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On the water with...Dwayne E. Cooper |
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Table of Contents Learning to find water on my own Information on the 99' fishkill on the White River Have fun...but don't get your feet wet!
The famous pole marking the opening of The Monkey Box
Promoting the guide service and lake at the Orlando boat and sport show
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Home - On the water with Dwayne Cooper
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Graduating to Lake Okeechobee...Now, a lot of people dream about guiding on a lake like Lake Okeechobee ...but I got to do it. After guiding on Lake Monroe during my college years and with a semester left in college, I decided that I was approaching a good time in my life (at age 22) to take some time off from my studies and guide on a real lake...a real big lake. Lake Okeechobee is approximately 40 miles long and 30 miles wide and is a sea of a thousand grasses. It is not a lake for the timid. I remember our first trip out on the big lake. In my dad's 18' Ranger boat, we headed out toward the famed Monkey box and when we saw the opening of the lake...we both looked at each other in awe at the huge body of water that was in front of us. I don't think we caught that many fish that first day...but we slowly, but surely learned the lake by breaking it down in small pieces or "mini-lakes." Of course, the lake wasn't the only thing we had to learn. I knew a steady supply of shiners would be very important to our success... So I travelled around the lake meeting almost every shiner fisherman and bait shop owner on the lake. We got a large shiner tank at our cabin, a smaller one for the truck and smaller tanks for our boats and equipped them with the best aeration devices available. We also took the time to learn how to "shiner fish" so we didn't have to pay the exorbitant $10-12 a dozen for the wild shiners ourselves and in case our shiner supply ran dry when we started guiding. I also think I met every motel and campground owner around the lake as I continuously promoted our guide service. Knowing the importance of telling a good story or two while out fishing or on a long run out to the lake, one of my first jobs was to go to the local library and check out all the books on the wildlife and history of the area. There truly was a lot to learn! Okeechobee is truly a bird sanctuary with pelicans, herons, eagles, and osprey to galore. After our guide trips, the pelicans would come over from The Pelican tree to our boat and gladly munch on our dead shiners after we rang the dinner bell for them by clanging our keys on the metal rails of our boat. At times, there must have been well over 50 pelicans in that tree. The many raccoons on the lake also enjoyed a shiner snack on occasion too! For the most part, the rim canal (the body of water that circles the lake) and its levy surrounds the lake and protects the nearby small cities from the many powerful storms that seem to often ramble by. The rim canal was built after the great Okeechobee hurricane destroyed the better part of the area back in the 1920s. The area's indian (native american) history is plentiful and I took great pleasure in learning about that history and often passed on an amusing story or two while on a guide trip. Of course, everyone wanted to see alligators and Lake Okeechobee was often very accomodating when the air temperature exceeded the water temperature. Alligators greatly outnumbered humans and, in some areas of the rim canal, hundreds could be found in a mile stretch along the rim canal's banks either climbing trees, munching on gar or cruising slyly around the canal. Some specimens came as large as 20 foot in length and, believe it or not, I had the good fortune to see two white alligators while on the lake. I always tried to end the guide trip with a close-up view of one of these truly unique prehistoric animals... |
Some lakes and rivers that I really would like to fish in the near future... 1. Lake Erie 2. Saginaw Bay (Mich) 3. Canadian wilderness border waters 4. Guntersville Lake 5. Lake Fork 6. Dale Hollow 7. Eufaula 8. Reelfoot 9. Bull Shoals 10. Table Rock
Showing off our boats and a couple of nice bass (caught on artificials)
You see some weird things on Lake Okeechobee... Here's a heron that thought my fishing boat might give him an advantage in his fishing too!
The Pelican tree
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