When I was younger, my uncle had owned a Marina and the name of that marina was the Back Bay Marina. I doubt that it is heard of by anyone but the locals of Fort Myers anymore because it had went out of business about 12 years ago. It was a great place, a great marina, and besides them being experts in boat restoration they also had pontoon boat rentals.

One of my first jobs was working for my uncle at the marina and my main job there was to paint the pontoon boats that were going to be in the water soon to rent, and to clean the pontoon boats after the customers had brought them back after a day or a day and a half of renting them. Not a bad job at all I got to meet a lot of new people every day and I got to work on boats which I loved.

There were also a bunch of other boats that were parked there other than a fleet of used pontoon boats, like carolina skiffs and many other kinds of fishing boats. See my uncle had a live shrimp well there also because his marina was also a bait and tackle spot for other fishermen, and the people that would rent the used pontoon boats day in and day out.

At the end of the day we would throw all of the dead shrimp and their carcasses into the water right by the dock. Well it didn’t take long until there was a huge family of snook that started to hang around that very same spot where we tossed the shrimp. I mean there were literally hundreds of them, and I was itching to drop a line in the water and get some out of there. But the snook became more of a show for the marinas customers, especially the people that would be renting used pontoon boats all of the time.

So sure enough my uncle had forbidden everyone to fish for snook at the dock which was right in front of the shrimp well. That didn’t mean there wasn’t any snook along the half a mile of docks that was at the marina. In the day time they would wander off, they were smart and they knew what time the couple thousand of dead shrimp were going to be chucked in the water. So I managed to hook up with many snook many of times fishing the docks of Back Bay Marina. I miss all of the pontoon boats and the good old times, man I wish I could go back in time and be young again.