ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603230001
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: G-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LARRY TIMBS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
The summer tourist business is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
If you don't believe this, ask restaurateur and fisherman David Zachry of Jekyll Island, Ga. When he began offering his shrimp boat cruises in 1994, he could not have predicted that "Forrest Gump" - the blockbuster movie - would help make his venture a success.
"People are sometimes disappointed that we don't play the part," said Zachry, a shrimp fisherman for 22 years and captain of the Miss Angie, a 51-foot shallow draft trawler docked at the historic marina near the Radisson Jekyll Island Club. "But you get a good bunch of people on there [the Miss Angie] and you can cut up with them. ... That film, which came out about the same time we started, did bring us a few customers."
Although Zachry's business is not the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company that enchanted millions of moviegoers worldwide, like the movie, it lets you experience up close what it's like to work on a shrimp boat. A ride aboard the Miss Angie is more than a two-hour sightseeing cruise off the coast of Jekyll, a barrier island seven miles long and 11/2 miles wide, near Brunswick, Ga., 60 miles south of Savannah. It's also a chance for the five or six passengers Zachry takes on each cruise to catch their own dinner.
But after you've paid your $50 to board the Miss Angie and trawl the excellent shrimping waters between Jekyll and Cumberland islands, will you really catch enough to fill your plate?
Well, again, Forrest Gump said it best: "You never know what you're gonna get."
But if you're a paying customer that day, Zachry promises you'll receive part of the catch. "We've caught as much as 30 to 35 pounds of shrimp in a 30-minute tow," says Zachry, a native of Waycross, Ga.. He and his wife, Barbara, have owned and operated Zachry's Seafood Restaurant on Jekyll Island for nine years. "I've told people we may go out and we might all come back with a shrimp cocktail."
And then again, he concedes, they might come back with nothing.
However, as crew members on the same kind of craft they saw in "Forrest Gump," each customer will see and learn about marine life, as well as a shrimper's routine and so they leave the Miss Angie with something more than they get from a typical cruise.
"I tell people the objective of this is not for them to catch shrimp to take home," says Zachry. "It's to show you how it's done. The bonus is the shrimp catch. ... And even if we don't catch shrimp, we get the by-product that's normally caught - shells off the bottom, anchovies, crabs, bluefish, flounder ... "
Within 30 minutes of leaving the dock, the Miss Angie, powered by a GM 671 diesel engine, hits legal fishing waters and "we're setting our nets and we make a tow for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the wind and the tide," Zachry said.
Whether a paying customer actually works aboard the shrimper is up to him or her. You can kick back and listen to lessons on how to catch shrimp, as well as ride and enjoy the scenery, sunshine and salt air of the waters just south of Jekyll Island. Or you can "use your hands and get right into it," Zachry explained, meaning you work the winches and nets and help clean the catch.
Zachry calls his shrimp boat cruises unusual. He's heard of only one other such offering - somewhere in the Carolinas.
"Where else can you get an experience on a shrimp boat? ... People who go are people who want to do something different. I've had locals go with me, and they tell me, 'I've lived here all my life end watched shrimp boats and I've always wanted to go on one.' They go and thoroughly enjoy it."
Even if the shrimp aren't running, other marine life - dolphins, pelicans, sea gulls, wild canaries - make the trip memorable for most guests on the Miss Angie. Zachry recalls the day when he took a couple out who were quiet throughout the cruise. They didn't say a word but were obviously very pleased, tipping him $100.
There was also a large woman whom Zachry guessed wouldn't like his shrimp boat but who joyfully exhorted him to go faster and faster, yelling "yea-high!"
Twenty-eight-year-old Heidi Germano and her 17-month-old daughter, Ayla, rode on the Miss Angie last summer. Germano, who lives on Jekyll Island where she works as a hotel concierge, was busy caring for Ayla that day, preventing her from helping with the catch. But she recalls that they "got quite a few [shrimp[. They pulled them up and dumped them out on the deck."
A highlight of the cruise: dolphins that came up behind the Miss Angie and which mother and daughter fed an eel. "Ayla wanted to touch the dolphin. She really loved it," Germano said.
Germano said the cruise, with spectacular scenery, sunshine and refreshing ocean breeze, completely satisfied her. "We kind of just wanted to go for the sightseeing and the dolphins," she said, noting she had grown up on Jekyll Island but had never experienced a shrimp boat. Imagine the magic of Zachry's shrimp boat cruises, she said, for people who haven't been to the ocean or who haven't been on a boat.
Buffy Meeks, 22, a school teacher in Brunswick, Ga., has been out on the the Miss Angie at least three times, with dolphins among her most stirring memories of those cruises. She explained that after the crew pulls up the nets, dolphins will show themselves behind the boat "because they know you're going to throw out everything that's not shrimp."
The shrimp boat cruises are wonderful, according to Meeks, because they differ so much from the typical vacation activity.
"Just for you to experience it is incredible," she said. "You get to scrape through all the fish and help put the nets clown. It's great. ... And I mean he puts you to work and you get to do all the stuff. You don't just sit there and watch."
The catch?
You'll catch something, Meeks says, and even though it may not be shrimp, you'll come away happy: "It's not necessarily the catch. It's the ride and work and being on the ocean. That's what's thrilling, I think."
Interested in being a shrimper?
David Zachry's shrimp boat cruises are offered for $50 per person beginning around June 1. The Miss Angie will take up to six passengers each trip. The cruises are offered seven days a week, depending on the weather and other factors.
Reservations are required. For more information, call the Jekyll Island Authority at (800) 841-6586 or (912) 635-2236.
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LARRY TIMBS. The Miss Angie, a 51-foot shallow draftby CNBtrawler shrimp boat, cruises the waters near Jekyll Island Ga.