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Gulfshore Life • 1st April 2024

One of the Most Influential Men in Saltwater Fly-Fishing Lives in Fort Myers

"OK , I’m gonna put the hook in the vise. We want the shank parallel to the floor … The next thing we’re gonna figure out is what size eyes we want. The eyes will affect the sink rate.”

I am sitting in the home workshop of Drew Chicone, saltwater fly-tying master, watching him create a salmon-colored imitation shrimp to attract fish. He wraps thread around the hook to form a body, secures little black bead chain eyes and adds silicone legs to mimic the crustacean’s anatomy, sparkling fibers f...

Gulfshore Life • 1st November 2023

Naples' Leading Lady of Philanthropy

The first time I meet Dena Rae Hancock, she’s wearing a sunshine yellow business dress. The second time I see her, on Zoom, she’s in her Naples home office, in front of a brazen, hot pink wall. “Oh, I love pink,” she says, unabashed. “It’s a color that brings that happy feeling.” (Her electronic avatar is a grinning blonde ringed in bubblegum pink.)

Some will accuse me of being corny, but I’ll go ahead and say it: There’s a vibrancy to Dena Rae, and it goes well beyond her color palette. For...

Gulfshore Life • 1st October 2023

Behind-the-Scenes with Artis—Naples' Film and Literature Guru

Some three decades ago, Elaine Newton, a humanities professor at York University, Toronto, approached a sabbatical leave and sought a required academic pursuit to round out an upcoming year of adventure. Vacationing i n Naples for the first time, the literary expert glimpsed a sign announcing the soon-to-be Phi lharmonic Center for the Arts (now Artis—Naples). Inspiration struck. “I thought, ‘During the day, nobody uses a Philharmonic. What if I could start a book club here? What if I could be s...

Gulfshore Life • 1st September 2023

One Year After Ian: We Celebrate the Landmarks that Remain and Stand Strong in SWFL

One year ago, Hurricane Ian battered Southwest Florida. But these resilient institutions rallied and returned—stronger than ever.

J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge

Sanibel was gray the day Toni Westland and her colleagues returned to the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Gray silt. Gray sludge. Gray forests, stripped of green leaves. But, wait, a flash of brown—Toni, the supervisory refuge ranger, and fellow ranger Jessica Barry fixed their eyes on the movement in th...

Gulfshore Life • 1st April 2023

Walker Farms in North Fort Myers embodies the sweet life

A conversation with Allen Walker one January morning calls to mind an old children’s rhyme: “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly …” The woman went on to consume a spider to eat the fly, a bird to eat the spider, a cat to swallow the bird, and on up the food chain.
And so it is with the bees that Allen has tended for more than 50 years. “I wish people understood our entire food chain starts with bees,” he says. A bee pollinates a flower; a bug crawls in to enjoy the pollen; a bigger bug eats...

Gulfshore Life • 1st January 2023

Floridian food isn't what you think: Dive into the true, authentic flavors of Southwest Florida

T he platter arrives overflowing with local bounty­—big, pink Gulf shrimp and dense, fleshy grouper—but my daughter and I reach for the unfamiliar first: fried frog legs. We glance at each other, at our jointed pieces of meat and bite. “Tastes like chicken,” we decree, because that’s how unfamiliar white meat always tastes. We bite again, and a more complex flavor profile emerges. They are a little gamey, a little briny, a little lighter in color and density than poultry.
I’m searching for Sout...

Gulfshore Life • 1st August 2022

Naples Canning Co. Captures the Flavors of Local Farms in a Jar

David McCone is a young man working to perfect an old tradition. The 34-year-old created Naples Canning Co. three years ago, inspired by Southwest Florida’s bounty and a desire to capture its just-off-the-vine flavors. He is—for now—a one-man operation that partners with local organic farmers, transforms their produce into various jarred and pickled foods, and sells them on his website, at Naples’ Third Street South Farmer’s Market and at his five-month-old retail shop, The Farm Stand at Naples...

Gulfshore Life • 1st August 2022

Raising the Sails

The most high-end of Naples’ fine-dining establishments is run by an executive chef who just cracked 30 this month. Darren Veilleux assumed the top job at Sails Restaurant at 27, about a year and a half after starting out as a sous chef.
This being the Futuremakers issue, age matters to us. It does not, however, matter to Darren’s bosses. “I don’t believe in age, on the side of youth or on the side of maturity,” says Veljko Pavicevic, who co-owns Sails with Corinne Ryan. “It’s all about the min...

Gulfshore Life • 1st June 2022

The Fisherman's Daughter Seafood Brand

The world is dark and sleepy when Chanda Jamieson climbs onto her father’s commercial fishing skiff one Monday morning. But not for long. In the time it takes her father, Bobby, to pilot the boat from Cape Coral to downtown Fort Myers, emergent light illuminates the Caloosahatchee River, the city’s skyline and the bridges spanning the water. “This is the best part of the day out here, watching the sun come up,” says Bobby, who descends from a line of New England and Nova Scotia fishermen and has...

Gulfshore Life • 1st May 2022

Under the Mangroves

Mangroves take care of people in ways almost too numerous to count. They serve as nurseries for fish, filter excess nutrients from water, capture and store carbon, prevent soil erosion and act as coastal barriers against wind and waves.
Globally, however, these watery forests have been disappearing. But there’s good news: The rate of decline has slowed and efforts to protect and restore mangroves have surged. That’s evident locally thanks to two significant undertakings.
On Marco Island, the reg...

Gulfshore Life • 1st January 2022

Home Sweet Home

The handsome, two-story building on Goodlette-Frank Road is the physical manifestation of a declaration: We are here to stay.
Shouting that are the trustees and staff of the Naples Children & Education Foundation. Even with its age (22), its accolades (ranking as Wine Spectator’s top charity wine auction 13 times) and a trove of affirmational data (including an astounding 93% graduation rate in Immokalee), a sense of impermanence shrouded the foundation, which has bounced around Collier County,...

Gulfshore Life • 1st November 2021

Cream of the Crop

Once upon a time, a change in seasons brought with it a different set of foods: squash in winter, asparagus in spring, berries in summer and apples in fall. Seasonal fare still exists, of course, as food magazines and marketers constantly remind us. But the reality is, you can get pretty much anything any time you want. Tomatoes not growing in Florida in July? No problem! Thanks to industrial farming, California will ensure they grace your plate, just as the Midwest supplies corn during those mo...

Gulfshore Life • 1st July 2021

The Great Everglades Endeavor

Once upon a time in Florida, a pair of brothers in the real estate business eyeballed the eastern Collier County wilderness and saw dollar signs.
Baltimore natives Leonard and Julius “Jack” Rosen descended on the Sunshine State in 1957, the year they founded Gulf American Land Corp. Their arrival coincided with the completion of I-75, opening the state’s west coast to the cold-weary, the curious and the charlatans.
The Rosens (who’d gotten their start peddling an anti-baldness tonic), marketed S...

Gulfshore Life • 30th April 2020

A House Full of Love

“Ok, let’s go… now!” Karen Reynolds Scott strides through her front door, no-nonsense but not harried in spite of the clock inching closer to church time. She’s a singer and an ex-cheerleader, and her voice projects over a bouncing basketball and whirling bike tires. The ball falls still. The bikes too. Their three operators—boys ages 12, 7 and 8—scramble toward her 15-passenger van. The others emerge, a 15-year-old girl, two friends, her boyfriend, three more teenage boys, and an 11-year-old gi...

Naples Botanical Garden • 12th February 2020

Botanical Gardens Protect Wildlife, Too! | Naples Botanical Garden

Seventeen pairs of eyes recently scanned our scrubby flatwoods habitat, heads down, eyes peeled, looking for displaced sand and gently sloped, half-moon-shaped burrows — telltale signs of gopher tortoises.These dogged observers, representing various organizations, were part of an authorized gopher tortoise agent permitting class that the Garden agreed to host in exchange for data about the threatened reptiles’ status on our land.The survey, completed as part of the course, yielded important info...

Gulfshore Life • 18th September 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Hannah Rinaldi

There’s something about the composting fad that strikes Hannah Rinaldi as odd.“It seems like composting is a buzz word, the hot thing. You go to all these restaurants and they have compostable cups and compostable straws. Everybody wants to do it but nobody was actually picking up compost.”On Earth Day 2018, she and her husband, Tom, launched Naples Compost, a company focused on picking up and recycling household food waste and educating the public about the whys and hows of turning food scraps...

Gulfshore Life • 18th September 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Dr. Jerry Jackson

Years ago, as a professor at Mississippi State University, Dr. Jerry Jackson was frequently called upon to testify in environmental lawsuits. “I learned very quickly that doing these environmental cases was not winning friends for the environment. And not winning period. At the very best, it was stalling the inevitable,” he says. “I decided long ago that it’s better to reach the public with a positive message, to teach them about the gee-whiz things in nature, to teach them how to recognize the...

Gulfshore Life • 9th September 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Megan Kissinger

Megan Kissinger was raised in the Perdido Bay area along the original Bartram Trail, named for famed 18th-century naturalist William Bartram—a rather cosmic coincidence that produced a kid who loved the outdoors and chronicling nature through art.Today, Kissinger’s acrylic paintings feature the flora and fauna of Florida and the
Southeast. She says her pieces are somewhere between a landscape and a portrait of animals: “What I really want to do is put those two together and say, ‘Why is this la...

Gulfshore Life • 9th September 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Brenda Brooks

Brenda Brooks grew up a city girl, became a hairdresser, but longed to go to college. She found her way to campus at age 37 and flung herself into a long-held interest: science.“I did not grow up connected to the environment,” she confesses. “I think the closest thing to nature I had when I was a kid would have been a squirrel in a city park, but I was just drawn to science—and to the outdoors. That’s my happy place.”CREW, which she has led since 2008, is Southwest Florida’s largest intact water...

Gulfshore Life • 30th August 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Daniel Andrews

Three years ago, fishing guide Capt. Daniel Andrews watched the water turn brown, the fish flee and the tourists cancel their trips. It was an uncharacteristically wet winter, and the Gulf was suffering a freshwater assault from rainwater and, more critically, from Lake Okeechobee overflow gushing down the Caloosahatchee River. It was the last straw for him. “The oyster bars and grass flats I grew up fishing as a kid in the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River are gone. It’s mud now. Lifeless.”He a...

Gulfshore Life • 30th August 2019

Defenders Of The Gulf - Millisa Bell

Sure, Millisa Bell might like to save the world, but she’s practical enough not to chase windmills. Instead, she nudges people toward sustainability and environmental stewardship through example. Bell, also known as the “The Unruly Gardner,” grows plants and saves seeds from her Pine Island home, which serves as a model of how nature thrives without chemical-laden interventions. “When I see frogs, dragonflies, bees, wasps—all these different critters—I know that I’m doing something right,” she s...

Gulfshore Life • 30th July 2019

That's The Spirit

Jan and Panache Desai are arguing over Avengers: Endgame.Namely, how much Jan should reveal about the comic-book blockbuster, which the couple had gone to see the night before, the premiere. Her husband shushes her, repeatedly, lest she slip me a spoiler. She giggles.They settle into a chandeliered library in their Port Royal home. Classical music—Pachelbel’s canon, Bach sonatas—pipes through unseen speakers. The couple on this Friday night are in their “Saturday morning best,” shorts and T-shir...

Gulfshore Life • 8th May 2019

All of Your Marijuana Questions Answered Here

Lately, it seems, references to cannabis have been as abundant in media reports as they are at frat parties. We’ll admit it: We at Gulfshore Life were pretty hazy on the ins and outs of medical marijuana, the CBD craze, the hoopla over hemp and the legality of it all. We set out on some research (not of the experiential type, for the record) on these and other marijuana matters. We give you our resulting “pot primer” to clear the air.
What is CBD oil, and why is it all the rage?
Cannabidiol (CB...

Gulfshore Life • 25th April 2019

What's it Like to Live in Babcock Ranch?

She nearly had to pinch herself.
From a second-story window, Donna Aveck looks out onto Founder’s Square, the town’s central hub, where she sees twinkling Christmas lights wrapping palms and draping oaks. Firepits glow. Thousands of people mill about, kids squirmy with anticipation. Santa will be coming.
Donna and her husband, James, who goes by Jim, had been waiting nearly a dozen years for this—for life to be breathed into their new home, Babcock Ranch, the eco-conscious, high-tech, health-min...