Sebastian Fishing Club leader Capt. Kirk VanHart is always getting comments about a certain other Captain with whom he shares a name. And he always replies, “I was a captain before he was.”
But this Capt. Kirk explores not unknown galaxies far away but familiar waters close to home. VanHart lives in Roseland on the St. Sebastian River, where he continues to enjoy what he has done, for business and pleasure, since he was a boy – fishing.
VanHart grew up in the little southern New Jersey fishing village of Barnegat Light, named after the lighthouse built before the Civil War, some say, by the same man who designed and built the Jupiter lighthouse. When many 18- year-old boys were getting drivers licenses, the Barnegat Light boys were getting their captain’s licenses.
”I caught my first fish at 10, and my last at 67,” he says. That first one was a seabass, he still remembers, and he and his buddies would catch and sell seabass and blowfish called sea squad, which he says were good to eat.
After graduating college in Western Pennsylvania with a degree in English, VanHart and his first wife took their boat down to Abacos in the Bahamas, where they ran a little hotel, the Hopetown Lodge, for seven years. “I did pretty much everything – tended bar and carried the bags, while she was a hairdresser.”
It was an idyllic life for the young couple, but they eventually headed back home, spending time in West Palm Beach and then Riviera Beach, while VanHart ran charters and fished commercially. In 1974 they moved to Micco, where VanHart fished for oysters, clams, blue crabs and operated as an inshore guide, finally settling in Roseland.
As satisfying as the life spent outdoors on the water had always been, constant exposure to the sun at last took its toll – VanHart was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Ironically, on what would be the final day in the life he had known, he was in his 20-footer going under the Sebastian Causeway Bridge, and had just pulled up his last 40 crab traps, when a flatbed semi crossing the bridge suddenly careened off the road, over the rail and into the water “right in front of me. The driver must have had a seizure.” VanHart was able to maneuver his boat alongside and haul the driver to safety.
He was diagnosed shortly after that and had to undergo a series of grueling surgeries which would severely limit the strength in his right side and end his life as a commercial fisherman and fishing charter captain. Ironically, he later realized he never would have been able to rescue the driver of the semi if it had happened after his diagnosis.
In Roseland, a new chapter in VanHart’s life on the water began. “I was lucky,” he says. Now retired, he was known for taking families out on the river, just for fun. When the snowbird retirees would come down for the winter, and their grandchildren would visit, they’d go out on the river with Capt. Kirk.
”I had more fun with the kids, showing them the birds, and manatees and fish and stuff. It just fell into my lap. Then, when this club came along, I just started doing it.”
And he’s continued for several years now. The Sebastian Fishing Club is a very informal group of mostly men and a few women who enjoy the river and love to fish. Dues are a very modest $15 a year and members meet monthly during the season. (Members are local fishing guides and local bait and tackle shop owners, and quite a few snowbirds who fly North for the summer.) Meetings take place in the Community Room at the North County Library and feature a speaker, presenting some sort of fishing-related topic.
“On a good night, we’ll have 50 or 60 people. It fills up the place. And we have a Christmas party every year,” he says. Often smaller groups get together between meetings to boat or fish, or talk about boating and fishing.
Probably the most enjoyable event the club does annually is its kids’ fishing clinic, which takes place in the Riverview Park field by the city docks, usually in the spring. Through small notices in the paper, the clinic draws kids and their parents from all over the area.
“The kids that show up are really interested in fishing, and want to learn,” VanHart says. Any age kids are welcome but they’re typically in the 10- to 12-year-old range, with more boys than girls. But, he says with a grin, “at that age the girls are more coordinated than the boys.”
Sometimes Capt. Kirk has to play the tough sea captain to keep his young students focused, especially where safety is concerned. “I tell them if you snag someone with a hook it will spoil the whole day and could spoil their whole life as well. But 90 percent of them do pay attention.”
Six different teaching stations are set up, covering topics such as safety, first and foremost; fitting out a tackle box; caring for the equipment; casting; and more, with the kids split into six groups. The whole circuit takes about an hour.
Each child is given a fishing rod to keep, generously donated by a business. “The rods all have the push button controls now,” VanHart says. “I learned, just before the first class, that I was going to teach casting. We use a hula hoop that the kids aim for. Well, I had never used a rod with a push button control before so I snuck out early in the morning to practice. It worked out OK.”
After the teaching circuit is completed, the kids get to put their lines in the water, usually with great excitement. “We put bait on their hooks, chum the water a bit. The parents can help, too, if they want. The kids have a ball and even catch some fish.”
“Now that the sun has eaten me up,” he says, just a little wistfully, “”I’m making stuff out of local bamboo – walking sticks, whistles, back scratchers, jewelry from shells you can find in the old sand pits. I want to take my stuff to some local flea markets one of these days.”
Even with the life adjustment he has had to make, Capt. Kirk is enjoying his life by the river. He remembers when he first began to understand the unique character of Sebastian. Back in ’64 he was a mate on a fishing boat, unloading mackerel at Sembler’s one Friday afternoon. After the job was done, he and a buddy stopped by Earl’s. “There wasn’t a pair of street shoes in the place,” he recalls. “Nothing but cowboy boots, white fisherman’s boots and bare feet. Cattle, fishing and citrus. That was Sebastian.”
