Learning How To Fish

In my previous post, I mentioned that we had some tense moments coming into Everglade city. 

The trip down from Naples to the Barron River entrance, the channel to Everglade City, was uneventful. 

The navigation software and charts showed some very skinny water on the Barron River in the middle of the channel in a couple of spots.  

Selkie was going to have a hard time going through three feet of water when she draws four and a half feet.

I did what prudent people do:  I asked for directions. 

(Being on Selkie has taught me a new skill: when in doubt, ask for help.)

I called a couple of local captains to get some knowledge about navigating the river. 

After triple checking my route to Everglade City, we proceeded up the river. 

We chose to go while timing the tides at about two feet or more than low tide.

We got to the mouth of the Barron River a little early, so we stopped to anchor for an hour.

Libbie took the opportunity to go fishing, and caught a couple of cat fish.

She hates catching cat fish. 

She loves catching spotted sea trout.  

Catfish catching has become a theme for our Gulf coast trip. 

We needed to fix that.

I had a little present planned for Libbie that would make her a little happier about fishing in Florida later on in Everglades City.

In the meantime, while we waited for the tide to rise, and while she caught her catfish, I did a couple of checks on the boat to make sure all systems were still go.

After an hour, we pulled up anchor and proceeded up the Barron River.

The worrisome part in the navigation channel are by markers number 11 and 18. 

The odd numbers, like 11, designate a green mark. 

The even numbers, like 18, designates a red mark.

Thats important knowledge to have when you’re going up channel  towards a harbor. 

Green is on your left and red is on your right (hence the old saying, “Red Right Returning.”)

Over time, the marks can either get moved or with the heavy storms and hurricanes, channels get filled in with shoals of sand, mud and oyster shells. 

Coming up on the shallow areas we held our breath and slowed Selkie down to a bare crawl and wormed our way through the deepest areas that I could find on the charts. 

The depth alarm set at 6 feet went off a couple of times. 

But we were able to make it through carefully and quietly without really touching bottom in both low spots. 

Once we got through there, it was clear sailing all the way to Everglades city. 

We went to Everglades Isle Marina.

Everglades Isle’s main business is a high-end recreational vehicle park. For any of my friends and family that have a Class A RV, I would highly recommend a stay here.  Unfortunately for the rest, even airstream trailers aren’t allowed.

The facilities are excellent. 

There is a tiki bar and a regular bar. 

There’s a pool and a hot tub. 

There are excellent indoor facilities for working out in the exercise room as well as taking showers.

The people are amazingly friendly there.  We enjoyed our stay.

The next morning I had an appointment for us. 

It was Libbie’s present.

I had set up a fishing trip for Libbie to help her gain her confidence back in her fishing. 

We knew we were doing things wrong, but we didn’t know what we were doing. 

So I hired Captain Bill Metivier from Everglades City Fishing Guides.  

He picked us up at Selkie at 10 o’clock the next morning. 

Getting picked up and dropped off at your boat for a fishing guide experience is a pretty cool thing. 

Bill is a nice, quiet gentleman, about our daughters’ ages. 

I was wearing my Northstar hat because Florida was experiencing a pretty severe cold snap. 

Bill noticed it. 

We talked about what we did.  

It turns out Bill was a photographer at Heavenly Valley, a sister Lake Tahoe resort to Northstar about 10 years ago. 

So all three of us were at one time employees of Vail Resorts

He had also taught snowboarding for a while, so we had things in common to talk about. 

But Captain Bill’s true passion was fishing and hunting. He also has a love of sharing his passion.

Captain Bill guides in the Everglades from November through May. He is in Alaska where he guides from June through August. 

He then goes to Aspen, Colorado to guide elk and mule deer hunts. 

My kind of guy. 

Captain Bill was awesome. 

He showed us the techniques for catching fish and in fact for the first hour and a half we were catching fish about every cast! I can’t recall a similar experience, at least on the Loop.

Libbie appreciated Captain Bill baiting her hook and removing her fish. 

All she had to do was just cast out the bait and catch the fish. 

Captain Bill was very patient, and gave us tips on how to not catch some fish like ladyfish, and catch the ones we wanted.

Libbie still catch a catfish, but Bill showed how to get those off the hook easily and safely, for the fish and for us.

We had Bill busier than a one armed paper hanger at one point.

We got our limit of spotted sea trout in an hour. 

We then went to a different spot and tried to fish for sheephead. Sheephead are a little different kind of fish. You use different fishing rigs and techniques, but we were able to figure it out.

You have to be patient and not try to set the hook. The sheephead do that all by themselves. We caught 4 nice  sheephead. 

Captain Bill brought us back to Selkie’s dock on time, cleaned our fish and then said goodbye. 

We had a great day on the water. 

I know when I teach skiing that when people tip me well, I appreciate it. I want to take care of those people the next time I see them.

So I made sure that Captain Bill knew that we appreciated his service by tipping him generously.  

We might see him in Alaska in a year or two.  I might even try elk hunting in Aspen.

Who knows?

We took our fresh filets to Selkie. I went ahead and portioned the fish out for several dinners and froze most of it, but I held back some filets for dinner that night. 

Sea trout is a fun fish to catch and even better fish to eat.

Our last day, we got our bikes out and toured Everglades City. Everglades City is not that big, so it doesn’t take long to tour the town. 

We stopped by the charter company’s fishing store and picked up fishing tackle that Captain Bill had showed us the day before. 

We stopped by the Everglades City Museum, which has a lot of displays about the history of the city.

Everglade City was originally the county seat for Collier County.

The town was heavily influenced by the building of the Tamiami Trail, the highway that connected Tampa and Miami. Tamiami Trail is now used as the Highway US41 route between Tampa and Miami.

Unfortunately, a series of hurricanes came through and caused a lot of damage. The Collier County leadership decided to move the county seat up to Naples, Florida from Everglades City. 

Everglade city was a hot spot during Prohibition. The museum had an old whiskey still on display to prove the point. 

There was a lot of displays about fishing, hurricanes, and life in general at Everglades City. 

The most interesting display was a temporary display they had on hand.

It was a presentation showing what’s happening with the boa constrictors that are wreaking havoc with the Everglades ecosystem right now. 

To prove how bad the situation is, the small mammal population in the Everglades has plummeted. 

For example, possums have gone down to about only 3% of the original population because they’re so easily caught by the boat constructors. 

Some of these boa constrictors are big enough to consume a small Everglades deer. 

The pictures tell the tale

There are people to go out and hunt boa constrictors on a regular basis. They’re not making a dent in the population. 

After the museum, we biked a short distance over to the old Rod and Gun Club. 

The club used to be a popular place, drawing in all sorts of sportsmen and women. Presidents have visited.

It’s obvious that the place is old and that the owners are working hard to try and keep the place up. 

I worry that another hurricane coming in with a direct hit might take the place out. 

If you want to visit the club, consider one sooner than later. 

The club has several cottages where you can stay and it has a dining room. 

It is an all cash operation, but they do take Venmo. 

Libbie and I had lunch there. We both had two excellent portions of grouper tacos.

We went back to Everglades Isle Resort and stowed the bikes on Selkie.

We then took part in the resort amenities. We went up to the gym and had our first workout in a few weeks. We then enjoyed the pool and the hot tub. We had been eyeing them since our arrival. 

That was a Friday night, which had a planned resort get together with a fun crowd. 

The next morning it was wet and rainy. 

We stowed everything on Selkie and got ready to depart. 

Our plan was to go back down the  Barron River and then over to Russel Pass. 

Russel pass was where we caught all the fish two days before with Captain Bill. 

We proceeded down the Barron River after waiting for the tide to rise up the obligatory 2 feet we needed and went out the same way we came in. We had no issues getting out of the Barron River. 

We anchored Selkie in Russell Pass. It was a quiet anchorage with just a few fisherman buzzing by occasionally.

Libbie and I got the dinghy down.

We got our new fishing gear set up on our old poles. 

We headed out to back to the same spot where we had caught the sea trout to try our luck. 

It’s amazing what you can do when you’ve been trained properly. 

We caught a spotted sea trout dinner. It was fun… and tasty!

Our next destination was Little Shark River.  

We had to wait until 9 AM for the tides, and we got out without a problem. 

Two more days and we get to the Keys. 

We are excited.