We’ll be heading north to the Sweetwater Bay chickee. We are over 40 miles in and need to cut the distance to Chokoloskee so we’ll have the entire last day to fish our way out. We planned our route over breakfast, deciding to again take the back, back way avoiding a predicted headwind and exploring the less traveled water. On our way in on day 1 we spotted a flats boat, sporting fly fishermen, working the back corner of an out of the way bay. We needed to have a closer look. It is on the way.
We had quite a distance to cover so we spent the better part of the day moving and only stopping to fish what we considered to be prime water. We were anchored in a small cut between bays catching a fish a cast. It was one of those ,put a BIG circle on the map, kind of spots. In the background we heard a powerboat for some time that kept getting closer, finally rounding the point towards us when it shut down. We heard “ SHIT someone’s there.” Then they spun around and roared away. Nice to know we are sniffing out the good spots. We are still in the middle of nowhere. The circle on our map got a big star beside it.
As we neared our destination at Sweetwater Bay, Steve spotted a small creek on the chart leading to a dead end bay. The water in the bay was gin clean with a mass of light green moss covering most of the surface, the likes of which we had not yet seen anywhere. It would suggest this was a spring water bay adding freshwater to the system. It was a magnificent little oasis in the middle of nowhere. Another circle on the chart now marks “More exploration needs to be done here.”
We arrived at our final night’s chickee platform tucked in the back corner of remote Sweetwater Bay. It’s a double site and we have a neighbor who is a lady on her own out here bird watching for a few days.
Set-up is easy and after a final sunset happy hour we dined on fresh mangrove snapper and stir fry veggies, very delicious.