# Very bad news about Biscayne Bay....



## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

It will be like that everywhere if people don’t wake up.


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## RunningOnEmpty (Jun 20, 2015)

Naples and Marco island is the same. Things have really changed in the 38 years I've been fishing.


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## lemaymiami (Feb 9, 2007)

With the die-off of the grasses in the urban areas of the Bay from Government Cut to Haulover Cut... there’s no habitat for the shrimp that were the basis for all of my night trips. When the winter or summer shrimp runs were on the tarpon would load up in the shadows night after night on a falling tide. No shrimp, no reason for the tarpon to line up anymore. Wish it weren’t so.


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## mangoman (Dec 1, 2011)

lemaymiami said:


> With the die-off of the grasses in the urban areas of the Bay from Government Cut to Haulover Cut... there’s no habitat for the shrimp that were the basis for all of my night trips. When the winter or summer shrimp runs were on the tarpon would load up in the shadows night after night on a falling tide. No shrimp, no reason for the tarpon to line up anymore. Wish it weren’t so.


oh man do i wish my children could have seen the shrimp runs at Haulover cut.


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## lemaymiami (Feb 9, 2007)

There is a bit of good news that needs to be said... that is if they can figure out how to bring the grass beds back - the shrimp in the urban areas will come roaring back... in just a year or two.

Something else that needs to be said - the southern end of Biscayne Bay, south of Key Biscayne down all the way to Key Largo is still in relatively good shape (and that's where the bonefish and permit are for all the dedicated flats anglers). The terrible grass devastation is to the north of Government Cut (and hopefully won't spread to the south with a bit of care...


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## bonehead (Dec 9, 2016)

I’m 17, never got to see the fishing here at its peak, not even close. At least so I’m told. Would be cool if in the future we would at least have healthy clean water...


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## topnative2 (Feb 22, 2009)

How much seagrass do manatees eat?
*Seagrass* beds and freshwater submerged aquatic vegetation are important feeding sites for *manatees*. *Manatees can eat* 10 - 15% of their body weight in vegetation daily. A 453-kilogram (1,000-pound) *manatee*, for example, would probably *eat* between 45-68 kilograms (100 - 150 pounds) of food a day.


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## sjrobin (Jul 13, 2015)

All of the Texas bays sea grass beds are dying at an exponential rate due to higher than normal tides, higher water temperatures, and increased nutrient loads from Harvey and 2018/19 El Nino run-off. Without the high water temps and water levels, the nutrient loads can be good for the estuaries.. So, as humans, what can we do to help slow the damage? Keep voting for the same compromised politicians? Keep wasting fresh water? Keep building on our stressed coastlines? Keep farming land that should not be farmed? Keep rolling back EPA regulations? Keep fueling power generators with coal?


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## Net 30 (Mar 24, 2012)

bonehead said:


> I’m 17, never got to see the fishing here at its peak, not even close. At least so I’m told. Would be cool if in the future we would at least have healthy clean water...


I've got a few decades on you and my advice is to push hard to fish as many of the great (or used to be great) fishing spots as soon as you can. There has been so much degradation of habitat in the past few years that the tipping point on many places might be approaching fast.


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## fishicaltherapist (Mar 9, 2013)

topnative2 said:


> How much seagrass do manatees eat?
> *Seagrass* beds and freshwater submerged aquatic vegetation are important feeding sites for *manatees*. *Manatees can eat* 10 - 15% of their body weight in vegetation daily. A 453-kilogram (1,000-pound) *manatee*, for example, would probably *eat* between 45-68 kilograms (100 - 150 pounds) of food a day.


No doubt, manatees eat a LOT ! That said, not a big difference in the number of manatees in IRL when the area was clean water & abundant sea grasses.There is a problem in that, the manatees still eat the same amount with a whole lot less available grass. It might appear that the snowball continues to roll down the mountain at an ever increasing speed. If our so called "leaders" don't pull their heads out of their backsides Florida's waterways WILL be nothing more than a septic tank.


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

sjrobin said:


> All of the Texas bays sea grass beds are dying at an exponential rate due to higher than normal tides, higher water temperatures, and increased nutrient loads from Harvey and 2018/19 El Nino run-off. Without the high tides and water levels, the nutrient loads can be good. So, as humans, what can we do to help slow the damage? Keep voting for the same compromised politicians? Keep wasting fresh water? Keep building on our stressed coastlines? Keep farming land that should not be farmed? Keep rolling back EPA regulations? Keep fueling power generators with coal?


Build a few desalination plants in every bay system...


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## K3anderson (Jan 23, 2013)

906 people a day move to Florida and very few moving out. Everything is under construction on or near the water.


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

K3anderson said:


> 906 people a day move to Florida and very few moving out. Everything is under construction on or near the water.


Two legged manatees...
People seem to think we were part of the formula. Without us dicking around the water it would heal itself. Guys always tell me that they kill big trout because they are old and probably about to die anyway and the other age old BS I get is “if you knew how many fish dolphins eat you would realize the amount of fish people kill doesn’t matter”...
Brilliant


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## DuckNut (Apr 3, 2009)

sjrobin said:


> So, as humans, what can we do to help slow the damage? Keep voting for the same compromised politicians? Keep wasting fresh water? Keep building on our stressed coastlines? Keep farming land that should not be farmed? Keep rolling back EPA regulations? Keep fueling power generators with coal?


Keep adding 10% more boats every year dumping exhaust into the water?

The problem is everywhere and until people realize the problem and play their small roll in improving there will be no improvement.

Walk down any pier here in FL on any given day and every fish that is brought up is put in a bucket- nothing is thrown back. The only thing that has changed is there are more fishermen and fewer fish.


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

DuckNut said:


> Keep adding 10% more boats every year dumping exhaust into the water?
> 
> The problem is everywhere and until people realize the problem and play their small roll in improving there will be no improvement.
> 
> Walk down any pier here in FL on any given day and every fish that is brought up is put in a bucket- nothing is thrown back. The only thing that has changed is there are more fishermen and fewer fish.


The 5 gallon bucket fishermen rarely get citations because they’ll likely never pay the fine(s) so the wardens know to just harass the guys in decent looking boats and nickle and dime them on what’s in the outdoor manual because they will pay the fines. We have the same issue down here but TPWD is finally getting it and they are targeting Bin Lee and the rest of the people that know not what a fishing regulation is much less a fishing license. Who knew you could catch a 30” trout on cut bait on an upside down sponning surf rod with a Penn 309 filled with 100 pound mono?


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## DuckNut (Apr 3, 2009)

Smackdaddy53 said:


> The 5 gallon bucket fishermen rarely get citations because they’ll likely never pay the fine(s) so the wardens know to just harass the guys in decent looking boats and nickle and dime them on what’s in the outdoor manual because they will pay the fines. We have the same issue down here but TPWD is finally getting it and they are targeting Bin Lee and the rest of the people that know not what a fishing regulation is much less a fishing license. Who knew you could catch a 30” trout on cut bait on an upside down sponning surf rod with a Penn 309 filled with 100 pound mono?


A license for a pier is a mere $500 a year and they have thousands of fishermen. I know some of the piers the FWC has placed the operator in charge of enforcement but that never happens either.


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## BassFlats (Nov 26, 2018)

I've seen pier anglers throw small bonefish in their cooler


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## lemaymiami (Feb 9, 2007)

Been thinking about Biscayne's situation a bit and have come up with one issue not being mentioned in the water quality side of things.... That is simply this - all of our many freshwater canals in south Florida, and all the way north as far as they go are meant as flood control measures to be able to dump all the waters a big storm or small hurricane can drop on us (I won't mention big hurricanes since they just overwhelm anything we have in place...). Here's the problem -I don't remember hearing anyone talking about. All of our freshwater canals have weed problems. The stuff can clog up a canal in short order since all of the weed is fast growing. For many years cities had measures to harvest out the weed whenever it was a problem. In recent years (the past 20 from what I remember...) they've mostly gone to herbicides to kill off the weed (and end any fishing possibilities in many canals...). Probably much cheaper to spray than try to harvest out the weed - and that just might be a problem since eventually all of that herbicide filled water - ends up in Biscayne Bay.... Maybe, just maybe if it were stopped the seagrasses would come back....

By the way I've been fishing the Bay and nearby waters for many years and have a pretty good idea where I can find manatees each day. I doubt that manatee can harm a healthy seagrass area. The stuff just grows back after they feed on it - pretty much self-sustaining in my view. If the grass is dying off and getting grazed by manateee - I'm sure it's harmful... just one more stressor on a badly stressed environment...

I'm no scientist and folks like me are often dismissed in one hearing or other, saying we offer "anecdotal" evidence - which is bureaucratic language for without merit... I've been with Captains for Clean Waters now for a years or so (and probably need to renew with them). We all need to push for solutions to our water problems or we'll have fewer places to fish...


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## Surffshr (Dec 28, 2017)

What kind of “weed” there Cap?...


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## Frank Ucci (Jan 20, 2019)

I think Captain LeMay is on to something. I regularly see crews spraying herbicide along the shorelines of ditches and canals within a half mile of Biscayne Bay. If you ever read the label of a herbicide like Round-Up, it cautions against allowing it to runoff into rivers and streams. I'm certain the product being used to control plant growth along the canals is no less toxic to marine vegetation than Round-Up.
Additionally, I've noticed a vast increase in the flow of freshwater from the canals into the south end of Biscayne Bay during the past year. This seems to coincide with a decrease in the reported algae events in Stuart and Ft. Myers. I cannot help but wonder if the SFWMD has decided to "share the wealth" with us down here in order to take off some of the heat they've been getting for devastating the ecosystems of those two spots with their nutrient-laden discharges.


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## lemaymiami (Feb 9, 2007)

They don't physically have the means anymore to be able to get the discharge waters from the big lake down south to where we are...

Historically (before we screwed things up with flood control...) the overflow simply went south each year - and during the height of the rainy season Lake Okeechobee might have doubled in size every year- with all the growth going to the south. Once folks started coming here in numbers and particularly for farmers just south of the big lake efforts were made to dike the southern side of Okeechobee so that the land to the south could be farmed... That first small dike was a great success for early farmers (and the hustlers who sold dry land in the winter -that had a foot or more of water on it during the wet season...) until about 1928 when a big hurricane caused that dike to fail in the dead of night... Hundreds and hundreds died as a result (everyone needs to read The Swamp by Grunwald... it explains and recounts exactly how it all went south..a history of man's dealings with the Everglades for the past 500 years... I highly recommend it...). 

A few years later the feds built the Herbert Hoover dike along the south side of the big lake (and it allowed the waters in the lake to rise much higher (maybe over 14'...). To this day though, water managers have been worried about that dike and what would happen if it ever failed.... As a result whenever the water level gets too high they discharge like mad to reduce the risk.... no matter what it does to everything downstream...

At any rate, that completely messed up the way nature created the 'Glades but it wasn't until the early fifties - after more than one terrible flooding event that the state (and just about everyone else...) asked the feds to send in the Corps of Engineers to do something about flooding in paradise... The Corps did as requested - just look at the canals we have from that time - and every one of them meant to catch flood waters and send them to the ocean by the quickest (and easiest) means possible. Everyone cheered since no one realized what would happen if the Everglades was cut off from that annual flood each year. We live with the results to this day... Overflow from the big lake since then either goes west down to the Caloosahatchee River or east down the St. Lucie. That annual flood of storm water was bad enough for coastal areas -run a bunch of freshwater into a marine area and you kill off all of the small plants and animals (and fish) that need salt waters... That was bad enough when the big lake was relatively clean but an absolute disaster when the waters from the Okeechobee have a lot of nutrients in them the way they do today... that's why we see that terrible blue/green algae that can actually do you some real harm.... and of course for many years now the Everglades hasn't been getting the freshwater it needs (that has very bad consequences for all of Florida Bay to the west of the Keys as well..).

What I've only partially described is a mess for sure - and all of us, historically, had a hand in it. Now it's time for us to clean it up and fix our mistakes. Every bit of it can be fixed (except for all the people living down here now...) but it will take a ton of money - and a lot of years to sort it all out.... Figure I'll be long gone before they actually make a good start (although I do see a bit of motion....). Every last one of us needs to demand it - and work to convince a majority of voters how necessary it all is unless we want to just give up.

You're welcome to pass this along - and get a look at Captains for Clean Waters... that's an outfit actually trying to get government to respond to all of these problems - we owe it to our kids and grandkids - since they'll be living with what we've created....


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## Frank Ucci (Jan 20, 2019)

If you check the south side of Lake Okeechobee on Google Earth you can see that a canal drains from the south side of the lake. Although this canal is not as large as the navigable canals leading east and west, it still is capable of carrying water out of the lake. If you follow that canal and it's various offshoots, you will see that it does eventually drain into Biscayne Bay at various points. Also, the canal which runs parallel to Tamiami Trail receives water from the diked-up everglades to the north. The SFWMD can dump that everglades water directly into that canal, regardless of whether it has had time to be "cleansed" by the everglades themselves. During periods of heavy rain to the north, they will pump water into that canal at an unbelievable rate. That canal also leads (eventually) into Biscayne Bay.


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## levidog (May 14, 2017)

topnative2 said:


> How much seagrass do manatees eat?
> *Seagrass* beds and freshwater submerged aquatic vegetation are important feeding sites for *manatees*. *Manatees can eat* 10 - 15% of their body weight in vegetation daily. A 453-kilogram (1,000-pound) *manatee*, for example, would probably *eat* between 45-68 kilograms (100 - 150 pounds) of food a day.


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## levidog (May 14, 2017)

lemaymiami said:


> They don't physically have the means anymore to be able to get the discharge waters from the big lake down south to where we are...
> 
> Historically (before we screwed things up with flood control...) the overflow simply went south each year - and during the height of the rainy season Lake Okeechobee might have doubled in size every year- with all the growth going to the south. Once folks started coming here in numbers and particularly for farmers just south of the big lake efforts were made to dike the southern side of Okeechobee so that the land to the south could be farmed... That first small dike was a great success for early farmers (and the hustlers who sold dry land in the winter -that had a foot or more of water on it during the wet season...) until about 1928 when a big hurricane caused that dike to fail in the dead of night... Hundreds and hundreds died as a result (everyone needs to read The Swamp by Grunwald... it explains and recounts exactly how it all went south..a history of man's dealings with the Everglades for the past 500 years... I highly recommend it...).
> 
> ...





Frank Ucci said:


> If you check the south side of Lake Okeechobee on Google Earth you can see that a canal drains from the south side of the lake. Although this canal is not as large as the navigable canals leading east and west, it still is capable of carrying water out of the lake. If you follow that canal and it's various offshoots, you will see that it does eventually drain into Biscayne Bay at various points. Also, the canal which runs parallel to Tamiami Trail receives water from the diked-up everglades to the north. The SFWMD can dump that everglades water directly into that canal, regardless of whether it has had time to be "cleansed" by the everglades themselves. During periods of heavy rain to the north, they will pump water into that canal at an unbelievable rate. That canal also leads (eventually) into Biscayne Bay.


The


Frank Ucci said:


> If you check the south side of Lake Okeechobee on Google Earth you can see that a canal drains from the south side of the lake. Although this canal is not as large as the navigable canals leading east and west, it still is capable of carrying water out of the lake. If you follow that canal and it's various offshoots, you will see that it does eventually drain into Biscayne Bay at various points. Also, the canal which runs parallel to Tamiami Trail receives water from the diked-up everglades to the north. The SFWMD can dump that everglades water directly into that canal, regardless of whether it has had time to be "cleansed" by the everglades themselves. During periods of heavy rain to the north, they will pump water into that canal at an unbelievable rate. That canal also leads (eventually) into Biscayne Bay.


really


topnative2 said:


> How much seagrass do manatees eat?
> *Seagrass* beds and freshwater submerged aquatic vegetation are important feeding sites for *manatees*. *Manatees can eat* 10 - 15% of their body weight in vegetation daily. A 453-kilogram (1,000-pound) *manatee*, for example, would probably *eat* between 45-68 kilograms (100 - 150 pounds) of food a day.


Okay.... I try to stay quiet, as I never know who is out here and going to be pissed off by a comment. 
But really....Manatees are the reason Biscayne Bay is dying off? UMMMM... I can't actually believe someone wrote this. Good lord, lets all pump the brakes for minute. They were here before us. They don't overpopulate. Yes, they feed. But they don't waste the food, they just eat it. Manatee's don't have a large number of kids unless they can survive. I don't care what you blame it on...It's hotter, harsher, more crowded, more used and more polluted. Humans are the common denominator. We keep pumping Kids out. And regardless of whether they go to the Bay or not, their waste does; their carbon does. 
You cannot argue this when you drive on a road around here. You cannot argue this when you go out on a boat around here. You cannot argue this when you drive US 1 on a weekend and look at the people parked on the side of the road...using the ocean as their public toilet and refuse deposit. Even though it is sickening, it is still NOTHING compared to a weekend in Biscayne.
Lets leave the Manatees out of this argument and focus on those who are responsible...and the ONLY ones who can do something about it. US.


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## NDuncan (Jun 18, 2016)

lemaymiami said:


> Just read the attached article in today's Miami Herald. The Bay is a big place but the urban portions of it are my only remaining focus since that's where I've been running my night trips -between Miami and Miami Beach for many years.... Many an angler has taken his first tarpon on fly or spinning gear there with me - and all were sight fished in the shadows up underneath one of the bridges that connect Miami to Miami Beach... This year I've been reluctant to take a night charter there since the small 20 to 40lb tarpon just aren't around very much in the places where we always found them (I was first introduced to that fishery as a beginner in 1972.. and have been guiding since 1996...).
> 
> Here's the article -wish it weren't so.... I can still find fish at night around dock lights -but nothing like I'm used to... In the coming months I'm going to do a bit of exploring to the north to see what's available at night - but it won't be near Miami...
> 
> https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article235178352.html


Try the dock lights in Stuart!


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## lemaymiami (Feb 9, 2007)

Unfortunately that's a long way to trailer for a five hour night booking. I am looking around a bit and think Jupiter is do-able (only 75 miles to the turn-off from the Turnpike... from my house..). I'm on the road towing year in and year out at over 20,000 miles so I'm certainly used to it by now....

The only real drawback from my point of view is that none of the area north of us has great night fishing for 20-40lb tarpon.... It's mostly snook up that way from what I've learned...

I have no trouble hitting the road for day trips - I'm equidistant from both Flamingo and Chokoloskee - each one is exactly 93 miles one way (and I commute back and forth each day..).

I'm still doing a bit of reading about Biscayne Bay and hope that the troubles there can be corrected - and that I'm still around when they are. It's actually the first great fishing I ever enjoyed - all those years ago down here (winter of 1972...) When I began guiding full time in 1996 the bridges in the urban areas of Biscayne Bay were just on fire when the winter or the summer shrimp run was on... Nowadays not even the commercial wing netters work that area... It's just sad... Can't think of any other place I know where a beginner fly angler can jump as many as a dozen small tarpon in just a few hours. We always jumped less and fought more when the angler learned how to go about it (after losing fish after fish...). We certainly did get a lot of shots for years and years...


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## jasonrl23 (Jul 27, 2009)

We spray glyphosate in our lakes and drainage ditches even when its not needed. Every year we dump millions of gallons freshwater into our salt water bodies to prepare for Hurricanes. The grass dies shortly after. Most recently this happened in the Indian River Lagoon. In my opinion the FWC is one of the largest polluters in the state.


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