Battle brews over proposal to ban bridge fishing

Backlash from anglers has stalled a proposal to ban fishing from bridges along 32 miles of U.S. 41 East in swampy eastern Collier County.

The move would have ended a practice that began shortly after the two-lane, Tampa-to-Miami highway opened in 1928. The canal that hugs the north side of U.S. 41 through Big Cypress National Preserve is one of the few easily accessible fishing haunts in Collier.

“I don’t believe there’s the data to back up that there is a safety issue,” Brian McMahon of Collier County Standing Watch, a water access advocacy group, said Friday at a Collier Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting.

The 10-member growth-planning group includes Collier County commissioners and elected leaders from Naples, Marco Island and Everglades City. The group agreed Friday to lobby against the ban to state transportation officials and local legislators.

In response, the Florida Department of Transportation is considering alternative ways to improve safety. Among them are constructing catwalks on the sides of bridges and paving areas along the road’s shoulder where anglers could park and fish.

In April, FDOT alerted Collier leaders that the agency was on the verge of planting “no fishing” signs on U.S. 41 East. The signs would have appeared on all 42 bridges between State Road 29 and the Miami-Dade County line.

The National Park Service, which oversees the 720,000-acre preserve, had requested the prohibition “because the bridges are not wide enough and the exposure to oncoming traffic is a safety concern,” wrote Donald Cashdollar, assistant traffic operations engineer in FDOT’s Bartow office.

Photo by Garrett Hubbard, Daily News

Bob Murga of New Jersey fishes off a bridge along U.S. 41 about 9 miles east of State Road 29 while his girlfriend, Ashley Lewis, waits for a catch last Thursday in Big Cypress National Preserve.

At Friday’s meeting, Damon Doumlele, an environmental specialist at Big Cypress, disputed that claim, saying “restricting or prohibiting access was never our intent.”

National Park Service officials contacted the state’s top transportation agency to discuss U.S. 41 safety issues after a Michigan man died in a motorcycle crash on the road.

Ralph Wade, 63, was killed after being thrown from his motorcycle March 26 in front of Big Cypress Gallery, 20 miles east of State Road 29. An eastbound Honda Civic swerved into the westbound lane to avoid a turning vehicle and struck the St. Clair Shores, Mich., man’s motorcycle.

The Park Service oversees the land around the highway but not the highway itself. That’s the state DOT’s responsibility.

Bob DeGross, chief of interpretation at Big Cypress, said the two sides discussed improving the center striping along the road, creating turn lanes and implementing restrictions on standing on bridges.

Anywhere from a handful to a dozen or more people a day stop on the bridges to cast a line or get an up-close-and-personal look at alligators and other wildlife.

A few dozen “no fishing” signs might not seem like a big deal, but the action is part of a larger effort to stymie sportsmen’s rights in South Florida, said Frank Denninger of Hialeah, a delegate with the Everglades Coordinating Council.

“When you’re part of a threatened culture that’s been somewhat devastated over the last 20 years by regulatory action by state and federal bureaucracies, we decided to put our foot down,” said Denninger, who expressed his opposition before the MPO.

Other infractions against the “culture” include a prohibition against off-road vehicles in Southern Golden Gate Estates and the forced closure of airboat tour operations in Big Cypress near Everglades City, advocates have said.

“The risk isn’t a good reason to take away access” at the bridges, Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta said. “We’re losing our access points one inch at a time.”

Debbie Tower, an FDOT spokeswoman in Fort Myers, said the agency will look at the bridges individually to determine which ones are safe enough to support fishing and wildlife viewing.

MPO officials said they would address the issue again in the fall. In the meantime, it is legal to fish off bridges as long as they don’t have “no fishing” signs, Tower said.

Four do. Signs are posted at Turner River, a canal near Big Cypress’ headquarters, around the Oasis welcome center and at the Big Cypress Gallery.

The speed limit along most of the highway is 60 mph. The narrowest of the bridges are 28 feet wide and have a mere two feet of room between the white line and the guardrail.

Cement trucks roared past David Rinehardt, a 40-year-old Naples plumber, as he tossed a fluorescent-yellow fishing line into the gin-colored water Tuesday morning.

“That’s the problem right there,” Rinehardt shouted as one of the trucks zoomed past.

When a reporter told Rinehardt about the debate over bridge-fishing, he suggested that drivers, not anglers, are the problem.

“Most people,” he said, “don’t pay attention when they’re driving by.”

Rinehardt leaned against the guardrail on a bridge near Burns Lake Campground, about 10 miles east of State Road 29. Rinehardt and his two companions — his brother Mark of Janesville, Wis., and David Rinehardt’s 13-year-old son, Jake — were having trouble hooking the gar and bass that came tantalizingly close to their lures.

“If they take away these spots on the bridges, where else you gonna go?” Rinehardt asked.