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More Fishing and Boating

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• Seaworthy: Start the season right

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No input in about the Noll #151 Deluxe Fly Tying Kit I wrote about last week. The lady and her husband did bring it by. It has a larger box with more material in it than my #50 model.

You might remember the one for sale on eBay was a Noll #101 super model. It is a good bet they made several different kits starting with one for the beginner, another one for the next level of angler and another for the seasoned fly fisherman. We will keep looking for more information.

An email in from Mary “Fish” Meyers asking me if I had any information on a Joe Fish Lure. It seems she read my article while visiting her daughter on Marco.

The metal stamped lure has her father’s name “Joe Fish” on the back. He lived in a small town in Missouri and this lure was found by her son in Indian Rocks Beach in a pile of fishing junk in the garage of a man from the Chicago area.

It is about one and a half inches long with one triple hook attached at the tail end. There could be no connection between the two and, “my dad never had a lure with his name on it,” she writes. “I spent many a happy hour fishing with my dad in northern Missouri and have brought that love to my present home on Treasure Island. Thanks for any light you can shine on this sort of crazy request.”

Mary emailed me a picture of it. I told her it is a hard one to call so I decided to email the picture to some of the Florida Antique Collector’s members. Two responded; one said, “I have no clue on that one!”

Collector Chuck Heddon writes, “haven’t the slightest but it does resemble a Little George, however it is flat instead of solid.”

We will keep looking Mary! It may have been some type of key chain that someone decided to put a hook on it.

Finding antique tackle and other old things can be more of an accident than anything else. One that comes to mind happened during the funeral of President Kennedy.

I was watching it on TV while visiting my mother and she commented it was much like the funerals of other presidents.

“I have an old newspaper that I found in your grandfather’s house when he passed away and it has an obituary of George Washington in it,” she said. Then she remembered she loaned it to Mike Chance, then the editor of the Naples News.

The next day I called Mike and asked if I could pick it up. “Sure!” he said. I picked it up and found it was an edition of Ulster County Gazette, NY dated Saturday, Jan. 4, 1800. This four-page paper also holds some additional, very interesting, articles and includes classified ads.

One article was about a Spanish frigate bound from the Havana’s having on board upwards of $3.5 million besides merchandise that were taken on October 26 by four British frigates and safely carried into Plymouth.

The British frigate Lutine was lost on the outer Fly Island Passage. She was supposed to have proceeded to Hamburg to clear the commercial failures in that city. The crew perished except two persons.

I showed this to a friend of mine, needless to say we had gold fever and spent some time looking at charts only to find a retired navy gentleman living in Naples that was into treasure hunting.

I was ready to tell him everything I knew about the ship when he interrupted me and said, “Young man, you don’t know me from Adams house cat! Can you just give me the date the ship sank?”

I did. He reached for a book, opened it and asked, “is it the Lutine?” Needless to say our search was over. She sank in 50 to 60 feet of water. Some gold was recovered with hooks along with some church bells bound for America. The bells were crated and made their way to America. They were marked and the book told where some of the bells were still hanging in churches. Our search for treasure was ended.

Good hunting!

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Red Stier is a weekly contributor to the Marco Island Eagle. Questions or comments may be directed to redstier@aol.com or 172 Trinidad St., Naples, FL 34113.