A unique website dedicated to fishing information from Florida's Northern Big Bend. This includes the area from the Econfina River west to the Apalachicola River
IF you go to the Aucilla at night, you can use a spotlight and watch the rocks migrate and breed. baby rocks soon pop up during rock spawning season. they migrate into the river in the winter to spawn.
My current record:
Rocks 1, Mercury foot 0
Ducks, turkeys, flats fishing. Who has time for golf?
When the water is stained & dark, I go with at least 1.5'+ tides, stick to a few "RELATIVELY" safe routes and go with the, "Rocks? What rocks?" mindset.
Then when the waters clear the pucker factor goes way up as I hold my breath and motor over the 17 billion rocks while frantically trying to mark them all.
Then by the time the waters get stained again and I find the time to get back out on the water, I wonder what in the heck all the unnamed waypoints represent... fish or rocks?!
"The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank GOD for the United States Marine Corps." Eleanor Roosevelt, 1945
I understand the pucker factor. When the water is clear I have to take my polarized glasses off when I am running out of the river. Even though I look at the tides and know I'll be safe, it is still too scary to me to see all the rocks under me as I go out. The creeks are something else. I know where at least two of the rocks in the creeks are by now as you can see above.
The good news is that I will always know where some of the shallow rocks that warm the water around them in the cooler months are.
I think most of them are encrusted crab traps. I have been out there in a negative low with the yak, and there are probably 10 traps to every big rock.