Kayaking Ozello’s Mangrove Maze

Exploring the beauty, mystery, and rich history of Ozello Keys by kayak.

As we slide our kayaks into the water, a golden sunrise is mirrored in the glassy surface of the St. Martins River. We’re exploring Ozello’s vast maze of mangrove islands, hoping for a little topwater action before the midday breeze picks up.

For Brian Stauffer, a local guide who has fished these waters for a lifetime, it’s the mangroves that make this place special. “You’ve got them in Homosassa and Crystal River, but nothing like this. The closest comparison would be the Florida Keys.”

From the primitive ramp on John Brown Road, we hook west around the island then paddle north with a slow tide into Black Creek, probing the hard edges and oyster bars along the way. In the early light, a respectable snook smashes his plug. Brian walks the fish around his kayak, waits for the anticipated jump as the snook tries to shake the hook, then brings it in close for a photo op before a gentle release.

“That takes the load off,” he says. Now everything else is a bonus.

. . .

It was more than a decade ago when I first launched a Sam’s Club kayak at Pirate’s Point at the end of the Ozello Trail on the hunt for some winter trout. But there’s at least another decade’s worth of nooks and crannies to discover. Or get lost in.

Even with good cell coverage, it’s easy to get turned. The stacks of the Crystal River power plant are north, the Ozello water tower marks the middle of town. But paddling from where you are to where you want to be can still be a puzzle.

The added visibility for navigation is one reason Brian made the switch from his sit-on-top Native Watercraft to a Bonafide sit/stand kayak a few years back. “When you’ve got a high tide and you’re standing, you can see for miles.”

After another hour or two of paddling, we emerge into a wide intersection in the creek. “OK, now I’ve got it,” I tell him, pointing to an island hammock topped with cedars and sabal palms. “That’s one of my favorite routes over there.” Nope. A few hundred yards further I realize I have no idea where I am.

From above, this maze looks like a living, breathing organism. The Salt River on the east is one of the main arteries. In the grass and between the islands, there’s an endless network of twisting capillaries. Ponds and potholes pockmark the landscape like Swiss cheese.

That hard bottom with its myriad pockmarks is an exposed slab of Florida’s bedrock, the Ocala Limestone formation, according to Bruce McFadden, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The limestone was formed in a shallow sea 35 million years ago, give or take about five million years.

This karst topography (marked by sinkholes, caves, and springs) was formed by the relentless drip of slightly acidic rain dissolving the limestone. Inside this permeable layer is the Florida Aquifer which comes bursting out at Crystal River and Homosassa, but smaller springs can be found in Ozello as well.

During a pause in the fishing, Brian shows off one little gusher he found one day during low tide. Fish love these springs because the constant temperature feels cool in summer and warm in winter. Ozello’s potholes are famous for holding trout, snook and redfish in colder winter months.

The snook population has increased significantly since the hard freeze in the winter of 2016 and 2017, Stauffer says. And this region’s topography gave the fish a fighting chance.

. . .

On weekdays in the back country, without a soul in sight, it can feel like you’re the first person to explore Ozello. But Ozello has been a fishing hotspot for thousands of years, according to Scott Mitchell, who runs the Silver River Museum in Ocala. Taking a break from fishing the area last year, we climbed up one of a handful of shell mounds along the Salt River for a better view.

“The limestone here creates a lot of hard bottom that’s good for oyster growth and this makes a good estuary for redfish, snook, and trout,” Scott explained. “Another reason it’s so productive is that along the gulf coast, you don’t have the heavy tides and massive currents that scour and sweep the place clean twice a day. It’s a lower energy system, and that makes it a good nursery for critters. It was such a rich environment that people were able to make a good living farming the estuary and there was so much food that they didn’t have to plant corn or move around a lot.”

Scott likes to remind me that Ozello used to be in the middle of the state, not the coast. During the last ice age, when sea levels were lower, the gulf coast was 40 or 50 miles west. “But about five or six thousand years ago the sea level stabilized to how it looks now.” The shell mounds here began to appear about three thousand years ago and were used up until the time the Spanish arrived..

Unlike the temple or ceremonial mounds a few miles north at Crystal River, the shell midden we explored was essentially a trash heap that accumulated up over the centuries in fits and starts. Periodically the mounds were also used as platforms for living quarters. The layers of discarded meals, occasional pottery and shell tools tell a story about how native people fished these waters.

Native Americans fished Ozello with gill nets and seine nets woven from palm fiber, Scott said. The nets were weighted with shells and used wooden pegs or dried gourds as floats. Evidence of bone hooks in some shell mounds suggest they may have used trot lines tied to the shoreline. They also built weirs or fish corrals, sometimes constructing shell mounds around a central pond to contain the fish.

From studies of otoliths in these mounds (otoliths are bony structures in the ear of fish) archeologists have been able to determine what native people ate. “What they learned is that people were eating basically whatever they could catch,” Scott said. “Since they were feeding families, that often meant lots of little fish – pinfish, catfish, mullet, mud minnows. They weren’t sport fishermen looking for a trophy, they were just trying to survive.”

But along with this more pragmatic type of fishing, Scott described a technique that seems a little more like contemporary kayak angling – at least visually.

“You might have two native Americans,” he said. “One is standing up at the front of the dugout canoe while the other is paddling. The one up front is using a bow and arrow or atlatl with a barbed dart to spear the fish. Then they’d paddle up beside it and hit the fish with a club. Meanwhile, the teenagers are back checking the weirs and traps, collecting baskets of little fish.”

. . .

In more recent history, Ozello was a fishing village that emerged in the late 19^th century during the time when Cedar Key was the main port on Florida’s west coast. Unlike Cedar Key, whose red cedars were mostly used up in the manufacturing of pencils, Ozello still has quite a few cedar trees on the islands. (Red cedar is actually a species of juniper. It produces berries rather than cones).

Ozello’s brief brush with fame came when Ripley’s Believe it or Not reported that the town’s school bus was a boat. The story goes that residents on both sides of the St. Martins River couldn’t agree on which bank to build a school, so they eventually compromised by constructing a schoolhouse on a shell mound in the middle of the river. Any child above age six who couldn’t row a boat was considered beyond hope of an education, quipped one of the town fathers.

Today, in addition to fishing, Ozello is known for one of the most scenic drives along the nature coast, the winding 10-mile Ozello Trail (CR 494). The road starts at State Road 19 north of Homosassa. Someone once counted 57 turns on its way through hardwood swamp, salt marsh, and the Ozello keys, then across a scenic causeway before ending at Pirate’s Point and the Ozello Community Park boat ramp.

Pecks Old Port Cove near the end of the road is the most popular place to eat, offering good seafood and excellent waterfront views. But Blackwater Fins has lately grown in popularity, and the Island Outpost is a bustling gas station and grill with a full menu including tasty breakfast sandwiches and cheap beer.

 . . .

As the day moves on, Brian and I pick up a handful of rat reds but no trophies. Brian prefers throwing topwater plugs year-round in Ozello. When the conditions aren’t suitable, he switches to his custom-painted, weighted worm hooks and a purple paddle tail. In colder months he trades the worm hook for a jig head for a slower, more shrimp-like presentation.

For kayak anglers exploring Ozello for the first time he suggests starting at the end of the road at Pirate’s Point and then paddling east, fishing with a soft plastic bait on a jig weighing an 1/8^th of an ounce or less. And when starting out, he says, take care not to lose track of where you are. And remember to stay visible, because occasional airboats come speeding through and may not see a kayaker low in the water.

As for tides, Brian prefers the days in between moons with a gentle tide of a foot or two. “I don’t want all that moving water, getting pushed around with the tide and the wind. With a gentle tide, I can ladle around in the backcountry all day. It gives me a better opportunity to explore.”

 . . .

 We turn east as the day warms up with a light breeze, paddling toward the Salt River through a narrow winding creek. By midday, we’ve covered four or five miles without seeing another boat. We’ll cover about the same distance to get back to the ramp.

We’re accompanied by the squeaky call of bald eagles and the chatter of kingfishers, a pleasant melody over top of the high-pitched note of the breeze blowing through stowed fishing lines. Sometimes – and it’s always a nice surprise — a manatee breaks the surface and sucks in a huge gasp of fresh air.

As the fishing slows, I park on an exposed shell bar to stretch, then put the drone up to take a look around. Brian is a few hundred yards away, exploring a pothole, casting clockwise around the edge. From this vantage point, a couple of hundred feet in the air, the mangrove islands and salt grass extend to the horizon. It’s not true, but this feels like a secret place. Off in the distance, there’s a hint of civilization but it’s too far to paddle today. So for now, it’s time to start meandering back through the maze.