Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Jack, Dave and Ben headed out early for their second day of tarpon fishing with Captain “Teddy” Naftal. Today, they actually motored through many different channels and waterways between the islands that surround Marco Island, settling off Helen Key, on the exposed side of Marco Island. They initially anchored in a channel in front of some multimillion dollar mansions with mangroves on the outside. The mangroves reminded us of the mangroves in the Galapagos with brown pelicans, snowy egrets and cormorants in the mangrove trees. There were cow rays chasing each other and leaping into the air all around us, and we actually were seeing tarpon rolling on the surface nearby. Despite the “fishy” circumstances, we weren’t able to raise one bite. After a couple of hours of no bites, we moved further out in front of Helen Key to where we could see Cape Romano. At one point, we were approached by the local Marco Island Police on jet skis.
It seems like everyone knows Captain Teddy, as they just stopped to chat. They normally patrol in a 22’ center console powerboat, but they had just done maintenance on the jet skis and since the water was flat, they took those out for a spin.
We anchored out in a little deeper water (5’). We did see more action because within a few minutes, Dave had a good strike which he was able to set the hook on and land. But it turned out to be a 4’ black tip shark, not a tarpon. Jack had two strikes that went limp as soon as he picked the rod up out of the rod holder so we never knew what had generated those strikes. Ben had a good strike and hook set on what turned out to be a larger 6’ black tip shark. The leader broke at the hook when that shark finally took a leap out of the water 200’ from the boat. Then Dave hooked an 8’ bull shark which required all three fishermen to work really hard for over an hour on getting the shark to the boat. That steel leader got sawed off as the shark was along side the boat just under the gunnel. All 3 fishermen were experiencing lactic acidosis in their arms after that. We fished for another couple of hours without further strikes and called it a day. At least today, we saw a few tarpon and saw leaping rays and mangrove life.
The same day, Janet, Bonnie and Sharon had booked a Cape Romano dome house and shelling tour.
We could see Cape Romano, but the dome houses and their tour boat were on the opposite side of the cape, so we couldn’t see them. They had a very pleasant boat ride and beach walk where they picked up shells and egg cases. Janet likened it to agate hunting back home, but much warmer and sunnier.
In the evening, we drove to a unique grocery store in North Naples called “Seed to Table”.
It’s hard to describe it fully but if you could cross a Whole Foods Market with a fancy food court and add a wine bar, conventional beer and cocktails bars, several dance floors and multiple bands on two levels, you might begin to get the feel of the place. Throw in “Lady’s night” featuring free drinks for women at 8pm, and you have a recipe for an overflowing parking lot, packed dining venues, throbbing music, gyrating bodies, food and alcohol and near total sensory overload. And all this dispersed through a huge supermarket complete with refrigerator cases, prepackaged convenience meals, domestic and imported dry goods. It was very confusing at first, but we eventually figured it out. The upstairs had a dining area with waitresses who could take your food and beverage orders and bring your food to you, while the down stairs functioned more like a traditional food court where you went to the prepared food venues to place your food orders, and to one of the bars or other beverage venues for your drinks and didn’t have to leave a tip. The food was pretty decent in quality and serving portion size. It was certainly a much better value proposition than Tin City. Jack, Sharon, Dave and Bonnie spent several songs dancing after we ate dinner, but they came ill prepared for dancing, wearing the wrong shoes. Otherwise, we likely would have been there until the bands shut down.
We did need to get to bed early because Jack had told Captain Teddy we’d like to get out a half hour earlier at 6:30am.
