It is very dark in the Springs at night. There are no street lights or house lights. You may see an anchor light or lights in the cockpit, but once everyone goes to bed, the only light is the moon and stars. It is beautiful.
That is also when the Bow Fishing crews come out. They have large generators and big spot lights. Even with our curtains up…they lit up the cockpit. I could see at least 2 different boats, but there may have been more, and they came in and out of the anchorage. Most of the time I could see their light closer to the entrance to the lake but they did cruise by us several times. I took this video. It isn’t very clear. My camera had trouble focusing on them. But I did see one catch a fish.
The bows have reels with line on them that is attached to the arrow. They shoot and then reel it in. I watched them for quite awhile. It looks interesting, but I don’t think I want to be out there in the cold, damp fog. I was inside with my heater going.
Jim and I slept in for awhile, waiting for the “solar heater” to warm up the boat. I don’t know how we manage to do it….but we are always behind the tallest tree. At least it didn’t have a lot of leaves and we did get some filtered sun.
After coffee and breakfast..(home fries, sausage & eggs) we went for a dingy ride. Captain Jim waited while I waded ashore with Raisin. It was too shallow even for the dingy. See how clear the water is?
I took a blank DVD over to Larry so he could copy the pictures and movies he took of us on the trip. While there we looked across the water and spotted this 5’ – 6’ alligator in the weeds. We were laughing because the lady with the dog in the dingy said she had been coming here since she was 2 and had never seen a gator in the anchorage.
So now we are on a gator hunt. We moved on down the spring run and spotted this nice one. When it realized we were watching….it slowly slid backwards into the water.
We circled around a small island and this one was sunning.
While we were drifting looking at the one on the stump…another one came swimming towards us.
We decided to run up the side creek and see if there was anything in there. I think this is a nursery. We saw 4 baby gators, only about 1 1/2 ft. long. Here’s 2 of them.
This is the one above in a different position. All the others disappeared right away. Jim doesn’t think this one will last too long. I guess it hasn’t been chased by anything yet and hasn’t learned to hide.
Here’s another look at the bigger one …it had come back out of the water while we were watching the babies.
This video is a collection of the video I took of the swimming gator, the one on the stump and the babies.
I also like turtles …this one was especially nice.
I think this might be the same one but it had moved a little between our run up and back.
I was taking this picture of a group of turtles. Several disappeared before I snapped the picture, but when I looked at it….I noticed a good sized gator’s tail in the photo.
I marked it with a red arrow.
It has been a great day. Around 2 pm we decided to head across Lake George to the S end and find an anchorage for the night. We are hauling the boats out in Astor, FL tomorrow. Guess it’s time to go home. Jim is already planning a camping trip to the Silver Springs area for a weekend with a couple of car shows.
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