The day · Fort Myers, Florida
Golden hour · 14 min left
Sun 2.1° up, in the west · Florida Peninsula
The kind of day it is
Heat
and high overcast
Hot. Growth is fast and stressed, trout and salmon retreat to springs and depth, and the useful hours are at the two ends of the day.
Water deeply at dusk, not at noon. Fish the springs, the shade and the depth.
The day, phase by phase
Happening now · 18:44–19:32
48 min long
Golden hour
Where the sun is this minute. Its highest today: 66.2°.
The sun drops back through the low angles and the long atmospheric path returns, warming the colour of everything. Shadows stretch to many times the height of what casts them.
Where the light lands · Florida Peninsula
The sun sets into the Gulf on the west coast and behind the state on the east. Sanibel and Naples get the postcard; Miami gets the afterglow.
Up close
The mangrove shadow line — the sharp edge between shaded and lit water — is the single most important structure in this landscape for a predator. Snook sit in the dark side and eat what swims through the light.
The whole landscape
Wading birds head to their roosts in the thousands. In the dry season, when the water concentrates the fish, the rookeries here are among the great wildlife spectacles of the continent.
In the water now
Rainbow troutbest now
Working the seams and feeding lanes where current delivers food, rising freely to a hatch.
Redfish (red drum)best now
Tailing on the shallow flats on a rising tide, backs out of the water, rooting in the grass.
Cruising the weed edges, pads and shallow flats, ambushing anything that moves across the top.
On the beds and the shallow flats, in water warm enough to see the bottom.
Warm water holds less oxygen. Fish the springs, the inflows and the deep water, and release quickly.
In the garden now
Out earlier and later than any other bee — a bumble bee can shiver its flight muscles warm and fly at 5 °C, in drizzle, in wind.
Sitting head-down at the hub of the web. Many rebuild the whole orb at dawn, eating the old silk.
On the newest growth and the undersides of leaves, reproducing steadily through warm daylight.
Above about 32 °C tomatoes drop their flowers and lettuce turns bitter.
Sitting this one out
Honey bee · Hoverfly · Swallowtail butterflies · Lady beetle · Green lacewing · Ground beetle
The full guide
Everything for Fort Myers this week in one place.
Florida Peninsula
The region this day belongs to, and what lives in it.
The almanac
The year's arc: day length, the moon and the water behind the air.
The week ahead for Fort Myers
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