Fickling of Florida Blog

Scalloping on St. Joseph’s Bay or Lanark Beach Florida

webmaster@fickling.com (webmaster) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:48:00 GMT

Scalloping on St. Joseph’s Bay or Lanark Beach is one of the benefits to living or vacationing in Franklin County, if you enjoy all the fruits of the sea. Fresh fish, shrimp and oysters are available most anytime, either those you’ve caught yourself or those you’ve purchased. One of our not-so-secret-anymore treasures has to be from July 1st, till early September, when the bay scallop season is open. Many different factors make these scallops special -there is no commercial harvest allowed – the only way to enjoy bay scallops is to head out and find them yourself. There are only a few places in our area where you can find scallops because they do NOT like fresh water so you have to make a trip to St. Joseph’s Bay or walk out into the water at Lanark Beach.

What you need when scalloping:

Florida fishing license – and yes, they check!
Snorkel, mask, fins and a mesh bag for collecting
special scallop cleaning knife (not too pointy a tip) or a thin spoon
Curiosity of all things living in the shallow waters…
Healthy appetite for fresh scallops w/ a sundried tomato/basil cream/caper sauce over fresh pasta! or just plain, with olive oil.

My favorite way to catch scallops (yes, Virginia, they can swim, and they are much faster than you think!) is to either paddle a kayak or drive a boat out into St. Joe Bay, hop out with mask and snorkel on, and slowly go through the eel grass. If you see one scallop, there’s a good chance that you could reach about 4 more in a 3’ radius. You have to move slowly and be on the lookout for their almost totally camouflaged shells but once you’re trained in what to look for, you’ll see more and more! Sometimes they are hanging out on the edges of the sandy holes, sometimes they are in the sandy holes, and sometimes you just have to resort to hunting through the grass. Anyone that enjoyed an Easter egg hunt as a child will LOVE scalloping. Cleaning scallops is a learned art and usually one or two people in your party will be gifted – find them quickly and offer them anything they want in exchange for cleaning.

Always ask the locals and see where they’ve been finding scallops because they do migrate around the bay – even as often as the tide changes.

The resulting dinner is well worth the work!

Visit Fickling & Company SGI for all of your real estate needs.

New Beachfront home for sale on St. George Island FL

webmaster@fickling.com (webmaster) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:32:00 GMT

Tongue in cheek… From this angle it looks like this unfortunate shrimp boat is running parallel VERY close to the beach. From the photo below though, you can see that he has bought his very own piece of beachfront property on St. George Island. He ran aground between 6th and 7th Streets on the west end of the Gulf Beaches.

Not to be deterred from the business at hand, he proceeded to sell the previous night’s catch to the gathering crowd. Now he’s just waiting on high tide to arrive so he can leave his short lived piece of prime real estate!

Visit Fickling & Company SGI for all of your real estate needs.

Cast Your Nets!!

webmaster@fickling.com (webmaster) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:11:57 GMT

Our fishermen have jumped right into the new year with a splash. I’ve heard from two sources that the January 5^th was the day to be offshore enjoying the Gulf of Mexico . Both told me that the grouper were so thick all they really needed was a cast net! Another Apalachicola captain went offshore Tuesday afternoon on a solo trip that only lasted a few hours because he got tired of pulling them in…

>>>>

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