I still get a little confused about the motel @ the Seagate Beach Access gets to use Collier Counties boardwalk but taxpayers don't get to use their pool? This government thing gets more confusing as time goes by doesn't it? GREAT shot of Clam Pass wouldn't you say?Please read SH's comments on this post you get an idea what it was like back then!
Having first visited Seagate in 1958, and living there from early 1960 through 1968, I can tell you that from Seagate Drive (which was tar and gravel if I remember correctly) there was nothin' but mangroves, palmettos, and pines until you got to Vanderbilt Beach Road. This picture blows me away.
ReplyDeleteI caught tarpon in the backwater north of Clam Pass, and canoed back in the mangroves almost all the way to Vanderbilt Beach Road. When paddling out of the magrove switchbacks going ito “Inner Clam Bay” it was like a scene from “Lewis and Clark” except with Blue Heron, Ibis, Snowy Egret, and I’d like to say Flamingo but I coulda been trippin’.
I was one of the few who could get a small powerboat from Seagate out to the Gulf at low tide, for that matter at high-tide too, (more that 16 ft. had too much draft & couldn’t hug the mangroves at speed).
Clam Bay was/is very shallow with a silty, muddy bottom (I know I have waded & clammed it - great cherrystones). There were schools of mullet so thick you could almost walk on them. After Clam Bay narrowed, north of the then non-existent foot bridge, the only channel hugged the right side of the mangroves. There was a mud bar between the narrowed mangroves that was out of water except during spring tide. Throttle on, 14 ft. Boston Whaler (1st edition) up on plane with mangroves brushing by overhead and a foot or so from the hull. Then a hard left and now hug the mangroves on the left as the channel wound around to the pass itself. If there were swells I'd go out the pass, get a little air, then surf 'em back in ... What a rush (hey, I was every bit of 12 years old).
My older brother was visiting once and tried doing what I did skimming along the mangroves. He punched a hole (above the waterline) in the side of his over-powered 16 ft. plywood ski boat with the Mark78 Mercury outboard. Didn’t sink it (wait), and I don’t think he ever got it back to the house by water. Instead he anchored it just off the Seagate Beach inside the sand bar at low tide, bow pointed west. He set an anchor on the beach and tied it off to a stern cleat. Then he walked back to the house to have dinner ... Then the tide came in... That’s when it sank !
That's my story & I'm stickin' to it
Seagate Homeboy
I don't think you were trippin' Seagate Homeboy. I've heard of at least two other accounts of Flamingo's in Clam Bay back then. Warren Southwick who lived on Starfish Ave. in Seagate from 1966 till he passed away in 1993, he was also an avid fisherman back in Clam Bay and told me stories that there was flocks of Flamingo in there on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteScott
Circle3Ranch