Here we go again . More bad news for Florida on invasive species thanks to some moron’s invasive species dumped in some lakes from an aquarium or from the tropical fish industry. This was on the front page of the Tampa Tribune.
I hope the snails can be confined to the infected waters in Lakeland but I won’t hold my breath . Or it seems we will have to let the snails wipe out lake vegitation until they starve and then reconstitute the lakes all over again.
Robert B. McCorquodale
Sebring, FL
“Flip a fly”
[This message has been edited by dixieangler (edited 05 August 2005).]
You guys should have some red eared
sunfish in those waters. Probably call
them “shellcrackers”. They love snails.
Hope they help ya out. Warm regards, Jim
I agree, JC. The more educated folks are, the better. Then there is the folks that don’t care what they do to anything or anybody else, so we make laws to stop them. Enforcing those laws is another matter .
We do have shellcrackers, Jim. In fact, I caught a 10 inch shellcracker on a yellow pusher this last season. They usually eat the smaller Florida native apple snails that the article talks about but I doubt they will eat these bigger foreign critters.
Robert B. McCorquodale
Sebring, FL
“Flip a fly”
[This message has been edited by dixieangler (edited 06 August 2005).]
I thought that Everglades Kites pretty much ate nothing but Apple Snails. Perhaps efforts should be made to make the neighborhood more friendly to those birds of prey. Either that or import some nice, hungry French tourists. I wonder if those snails, removed from their shells, would make good catfish bait. If so, the snails might disappear PDQ. Hmmm, thinking about it, Caymans eat Apple Snails too. I wonder of the local 'gator population could be taught that trick…
Ed
Unfortunately we have a portion of the population that simply doesn’t care. They’ve been “educated” and threatened for years with littering fines, etc. This morning on my walk my street was littered with broken beer bottles. Glass everywhere. We’re a neighborhood of kids and bikes and live on a short street between two funeral homes in a small town of 1,500. A friend was popped for flipping a cigarette out the window. $183. I said good for them. She agreed she was stupid and said she’d never do it again. Good I said. Now get this: I’m a vp of a river advocasy group that has many events up and down the river. Our biggest volunteering effort is not in the planning, but rather the cleanup afterwards. And, folks, this is the choir! I’ve gone to trout accesses and to catfish accesses and found incredible messes at both. This is a sign, to me at least, that people either have no respect for pretty places or simply don’t care. So what’s dumping an aquarium full of apple snails? Nothing to some folks. JGW
. More bad news for Florida on invasive species thanks to some moron’s invasive species dumped in some lakes from an aquarium or from the tropical fish industry. This was on the front page of the Tampa Tribune.
but I won’t hold my breath 
. Or it seems we will have to let the snails wipe out lake vegitation until they starve and then reconstitute the lakes all over again.