Old Florida Fish Camps and Cranes

Whenever Bucko and I get tired of watching the exponentially escalating development on Amelia Island and we want a taste of “Old Florida” again, we head to the middle of the state. Gainesville is the central hub of this area for us, but the further out you go in any direction, the further away fromthe modern developed world you can get.

This time we began our adventure by looking for the single whooping crane that has migrated there to Gainesville on its own, the southernmost whooping crane in the U.S. Like scores of other whooping cranes, crane number 9-13 was raised by people covered from view holding crane-head-like puppets to prevent the birds from getting imprinted on people. Crane 9-13 followed an ultralight plane from Wisconsin to north Florida last year. Now this whooping crane has made the migration on its own and is hanging out with a large group of sandhill cranes in Gainesville.  The birds spend their nights on Paynes Prairie and their days with the cattle at a University of Florida pasture bordered by Southwest 23rd Street and Williston Road. Birdwatchers from all over the state are flocking in to see this, the southernmost whooping crane in Florida and if you hurry over to Gainesville soon, you can see it too.

At last, we headed south down Hwy 441 to begin our real project, a fish camp tour of Old Florida. Bucko and I have always been great fans of Florida fish camps, but not for the camping, and not for the fishing. What we enjoy is watching the wildlife, boaters and fishermen, and trading tales with the Florida crackers that rule this domain.  In years past we hung out at fish camps in Miami and the Everglades when we lived in that area.  And we used to hang out at Pirate’s Cove Fish Camp on Heckscher Drive near us here in Fernandina until the property got sold and the fish camp cleared away.  So now to find fish camps we travel further afield.

Just off Hwy 441on 191^st Place just south of the small town of Mac Intosh we were happy to find that Georgie’s Lakeside Restaurant on Orange Lake was still open. This place isn’t exactly a fish camp, since there is no camping there, but it is nestled in a lakeside park with a boat ramp that attracts all manner of local fishermen, many with stories to tell at the long bar facing big windows on Orange Lake. If great hamburgers and BLTs and beer and local lore is your mission, you can’t beat this place!

 

From our vantage point at the bar we watched an airboat zoom past us on the lake beyond while closer to us, in a canal full of native aquatic plants a tri-colored heron was patiently awaiting a fish to come by, while a group of black vultures flew in to roost on a large tree in the background.

The locals eating lunch with us at the bar were full of information about how Orange Lake had shrunk in size due to a decade of less than average rainfall, and how most of the fish camps and business like Georgie’s had suffered when boaters could no longer access the water from the boat ramps. But now, the lake is back and it has also been restocked with bass fingerlings by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and fishing should soon return to days of old.

When we drove further on to Cross Creek we were dismayed to see that the fish camps we remembered were derelict and up for sale.  The drying Orange Lake had also dried up Cross Creek, which connects it to Lake Lochloosa and the fish camps had dried up along with it.  The water is back here now, but not the facilities except for the cabins connected with the Yearling restaurant where we spent the night. 

But the next day, heading home, we got lucky. The Lochloosa Harbor fish camp on HWY 303 just south of Hawthorne was alive and well! We gobbled down a fish camp lunch of the best (and cheapest) pulled pork sandwiches around and chatted with the alligator hunter beside us at the bar.  Outside the wind was blowing white caps on Lochloosa Lake, but a lone egret stood near us on the dock, feathers rustled but otherwise unperturbed. It was great to be in an Old Florida fish camp once again!