Care must be taken while boating on the lake due to the stumps and snags. A public boat ramp on the West Arm of the lake is a popular access point for boaters.
It is known for having good fishing, specifically for bluegill, shellcracker, and largemouth bass. Regardless of how it formed, Dead Lakes exists today as a mixture of lake, river, and swamp, filled with both live cypress and white tupelo trees, and dead tree stumps. The rising water from the blocking of the river apparently killed many of the trees in the floodplain that became the lake, leaving their dead stumps throughout, and inspiring the lake’s name. There seems to be some dispute as to how Dead Lakes was formed, whether it was by the Apalachicola River’s power naturally creating sand bars long ago that blocked the flow of the Chipola River where they meet, or whether it was due to a dam that existed at the lower end of the Dead Lakes section of the Chipola River from 1960-1987. The lake is part of the Chipola River, the largest tributary of the nearby Apalachicola River. Dead Lakesĭead Lakes is a 6,700-acre lake near Wewahitchka, Florida. Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 hurricane, hit the area less than two weeks after I made this image, making landfall at nearby Mexico Beach before moving inland. The panoramic crop adds more emphasis to the unusual stumps rising from the water’s surface. I have cropped this image to a 2:1 ratio to remove extraneous sky from the frame. The water was calm and created a beautiful reflection of the trees and the stumps. When I captured this image, the sun was still fairly low in the sky over my shoulder, casting nice light and long shadows on the unique cypress tree trunks and stumps. Occasionally I would have to reposition the boat to recompose the scene and continue creating images while drifting. I photographed from the boat, drifting with the slow current.
I explored a section of Wewahitchka’s mysterious Dead Lakes for a couple hours until I came across this scene. I drove from Tallahassee through the pre-dawn darkness and was on the water at sunrise.
However, I had never been out on the nearby Dead Lakes, so one day I hitched up the ole boat and headed to Wewa. I had done photo shoots in the past in Wewahitchka, Florida, such as of a beekeeper at an apiary that produces tupelo honey – famous honey from the Apalachicola River basin. The Making of the Dead Lakes Landscape Photograph
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