t happen upon creatures in the wild, there are plenty to see back in the animal sanctuary. Native animals include endangered North American crocodiles and Florida panthers Kennedy said are descended from stock maintained at the zoo for 30 years.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 11026/1075
