"thunder" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:21:55 +0000, NOYB wrote:


I have. Unfortunately, red tide is in full force down here. Dead
grunts,
catfish, and bait are everywhere. I fished the backwaters on an outgoing
tide (no red tide in the bays), and put a pompano, a large spotted trout,
and a mangrove in the cooler for last night's dinner.

I vaguely remember reading of a spot somewhere between Naples and Key
West, where red tide is quite common, as in a yearly occurrence. Do you
run into it much where you fish?

Every year and a half we seem to get a really bad outbreak. It was really
bad early last summer, but we were spared for most of this year...until now.

Sarasota/Venice area had it bad all spring and summer, and it has finally
moved south.

It is a natural occurence, but there is a lot of research now showing that
the nutrient-rich runoff being pumped down the Caloosahatchee River from
Lake Okechobee is partially to blame for worsening/prolonging the problem.

The Army Corp of Engineers may have contributed to the problem by building a
levee on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee at the request of "Big
Sugar"...so that they could use a bunch of the land to the south of the lake
for agricultural purposes. The problem is that the natural sheet flow of
the water no longer occurs. It is now pumped unnaturally down the rivers
(both East and West), and picks up a bunch of nitrogen-rich runoff from the
sugar cane fields.

South of Naples isn't affected as much by red tide (they get "black water"
from the Shark river runoff). Instead, it's mostly the cities to the south
of the mouth of the Caloosahatchee: Ft. Myers, South Sanibel, Cape Coral,
Estero, Bonita Springs, and Naples.