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Kayaking Florida: Gum Slough

It’s the night before I’m scheduled to leave for Florida to visit my parents and kayak in the Ocala area, and Lara appears in the Bobatorium. I’m basking in the glow of high definition hockey. She’s bearing gifts a full week before Christmas, which is very unusual. Despite my nagging, Lara never relents when I’m lobbying to open presents early.

It seems I made the mistake of reading her a line from the research I was doing on paddling Gum Slough.

“I have to warn you that this is one of those places where folks have been lost and spent the night in the swamp. I would recommend going with a guide.”

marsh.jpg

With images of mosquitos, gators and me wandering the swamp in the middle of the night dancing in her head, she decided to break down and give me one of my gifts early.

And it’s a cool one: A Lowrance iFinder H2Oc. There’s no way I can digest the manual before I’m on the water, but I figure it will be a good backup for that run.

As it turns out, I didn’t have problems with Gum Slough, but I was pretty cautious. I put in a little before 10 a.m. and paddled downstream on the Withlacoochee South River a short distance to the entry to Gum Slough. From there, I paddled up the narrow, shallow, see-through water until I reached a marsh. That’s where I was having a tough time establishing clear reference points, so I turned around after about 45 minutes in the marsh. I wanted to make sure I left myself enough sunlight to get out in case I did get turned around on the way back. But the trip downstream on Gum Slough was much faster, and I was back on the Withlacoochee by 2:30 p.m. I didn’t make it to the source of the spring that feeds Gum Slough, but it still was an amazing way to start three straight days of paddling springs in the Ocala area.

Here are a few more details about the Gum Slough paddle:

  • I saw a few gators, but it was more fleeting glimpses than eyeball-to-eyeball stare downs. They both appeared relatively small. Maybe in the four foot range. I also saw a lot of birds that I couldn’t identify, as well as a group of ducks that stayed several hundred yards ahead of me as I went upstream.
  • The clarity of the water there (and at Juniper Springs and Silver Springs) was outstanding. I took several underwater shots, including this strange self-portrait. Gum Slough was very tight in places, but nothing I couldn’t navigate. I had to get out at one point and portage to get back into the “main channel” when I drifted into a small artery. It became clear I was off course when I kept hitting logs that blocked the entire passage
  • After considering transporting my QCC on my truck for the trip and being told in no uncertain terms that my scheme was seriously flawed, I decided to rent a kayak once I arrived. Soggy Bottom Tours was happy to oblige, and they’re only about a hundred yards from a launch on the Withlacoochee that’s just upstream from Turner’s Fish Camp. They charged me $30/day for a 15-foot Perception Carolina. A plastic boat was perfect for the log-bumping muck-sludging trips I took while I was in Florida. (Soggy Bottom are good folks and I’d definitely rent from them again … maybe next time I’ll tour Gum Slough with them.)
  • While the Extend-A-Truck was a tenuous way to try to transport my QCC, it worked fine for the smaller, plastic boat as I hauled it from stream to stream.
  • After I’d come back down Gum Slough and was tooling around on the Withlacoochee, I heard a godawful noise downstream. The drone increased and a pair of airboats blew into sight. It was cool watching them roar past, and like bass boats, they throw off very little wake so I didn’t get bounced around. They both gave me a wide berth, with one of them waving as he went by.
  • Photos from the trip.
  • Here’s a very useful trip report from the Green Wave Forum.