During extreme wet periods, it has been known to spill over its banks and flood surrounding countryside. In exceptional draught conditions, portaging over sand bars is often obligatory, even with shallow-draft aluminum jonboats and canoes. Mostly, however, the tame, lovely and under-utilized Withlacoochee River remains a rare and undiscovered jewel to many inveterate Florida residents and visitors. With headwaters in the Green Swamp in northern Polk County, the Withlacoochee meanders 156 miles north and east, eventually flowing into the Gulf of Mexico near the picturesque community of Yankeetown. Many of the lands bordering lengthy stretches of the Withlacoochee are privately owned, thus giving it a remoteness and sense of inaccessibility.
Canoes afford the most practical and scenic mode to view and explore the comely waterway.
Its name comes from the Seminole Indian word meaning Little Great Water, a seeming contradiction that somehow manages to speak eloquently of the Withlacoochee. A flat, glassy river surface mirrors the thick, green tangles of cypress, oak, ash and cedar boughs overhanging the banks. The tea-colored water is rich in tannic acid generated by rotting swamp vegetation. Turtles sun themselves on logs, alligators poke snouts above shallow waters before sinking quietly beneath the surface and usually blue and unclouded skies are an aviary of both common and rare birdlife. Bird watchers can focus on an osprey, but quickly find their attention challenged by great blue and white herons, a rare wood stork or an endangered purple gallinule.