you had good numbers of birds on the lake one year and almost none the next I'd "guess" that the lake was sprayed to knock down emergant vegetation, (hydrilla or hyacinths)......never forget that Florida is a BASS FISHING STATE and a PLEASURE BOATING STATE and the relatively few Duck Hunters there are aren't normally taken into consideration when a lake is heavily overgrown with duck attracting hydrilla that makes it a great place to duck hunt but a poor place to fish and water ski.....when that happens the contract sprayers come in and by the time they're gone you're looking at three or four years before there will be a reason for the ducks to come back......
United Waterfowlers~Florida is the only entity that I know that is working for Duck Hunting interests these days.....they'd appreciate your membership,
www.unitedwaterfowlersfl.org , which would help them try to stop blanket spraying in the future.....(plus they have a MEMBERS ONLY website exclusive to Florida where you can get current info on lakes and birds and where you "might" get someone to give up a spot)
Boats for Okeechobee......if I was hunting Okeechobee these days it would be out of an airboat and a MoMarsh layout......when I hunted it, and I "think" the technique is still the same when the water levels are normal, we ran till we found ducks in a pothole....they'd flush, we'd set up there in innertubes after chasing the gators and snakes away, and then shoot em when they came back. In mpst cases this happened "quickly" so you don't want to be piddling around once you flush birds out........An Airboat was the best way to find birds quickly and the inner tubes allowed you to operate away from the "condo" that an airboat often looks like in the marsh.....get lucky on where you found birds and you could sometimes pull the airboat into the cattails or willows and shoot from the boat but the "little boats" will give you the ability to hunt no matter what the vegetation ht......
Mud Motors have become hugely popular in Florida of late and they are an option....they provide the advantage of being able to hunt out of them if you can get them to the birds but, to me, (I'll qualify that so anyone with a mud motor takes pity on me and invites me to hunt the PROPER WAY to prove me wrong--I'll be in Florida the week after Christmas for all mud motor owners who wish to call BullShit and prove me wrong), the airboat would be the way to go, faster, covers more territory, you can run it dry, bust it through cattails and willows if you have to, and its just all around neater to be sitting 7' over the water going 30knots than churning though the mud at 3.....
Decoys.....Ringnecks, Teal and Mottled Ducks thats what you'll be shooting there predominantely.....never felt the need for large spreads, and in fact thats unnatural for Mottled Ducks which, unlike Mallards, aren't normally going to gang up in huge flock, to hunt Okeechobee.....you'll be hunting relatively small pockets in the vegetation and if you've done your job and scouted they'll "want" to be there.....in some pockets a dozen decoys will be crowded....in others a couple of dozen will look nice and be appreciated by the hunters.....the Teal and Ringnecks won't really care about numbers because they'll be coming there anyway and the decoys are more of a "land RIGHT HERE" invitation and not the long range attraction that big Mallard and Diver rigs are on open water.......
I'd go (18) or so Ringnecks, a dozen Teal, (not because they're really needed but because they're so small and cute), and (3) Mottled Ducks, (Hen Mallards work fine for this).....put the Mottled Ducks off to the side by themselvs and if the give you a passing shot in range TAKE IT....shoot the biggest one first...(limits one a day so thats not hard to do)...and "most" of the time you'll be shooting the drake out of the pair. If there are Whistling Ducks in the area decoys specific to them are nice, (natives will tell you they don'tt decoy but thats only true because only a very few use decoys specific to them). These you'll have to either make yourself or have carved by someone....
Thats about it....sort of like hunting the spring creeks in Montana when everything else is frozen.....if you know where the birds are it more about shooting than decoying cause you're right where they want to go.....the difference is that on the Sping Creeks you're on the only open water....on Okeechobee you'll need MULTIPLE spots with birds because "most times" a pothole won't stand up to multiple days of shooting....PLUS you can count on the fact that if you find a honey hole that those hunters close to you will be in that spot while the smokes still curling out of the last empty hull on the water as you leave it.....
Steve
