Now, I'm curious about your statement that the deepest you've seen out there is 9', except if you're out past the racks. From the mouth of Ickky you have to travel at about a 30 deg. angle from the shore line,southeast, to get out to the racks which are around 7-8' deep, depending on the tide. What I'm talking about in '92 was going straight out the mouth of Ickky, perpendicular (90 deg.) to the coastal shore line there, until you get to around 15' of water, which is about 3/4 mile out around high tide. Back then for a while, the water was as clear as Wakulla Springs. I seem to recall the spot where we saw the 12' x 20' patch of grass (it looked different than turtle grass) was in a slight depression in a large patch of light tan sand, with turtle grass growing up to the edges of the sand patch , kinda like areas of spotty bottom. If you check my post about grass shreds, I think it was EJ who gave a link to some research site, or maybe I Googled, "Turtle Grass." Anyway, the research about turtle grass (the long, flat-leafed grass in our grass flats) said that turtle grass will grow to depths of 100', provided it gets sunlight, meaning, the water isn't, "turbid," meaning dark or stained, like we call it. The research was mostly referring to water made turbid by pollution. What we have making our waters turbid, now, is mostly bio-veggi-tannin soup washed from up-stream wetlands and then down our rivers with all this rainfall we've been having. But, not so fast, my friend; we also have varying degrees of pollution ourselves from our old stinky friend, the Fenholloway River, Florida's only industrial river (or it used to be) that flushes the Buckeye Cellulose plant's poop water out onto the grass flats just a little southeast of Rock Island and the prevaling current to the northwest takes that crud, you guessed it, to the Ickky area, and to the Aucilla area (usually not as bad as Ickky, because of the larger amount of spring water and the relatively larger volume of flow, than the Ickky). With all this rain we've had, the major part of the stained water is from the natural veggie soup flushed down by runoff water from the headwaters of our local streams with maybe to a lesser degree from the major spring-fed streams like the Wakulla, upper St. Marks and Spring Creek (which is the biggest, being something like 3-4 times the spring water volume of the Wakulla River). Isn't it just great for some smart-azz to take up so much of your time telling you this kinda crap, when all you want to do is catch some fish! I can't help myself, I've always been curious about the natural world and can't get enough info about it, even when some times it turns out not to be all that accurate. Enough!!!
