Upper Aucilla adventures

[BloodyChamp]

Looks like we’re rained out for a while. I hope it doesn’t rain so much that it dirtys it all back up for weeks. I don’t think it will but a weatherman I ain’t. If it looks like it going to rain but not pour I might go sneak around in the truck and see what I can find on the Greenville side. According to the map the SRWMD owns both sides but I’ve never seen 1 of their signs or post thingys that are now more common in Greenville. I’ve seen some primitive trails that look like they go to the river, but I assumed it was private hunting land. And if I can’t find anything I can always go hang out at the cool Dairy Queen there at 150

[Danibeth]

Your pictures make me wanna get out and go explore! Maybe not drag my canoe up and over logs while dealing with yellow flies (I react very badly to those nasty evil monsters' bites), but definitely explore and catch bluegill or redbellies. Been too long on that for me. But because of some of your posts, I've been very curious about the Aucilla and Wacissa rivers so have been doing a bit more researching and learning about this area. Pretty neat stuff.

What would 7" of rain do to the rivers? Muddy em up bad? I got a little over that this weekend...

[BloodyChamp]

It wouldn’t effect the Wacissa. It *probably* didn’t affect the Aucilla considering how dry it was getting but it doesn’t take much to fill that bad boy up, especially the narrow upper parts.

[woodstock52]

For the yellowflies
I boat a lot & have a place on the St Marks.
I found out several years ago, by accident, that Austrian Gold sunscreen works GREAT!!!!
I use 30 or 50spf but I don't think that matters. I have been using it for 3 years, when the fly's aren't around, its a great sunscreen. It only takes a small amount, but do not miss a spot.
I have shared this info with some friends who now use it & have thanked me several times.
They will still buss around & will land on your skin, but they Will Not Bite.
Order it on-line, it's not in many stores.

[BloodyChamp]

Man was I wrong on that one lol! The Aucilla is FLOODED and water is still pouring in from the woods. I saw creeks with miniwaterfalls today. So this project is on hold...along with the Pinhook project lol! I do go back to work soon though so maybe I’ll get to do what I was talking about there by the end of the summer.

[BloodyChamp]

I thought I had an upper St Marks River thread around here somewhere, complete with the 2 bucket mouths I lost last year after marching through stuff similar to the Aucilla but I can't find it. I ended up playing around the upper St Marks this weekend. I found a new place to drive to pretty easily yesterday and it was flooded but not 60 feet deep whooshing Aucilla flooded. The yellowflies have gone but with the water now there are mosquitoes which I hate the most.

I went back today with some chicken livers but was shocked to find that the water had dropped a couple or 3 feet overnight!!!!!! I caught 1 nice catfish pretty fast and thought I was about to load up on them but I didn't get another bite so I grabbed my bream pole and started walking. They're not back to popping but there was a little evidence that they were out there...taking off from the few calm spots as I crept up. I managed to get the lure into the water from far away in 1 spot and lost 2 big bream or perch. They grabbed it but they didn't inhale it so it's possible it was tricky ole Warmouth Perch who takes the bait funny in my experience, especially lures. Then I walked up on a pretty wide creek that I can't believe didn't show up on the map so the walk down the river was cut short. I went down the creek and you wouldn't believe the fish tail that happened next.

Something ginormous followed it to my feet and stopped, and his fins came up out of the water Redfish style and he just sat there looking at the lure. Then something whooshed in out of nowhere and swallowed my lure and the other fish took off. That something was the Black Attack He flopped onto the bank by accident and I thought I was in luck as I never would have gotten him in without breaking something in my bream rig but boy was I wrong. He still broke the line somehow and my lure was all the way down his throat. I picked him up and was going to try and get it out with a stick but he got away complete with the cartoon ending - whopping me in the face with his tail and making an unrealistic mud splash that hit me perfectly in the face. Had that lure since I was like 12 years old lol! Punk Blackfish!

I'm excited about getting the paddleboat out there now though. Hopefully the rain will hold off another few days and it will sink back down. Then I can do some more organized fishing. If nothing else I want to make a few paddle trips similar to the ones I had planned for the Aucilla and Pinhook.

[GaryDroze]

Can we assume that the "blackfish" was a bowfin, aka mudfish, aka grindle? So many names for that prehistoric a@@hole of a fish. A bunch of them over 10 pounds infest the St Marks Refuge ponds. You do not want to get your fingers near their business end. I try to believe that all God's creatures have merit, but mudfish test my faith.

[BloodyChamp]

You’ve never heard them called Blackfish? Aholes they are and I used to be 1 right back to them but then I learned that they are the last species of what used to be an entire order going back to the Jurassic period! Talk about a survivor! I’ve always tried to get my hook back and release them since learning that. This was a pretty big one. Ones up in creeks usually aren’t that big. I don’t doubt that the ones in the refuge are bigger and SLIMIER lol!

[BloodyChamp]

I cheated a little and made a paddling trip today. This wasn’t at Sunday’s place, but upriver at a place just down from the Tram Road Bridge. I’d done the Tram Road paddling trip before as far as I could. It turned back to pure swamp somewhere in the middle but before that I did catch some fat Warmouth and some small Pike. Meanwhile at today’s landing I caught a Redbreast and a couple small Warmouth off the bank, back in April. So obviously there are fish out there but not today lol! Still to high even though it has sank back down. That’s where I cheated though. I did this to avoid having to drag across logs every 10 feet. I did catch 3 Blackfish on lures. You probably could have caught bream on live bait if you sat it down on the bottom and waited. If the water was right I would go as far as to say you could have caught some bass. There were plenty of wide spots with grass on the sides and logs, and not just flopped across the river logs, but lots of different situations with logs on the sides, in deep water etc. That also showed me that the dragging won’t be as bad as I thought. There was some dragging, but some is it. Nothing like what I usually get into exploring lol!

I made it down to the first wide opening, and just down from that was where the main creek shown on Google maps joins in. That looked interesting and everything but nothing unlike I’d already seen. There was the creek from Sunday that I’d mentioned and 3 or 4 before this one, today. And there weren’t rinky dink creeks. This was serious water coming in. The next paddling trip will be a paddle up from Sunday’s spot to where I turned around today. I’ll go ahead and wait on the water to fall back down for that, as I have another little trip planned tomorrow up from Tram Road on foot through the “state park” (State Park that was bought and planned then abandoned during the recession). On Google maps there is a wide, round opening on the river up from there that you can walk to. It must be a sink hole or a spring. It will happen tomorrow though and we’ll see.

[BloodyChamp]

I’m at home laid up with a sore leg lol! About a 3 mile walk there, and I didn’t make it. I made it to the turn off of the trail to get there and I didn’t take my uncomfortable rubber boots hoping I wouldn’t need them. Bad move...did cross the river swamp barefooted but only after walking to the easiest spot, which then put me off course. I went ahead and turned around because I didn’t want to put socks back on my wet feet and going barefoot anymore was borderline dangerous. And while I think Google Maps was working, it was spotty. The wide area was just over the river and I thought I could see where the treetops vanished ahead.

There were some old picnic tables somewhere in the middle that I rested at going to and from the place. When I got up the 2nd time my leg was hurting ugh. I’ve been saying I’m going to get a bicycle for this stuff and haven’t done it. Looking at the size charts they say a 5’6 guy belongs on a 16-20” bike. Most of those are in the little boys section lol! Can this be right? On top of that I have short legs. The truth is those bikes look alot more stout and sturdy for trail riding. The only adult ones that look that tough are hundreds and sometimes a thousand dollars lol!

[Danibeth]

You should get you some COMFORTABLE rubber boots I'm a big fan of LaCrosse Alpha Burlys….pretty much all I wear turkey hunting and I can do some serious walking in them. They work well on a bike too.

Is the water still pretty high back up the St. Marks?

[BloodyChamp]

Not way up there where I was. It’s still a little high down river where all the creeks and water from the woods is pouring in. It shouldn’t be long before that’s all gone though if it doesn’t flood again.

[BloodyChamp]

I’m going to try again tomorrow after some better preparation, including my boots! In the meantime has anybody been here before? Even if it was years ago I’m just curious. My Uncle says he used to go swimming in this spot. Here’s a pic from Google Maps. The short explanation if you don’t want to reread everything before is that this is a sinkhole or something on the St Marks, way up river in the middle of the swamp part. Way up from Horn Spring and way up from the Tram Road Bridge, but way below the middle western Leon County lakes and creeks that are the start of the river. That’s the streamlined trail off of Tram Road there on the left, and I walked down a pigtail road to the river swamp.

[Danibeth]

I haven't been up there, though I have been looking at that hole and wondering about it. Good luck on your trip when you go...

When you go on the upper river trips like this, do you often see any big gators in the back of beyond waters? I know I have seen some little gators but anything big?

[BloodyChamp]

I made it!!!!!! I didn’t quite go the way I said I would. Pics later maybe. I saw 1 big gator today and he eased off into the water. I don’t always see the big ones but they’re out there, usually trying to stay cool this time of year I guess, and not perched up where you can see them. I also saw a ton of bream popping and stuff flopping in the middle. *Might* have even been a spring, but if it were it seems like there would be more information on it. It was pretty clean in the middle though, not clear blue clean, but I’ve seen less than clear water that’s above incoming spring water on the Aucilla where there’s no channel. I couldn’t take the best pics let alone fish to good. Water was still in the woods, but it looked dang good out in the middle and around the shade line.