ST. AUGUSTINE AND CAMP MACK

Guy Harvey Outpost Resorts

BY MARK ELLERT

St. Augustine

It’staken more than 450 years for St. Augustine to go from an outpost for Spanish explorers to a beach outpost for Guy Harvey Resorts. As the saying goes, the ship has finally come in, and it’s been a busy season at The Guy Harvey Resort St. Augustine Beach. Situated on one of Florida’s great, scenic shorelines, the 151-room outpost brings the Guy Harvey outdoor lifestyle vibe to this coastal casual surfing community with its famous zebra-striped lighthouse and ever-popular Anastasia State Park.

Santiago’s Florida Kitchen and Craft Bar opened to rave reviews, showcasing the talents of Chef Joe and the culinary team behind a fusion menu of Spanish, Southern, and Latin American tastes. The décor pays homage to Guy’s first artistic series, pen and ink drawings interpreting Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and its protagonist Santiago who battles a giant marlin. Santiago’s comes on the St. Augustine culinary scene as Southern Living Magazine has ranked the city as the No. 1 “foodie town” in their “South’s Best Food Town” 2019 issue.

No slouch when it came to fishing, Hemingway once wrote “anyone can be a fisherman in May.” And in St. Augustine, pretty much every other month, too. The Outpost Pro Team is expanding its ranks as the resort’s fishing program showcases new angler activities. Launched as a one-day seminar in March and hosted by surf fishing pro legend Noel Kuhn, the Outpost Surf Fishing Academy is now scheduled monthly through September: July 21, August 18, and September 22. Classes are held surfside, dedicated to teaching the techniques and tips of bait rigging, site selection, and long-distance casting. And we mean, long, like in the distance of two football fields!

In May, kayak fishing landed on the activity board, with industry leader Jackson Kayaks presenting a tutorial on this increasingly popular angling style. Showcasing Jackson’s ever-expanding line of fishing kayaks, including their new Big Rig watercraft, Jackson fishing pro Captain Jim Sammons and Guy Harvey Outpost pro kayak guide, Bart Swab, shared competitive insights on Northeast Florida kayak fishing with anglers both accomplished and new to the sport. Captain Swab, also a Jackson kayak pro, is the resort’s go-to charter guide for customers looking to stalk the estuary systems of Flagler County and the St. Augustine area. The skinny water, winding creeks, and marsh habitats make for both picture perfect settings and exceptional year-round kayak fishing.

And exceptional in St. Augustine, America’s Oldest City, are the big tarpon, the Silver Kings, which show in June in the coastal marshes for their annual spawning that runs through September. Considered by most as one of the best tarpon fisheries in the U.S., even a lowly TV weather anchor can reliably forecast the bite to be as red hot as the summertime temperature. Among the resort’s fishing staff, Outpost pro guide Chris Herrera puts 20-plus years of local, skinny water and inlet fishing experience on display with each launch of his Hell’s Bay skiff in search of tarpon. Growing to about 5–8 feet, anglers can expect hot action inshore for 50–80 lb. fish, and along the beaches, larger, 100-lb.-plus trophies.

Even if you fail to jump a tarpon, the Matanzas Bay and the Guana and Tolomato Rivers are among the most fertile estuarine waters in the state of Florida, creating an inshore fishery that is the envy of light tackle or sight fishing anglers targeting redfish, snook, sea-trout, and flounder during a flood tide. For the angler looking to fish while the family enjoys a beach vacation, it’s truly “so many fish, so little time.” The resort Pro Team makes your fishing day count.

Back on the beach, with summer winds and warmer water upon us, be sure to channel your best Duke Kahanamoku longboard, surfer-dude attitude and hit the resort’s Surf Academy on Saturday mornings. Hosted by the pros of St. Augustine’s Surf Station, the local go-to shop for all things surfing, the academy offers two hours of training for any level of expertise, from building your confidence to wiping out gracefully to executing a flawless 360. St. Augustine boasts a large surfing community due to a shoreline that generates consistent swells year-round. Don’t plan to lay around and miss out on St. Augustine Beach surfer dude fun. The Surf Academy is your certificate to hang-ten with the best of them.

And no trip today is complete without a file full of selfies and lowly digital images known as snapshots. The rich photographic backdrop of the nation’s oldest city is a photographer’s dream. The Guy Harvey Resort St. Augustine Beach has partnered with the St. Augustine Camera Club to offer tips on taking better photos, with a standing contest for guests and club members. Entries posted to #GHOPhoto on Facebook and Instagram are judged by a panel of camera club officials with prizes awarded monthly.

In other photo news, the resort hosted in late June its first Youth Photo Academy in partnership with the St. Augustine Camera Club and Canon, who is supplying cameras for classroom use. Earlier in the year, the four-day Florida Birding and Photo Fest was based at the resort. The internationally respected festival attracts birding photographers from across the globe to St. Augustine during the spring birding migration. Outpost Pro Team photographer Ben Hick, an authority in fine-art landscape images, hosted a popular workshop session on surfing photography. As a keynote speaker for the festival, Hicks shared his images highlighting fragile ecosystems around South Florida and the importance of environmental awareness and conservation.

Guy Harvey Lodge at Camp Mack

Moving South from St. Augustine is the heavily trafficked migratory flyway of Central Florida and the 30,000-acre-plus Lake Kissimmee watershed habitat, where you’ll find Camp Mack, a Guy Harvey Lodge. Tucked into the north bank of the lake with bass tournament action scheduled almost weekly, the lodge and Guy Harvey Outpost Resorts have teamed with Major League Fishing bass pro legend Bobby Lane and the iAngler tournament app to launch its own Big Fish Tournament that will run through the balance of the 2019 calendar. Open to all anglers, registration is free using the iAngler app, also used to record eligible catches anywhere within the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes.

The winner-take-all format will award at year end a popular Power-Pole Shallow Water Anchor to the anglers catching the biggest fish in the largemouth bass and panfish divisions, where black crappie or bluegill are eligible species. Data collected on the app from tournament qualifying catches will help populate databases used by scientists monitoring fish habitats and water quality across this important watershed.

Working with the developers of the iAngler app, Guy Harvey Outpost and Bobby Lane also created a novel Trash Fish Division, allowing anglers to upload images of garbage and debris harvested from the lake while fishing. Monthly prizes will be awarded at the discretion of the tournament director for the most unique reclaimed trash fish, not to be confused with disrespected species such as catfish and the Florida snakehead.

Bobby Lane and his brother Chris, an equally winning bass pro tournament angler, owe their success to growing up on the lake, learning fishing skills from their dad and other grizzled bass anglers. A favorite son of Camp Mack, Lane finds time to pass along his love of bass fishing to kids of all ages. The lodge hosts the Bobby Lane High School Cup, a tournament held each December attracting high school bass fishing teams from across the country.

This outreach to junior anglers took another step forward on July 13th with the launch of the Outpost Angler Youth Academy at Camp Mack. Working with the IGFA to inspire future generations of anglers and conservation advocates, Bobby Lane, along with Yamaha and Pure Fishing, Inc., a leading global fishing brand portfolio that includes Penn Reels, Berkley, and ABU Garcia, will provide fishing tackle and teach junior anglers the basics of fishing in an engaging and hands-on manner, as well as the importance of conservation. This and future half-day Angler Youth Academy programs will be hosted at Camp Mack, a Guy Harvey Lodge Marina & RV Resort, and the Boy Scouts Flaming Arrow Reservation. Registered students will receive a rod and reel kit, welcome bag with sample tackle, and a course completion certificate authenticated by the IGFA.

And what vacation at Camp Mack would be complete without an airboat adventure to witness up-close the wildlife of this Kissimmee Chain of Lakes. The lodge’s very own Alligator Cove Airboat Nature Tours is ranked the top airboat excursion in Central Florida. Every hour of every day, Lake Kissimmee nature gets served up in a different color. Whether searching out alligators, egrets, or eagles, the pallet of a fascinating new world colors over the familiar as civilization is left further behind.

When you travel alone or with family and friends, Guy Harvey Outpost Resorts offer more than a relaxing vacation. The focus on conservation, fishing, and diving headlong into nature is the mantra reflected by the man himself, Guy Harvey. For more information, visit GuyHarveyOutpost.com.

Photo by Ron Smith