Fifth Day Fish Day (ECT Day 11)

• Paddled Today: 10 miles
• Total Paddled: 66 miles
• Total Hiked: 165.7 miles

Rodger’s River Chickee to Lostman’s Five Ground Site (Everglades 99-mile Wilderness Waterway – Part 5)

We were happy to have a pretty uneventful night for a change. There were some fish jumping, but not near as many as previous nights. After some oatmeal and coffee, we hit the water around 8:30 am.

See ya Rodger’s Riv

Some Potential Wonderments You Might Have

If you’ve been wondering, what ever happened with your dramatic fear of a poisonwood rash outbreak following the bushwacking experience Stevie? I did end up getting a rash. Thankfully, it wasn’t very bad. I had imagined a whole body attack since I was all over in that brush, but it was quite localized to my ankles and knee caps oddly. The ointment they picked up for me did come in handy, and although it kinda has been lingering, I don’t think I’ll need it much longer.

If you’ve been wondering, how deep is this water Stevie? Not very deep. I think the deepest spot dad marked on his depth finder was 9 or 10 feet of water. On average, as we’re going about each day, it was pretty consistent at around 3 or 4 feet. Even across the big open bays. On occasion, a smallish area will get to 5 or 6 feet and that’s often where we found some fish hiding. I never really know what the depth is, although the water has cleared up some as we’ve gone north, so if shallow sometimes I can see bottom. I occasionally stuck my paddle down to check just for fun.

If you’ve been wondering, do you feel like your arms are going to fall off Stevie? Not so much. I’ve been really surprised and thankful that my body has held up to this challenge. I am certainly tired and sore at the end of each day, and have taken some ibuprofen even, but it has yet to be pain that feels bad. What i mean by that is a pulled my muscle or that I overdid it. The soreness has felt appropriate for using all these new muscles.

Feel free to ask any other wonderments and I’ll try to answer 🙂 

Ok, Back to Paddling 

I started off deviating from the boat team right away, choosing to go west around a big island whereas they went east to join back up to the official waterway trail. In an earlier post, I think I called this place a “maze.” Well, if it’s a maze there are an infinite amount of ways to get through it, especially with a kayak because I can travel in shallow water. Apart from this first split though, our group stayed pretty close to each other today.

When I got back to the waterway trail, I noticed there were many more sign posts than before. I was at number 42, which was near a small mangrove island. I tried to reach the boat on the walkie talkies, but nothing. Must have been out of range. I figured they were behind me, so while waiting, casted a few towards the island. Bam, I caught a snook. Next cast, had another on. That one got off.

Nothing much after that by the island, but a little further ahead I had something break my line. After re-rigging, on the next cast I had what felt like the same kind of fish again, something bigger than what I’d caught yet. I didn’t turn out to be big, but the mighty jack crevalle (we think) towed me around in my kayak a bit. It was a ton of fun. We would end up catching a lot of these throughout the day. 

And, I ended up getting two large trout, which we kept and ate for our third night in a row of fresh fish.

Just as the boat guys caught up, I started to get sprinkled on. When we left our chickee in the morning, we’d all been looking to the south. It was clear and we thought it would be a warm one. Instead, overcast skies took over from the north just as we got on the water. Thankfully, those few drops was all the rain we got though!

Some other highlights of the day were a few more alligator sightings, lots and lots more birds, and at the end of the day I found one of my favorite spots out here yet. I followed a small channel a bit which dead ended into a “pond.” There were fish everywhere in there. I could see them hanging out below the drooping mangrove branches. Since it was close to our campsite, I spent about a half hour just messing about around in there.

The Ground Site

Tonight was our one and only camp on the ground, every other camp was above the water on a chickee. We were all a tad nervous about this. Maybe more than a tad if honest… mosquitos, alligators, and who knows what else might be hanging around. To us, this felt very much like the jungle. Thankfully, the camp did have wooden platforms, which helped a bit in easing my worries.

We set up preparing for a mosquito assault, There were some, but we had the awesome net to eat in. Dad called it a shield at one point and in my mind I imagined the dome-like one overtop of Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War. The only problem with ours was that it was open at the bottom haha! A few were sneaking in from the gaps in the wood boards. They seemed to keep to themselves though. Hoping all the things stay quiet tonight 🙂