The Wandering Disciple

Venice & Englewood, Florida: The nice crisp fall weather provided by the first cold front of the year provide great weather for a fishing Sunday. Although we were battling low tide conditions, we still managed to catch five fish in the group with my wife leading the group with three, I had two and my Dad had one. Following our success last trip, we decided to go to the South Jetty again. We armed ourselves with 2-dozen live shrimp from the Crows Nest and hit the rocks. First shrimp in the water and my wife already had a fish. Her first was a Mangrove Snapper. But we were fighting a really fast current in the Jetty enhanced by the outgoing tide. So we decided to go the Gulf side of the rocks where nothing was happening except watching a Manatee playing in the water about thirty yards offshore. We decided to hop around a bit and try some new locations. The first of these was the boat ramp at the Venice Train Depot. Despite some rather large Snook under the docks, there...

Venice, Florida; The train depot under the Venice Avenue bridge is one of the last remaining pieces of railroad history in Sarasota County. The newly restored Venice Train Depot and the Coakley Railroad Park offer visitors a look back at the railroad that brought residents into the region. Seaboard Airline Railroad decided to extend their route to Venice in 1910 by an order by Mrs. Potter Palmer, who demanded the railroad be extended further south as a stipulation to her purchase of land in Sarasota County. The railroad agreed and the rails were extended to a mark in which the real estate broker designated. The line was opened in 1911 and tickets were sold out of a freight car. Venice prior to the extension of the railway was a small town with only about 50 families residing here at the time. The city had no schools, churches, stores or paved roads in the area. Travel through the area was done by mules or boat. It wasn’t until the railway was opened that Venice started to grow....