Muskrat Man's tale of woe about the mushroom site reminds me of an incident about 45 years ago. A friend and I that worked with at the Pollution Control Department in Orange County Florida always had great fishing opportunities due to the fact our job kept us on the lakes, creeks, ponds and rivers. (Orlando hadn't totally exploded at that time but the growing population was what caused us to move to west Florida.)
We were drawing water samples where Colonial Drive crosses the Little Econlockhatchee River, actually nothing more than a black water creek. The is the Little Econ and further east is the Big Econ, part of the St.Johns River basin. While getting our water samples we noticed a lot of fish activity. Segments of the Little Econ had been channelized due to development before all the environmental regulations came into play. The point we were sampling was where the natural creek poured into a channel that had a series of flood control structures (dams). We came back after work to fish and caught and released over 50 bass in less than an hour. We did that for several days then got tired of it. We happened by there a few days later and it was as MM described the mushroom hunting, it was shoulder to shoulder
. We both denied telling anyone about the spot and that is probably right as this was beside the main east west thoroughfare in Orlando at that time. The catch and release didn't happen too often with us but the reason for it on those occasions was there were at least a dozen small sewage treatment plants dumping their effluent up stream from where we fished. The sections of creek that ran through undisturbed swamps worked as a natural filter removing much of the nutrients that the stp's dumped at that time. All the same, we chose not to keep a limit and not eat any of 'em.
This reminds me of another tale on that same creek. "The powers that be", decided to drop the water levels in the flood control pools, the channelized creek , no more than a canal, mowed grass on both banks. At the last dam where it poured back into the natural creek bottom we were required to take water samples during the draw down (gates open). The biologist told us the DO (dissolved oxygen) reading was dropping as they had warned the big shots. He said we were in for a big fish kill. In our monitoring, a day or so later, we noticed thousands of channel catfish swimming near the surface on the down stream side of the last dam. They were in distress due to the low DO. Right after work we took our persoanal 12' aluminum jon boats, pickups and long handled dip nets and proceeded to capture literally 2 pickup truck beds full of marketable channel catfish. We were able to sell them to a fish house in Kissimmee that night, whole.
The next time we tried that, we decided we would clean the catfish as you naturally would get a better price per pound. Lesson learned, when you are literally looking at jon boat full of catfish it ain't worth it! We cleaned fish the most of the night and had to go to work that morning, young and full of vinegar.
I need to add, the days following the draw downs we were on site, monitoring the water with a DO meter, observing the fish kill and watching crews from the Road and Bridge department scoopin' up dead fish.
What I would give for pictures documenting some of our escapade when I worked for that agency! There are a few pictures and new clippings in an old photo album of a those days when we were young and foolish. We were on TV and pretty often in the Sentinel Star local paper, concerning water pollution issues as it was the big thing in the early 70's.
Another tale,
y'all know about Muscovy Ducks. They are the cute little yellow Easter ducks that turn into big ugly black and white, nasty critters that live on the docks and in the waterways behind some homes. The developers dig out a bog, back fill it, build a subdivision and sell water front lots actually drainage canals that led to a lake. Well the ducks began to die and we did an investigation, every agency was involved, the Game Commission, Animal Control, the county health department and you guessed it, Pollution Control.
After all the excitement,, it was determined the ducks were being overcome with a botulism that caused a condition known as "rubber neck". The critters lost control of their heads and neck, kinda' paralyzed from the shoulders up, you know similar to some of the political leaders of our great country.
The ducks that were involved were placed in animal control trucks and rushed to a vet (according to the news) never to be heard from again. Well the bleedin' heart home owners association wanted something done so their remaining, beautiful manure machines would not end up like the ones that were headed to the "vet's office".
Some one, again, "the powers that be", decided the ducks should be captured and removed to a more favorable environment.
I'll add, we had all kinds of boats in our department. We had a big, for that day and time, runabout with a 100 horse outboard, a 17' tri-hull that was our shocking boat, 2 air boats and some special built jon boats. These little jon boats were 8' long but were the same width as a 18' aluminum jon boat. Equipped with a 9.8 Merc, two men could do a lot in a small space. Being we were young and invincible, we had learned to turn those little boats in 180 and 360 turns just like cuttin' the fool in an airboat. So we had plenty of water to run in and we captured a pile of Muskoys, put 'em in the dog boxes on the animal control trucks.
This event was filmed by a local TV station and was quite an item for a day or two. After explaining the biological issues happening to the ducks and the plan to move them to a "safe space"
, they filmed us capturing the ducks, runnin' up and down the canal wide open and scoopin' up the live ducks, almost like the catfish. What was hilarious, the TV folks set the film to William Tell Overture, "Lone Ranger music" to us rednecks.
The tale gets better! The "safe space" release was in a beautiful small lake that was within the bounds of an orange grove. It was a very well preserved lake with a large buffer zone to help eliminate runoff from the grove, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.. In this almost pristine pond there was also a gator. In just a few weeks the ducks had apparently "migrated" to the happy huntin' ground.
Hope y'all got a little glimpse of early pollution control activities through the eyes of a young field technician in Orange County, FL, around 1971.
Treefarmer
Some of the tactics reminded me of how some folks used to poach deer on the big ranches of central Florida, being dropped off, etc.. All I was asking the 'puter was tell me about the edible mushrooms in the Florida woods. 
When we were growin' up, the old folks referred to the mushrooms as "toad stools" and you weren't supposed to mess with 'em 'cause they were poison!
