Daycation: Cortez, FL: Captain Kathe is a Cortez Original

Captain Kathe climbs to show us a perfect conch shell

Sullivan learned to safely handle a blue crab

CORTEZ – One of my favorite place's in the world is the Cortez Fishing Village. To me, it's the quintessential embodiment of Manatee County and I honestly can't get over there often enough. Recently, my six-year-old son and I joined 4th generation commercial fisherman Captain Kathe Fannon for one of her charter tours and though I wouldn't have thought it possible, I now love it even More.

Though plenty young, Fannon is part of a dying breed. Her husband shrimps the grass-flats each night in his old shrimping boat, the only way to eek out a living inshore since the net bans. She awakes early to begin chartering vacationers through the Sarasota Bay and sometimes they are together only for a brief spell of shared sleep and a kiss goodbye.

Some of her clients are out for a day of fishing, others for a tour, but all are bound to walk away with an engaging history lesson on the once mighty fishing village and the reasons for both its survival and decline.

"In 1995, there was a constitutional amendment in Florida to ban net fishing, which is just about what all the independent commercial fisherman in Cortez did. Most of them didn't survive that ban."

The controversial ban was portrayed mostly as an environmental issue, but Fannon makes her position clear.

"The referendum asked citizens in Florida to vote on the fate of an industry they knew absolutely nothing about," she insists passionately. "What they did know was mostly based on misinformation that was spread by the special interests that were financing the ban."

Having moved here six years after the ban went into effect, I asked her to be more specific.

"Florida is the largest sport fishing destination in the world... not the united States – the world," she exclaimed. "There was big money at stake. The other side was running ads and renting billboards depicting dead dolphins caught in the nets of foreign fleets and were successful in convincing people that a ban would save dolphins, when it had nothing to do with foreign fleets or dolphins."

Fannon's love for her craft is as bright as her love for her home and her admiration for those who work her waters is pronounced. She points out A.P. Bell, the only major fish house to survive the ban and notes their foresight in having built five out-shore vessels beginning in the 1980's that allowed them to persevere and absorb.

"You see those boats waiting to go out?" she asks stoically, "Each of those captains will be in debt $3-5,000 by the time they get out to sea. You know that song, I owe my soul to the company store? That's how it really is for those

Pup Pup on the lookout for dolphins

Dolphins were plentiful throughout the cruise

guys and they pay it whether or not it's a good haul."

Once we're out of the port, Fannon shows us the sights. The tiny, but luxuriously inhabited Jewfish Key, the shell paradise of Beer Can Island, and of course the dolphins. Captain Kathe has an unparalleled advantage – a dolphin-sniffing first mate, second to none in bird-dogging the faintest sight of a buoying dorsal fin.

Pup Pup is a cocker spaniel that was born to be on the water. Quick to spot dolphin and manatee, he also has a taste for the raw shrimp that she catches in her critter nets. At first, I think the dog's skill is a parlor trick, but soon enough it is clear that Pup Pup really does have a nose for sea creatures and Fannon's success at spotting them is showcased when a fellow charter captain advertising "dolphin tours" discreetly pulls alongside her pontoon to ask where he might find some.

On this day, we are something of a tandem tour. Fannon's 19-year-old daughter has recently decided to ply the family trade and is hard at work with another group. It is clear that Fannon adores having her little girl aboard a nearby boat, working the family business.

"The plan was for her to go off to school," said Fannon, "but once she got out here, she just loved it. To tell you the truth, if I'd been a boy, I probably wouldn't have gotten past the 6th grade. I would have left school to go and work with my Dad, but my mom was adamant that I finish."

Off Jewfish Key, we anchor near a sandbar and the captain quickly scoops up some wildlife – blue crabs, starfish, and giant conch. The kids are entranced by the spectacles, giddy to hold a sea creature as she explains the animals to an eager audience. We swim around with snorkels and nets, amazed at the foreign world that is so close, yet rarely seen.

When the two-hour tour ends none of us wants to leave. We're addicted to the sea, bitten by a bit of the bug that called our capable captain from its shores, convinced that if only we too had a magical cocker spaniel to guide the way, we could spend our workdays on the water.

Finally, it's only the smell of fresh, local mullet from Starfish Company, where we disembark, that brings us back to reality and reminds us we're only visitors. We're sad for but a minute, our delicious boxed fish and ice cold beers enjoyed amongst real sailors ample consolation for our farewells. Whether you work behind a desk, in a field or even a cubicle, an afternoon aboard Captain Kathe's boat will give you a heavy and memorable dose of a sailor's life and bring you closer to the intimate magic of the sea.