FLORIDA BAY FOREVER SAVE OUR WATERS PRESENTS

THE VOI CES OF THE FLORI DA BAY PROJ ECT

THE INTERVIEWS

WWW.FLORIDABAYFOREVER.ORG T H E V O I C E S O F T H E F L O R I D A B A Y P R O J E C T

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INTRODUCTION 2

STU APTE 3

EDDIE WIGHTMAN 4

BILLY KNOWLES

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STEVE HUFF T H E V O I C E S O F T H E F L O R I D A B A Y P R O J E C T

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SANDY MORET 7

VIC GASPENY 8

TIM & ROBERT KLEIN 9

TIM CARLILE

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RICK RUOFF

T H E V O I C E S O F T H E F L O R I D A B A Y P R O J E C T

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CRAIG BREWER 12

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS V O I C E S O F T H E F L O R I D A B A Y P R O J E C T

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

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Florida Bay is an 1,100 square Over the course of 2020, mile estuary nestled between Florida Bay Forever Save the southern terminus of Our Waters conducted and Everglades National Park and collected oral history the Florida Keys. interviews with 11 Florida Keys fishing guides and It is also an ecosystem in anglers. peril. This book is a collection of Over the course of the last 50 the transcripts resulting from years, Florida Bay has seen those interviews. The stories tremendous changes. Where are of a Florida Bay that we lush seagrass meadows and will never see again. They are plentiful fish once covered also stories of camaraderie, the banks and basins of of epic fish, wicked storms, Florida Bay, there is now and the crown jewel of the nothing but a memory of Everglades: Florida Bay. what once was. Florida Keys fishing guides The Voices of the Florida hold the key to Florida Bay Bay Project aims to collect past, this collection is our those memories of Florida way of honoring tradition Bay past, present, and future and finding a path forward from the people who know it for our estuary home. best: Florida Keys fishing guides and anglers. -Emma Haydocy, Executive Director

Florida Bay Forever

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CHAPTER TWO

STU APTE

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HAYDOCY: So Stu, what year were you born and where? APTE: Well, I am an old 90 year old dude born 1930 in the city of Miami, back then they called it Miami, I call it My-Amma. It’s actually my claim to fame was I was the first baby born in Jackson Memorial Hospital in 1930 on Mother’s Day. There were only two hospitals in the whole city of Miami back then. Miami was a really calm place to be in with my brother Marvin who was five years older. We were riding bikes and streetcars to explore the various waterways and canals in the area. HAYDOCY: Will you tell me what led you to become a fishing guide?

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APTE: You know, being a fishing guide is something I always wanted to do but, before that time happened, in 1951 when Korea happened, I had graduated college. I joined the Navy as an aviation cadet and became a fighter pilot. 1955 I was back as a civilian and went to work for Pan-American World Airways. Then, I got laid off after being with them for two years. My dad said, “Stu, what are you going to do? Are you going to work for United Airlines? American Airlines?” They were all wooing you because of your credentials when you got off of active duty. I said, “No, Dad. I’m going to do something I always wanted to do. I’m going to study, take the Coast Guard test, and be a backcountry fishing guide.” And, he laughed. He said, “No, really son, what are you going to do?”

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And, that’s what I did. So, I moved down to Little Torch Key, 28 miles above Key West and started guiding. Back then, the fishing was fantastic but the customers were not. It was $55 a day as a guide, $35 for a half a day as a guide. Those days went by and I ended up producing a lot of world-record catches for my clients and becoming a really fair-haired guide. Then, I was on the water for hire, more than 330 days a year for hire at double the going rate which was $55 a day. I was getting 100. I can remember, back then, the schools of tarpon, which was always my favorite, that would come down a bank out of the channel. I can still prognosticate when that will occur. In late March, the moon phase, in late March or early April. But nowadays, there will only be 6 or 8 tarpon that will go due at the same time of the tide.

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Back then, there would be a school of a hundred tarpon coming. It was just like clockwork. It was fantastic. The reason now, I think that we don’t have the big schools has to do with the water pollution and the lack of freshwater that flows through the Everglades into the Keys. Back in the ‘80s we formed an outfit here in the Keys called the Everglades Protection Association. I was the first Vice-President of it. Billy Pate was the President. They wanted me to be the President of it, but I was busy flying for Pan-Am and I couldn’t be at all the meetings. So, it went on like that. HAYDOCY: Can you tell me why the Everglades Protection Association was founded? Was there an event, something bad that was happening on the water that you noticed? APTE: Oh, absolutely.

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The reason we formed that organization was because the commercial fisherman. I forget, they were called the Commercial Fisherman of Florida, were really, really ripping things up and killing so many fish and doing a terrible job. We had many, many meetings up in Miami, in Everglades City, and in the Keys. We got that turned around, which was very, very good and necessary. We still have a water pollution problem here because of the sugarcane people up near Lake Okeechobee and we have to get that turned around. We had a lack of bonefish here happening because of that, because of the water pollution. It would kill the food source for these fish. The fish weren’t happy, they wouldn’t be here. HAYDOCY: What was the guide community like when you were down here? The guide community?

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Did you guys have good camaraderie amongst the fishing guides? What was that like when you first started? APTE: Well, when I first started guiding down on Little Torch Key, Islamorada had most of the clients and most of the guides. I didn’t get along too well with them because I was producing record catches for my clients and when they had tournaments as a guide, I was the winning guide from the Lower Keys because I worked very, very hard. You know, life goes on. You have to do what you have to do. There was only one guide from Islamorada that I got along with very well. Unfortunately, he got killed in a plane crash in the backcountry here, spotting tarpon, Jim Brewer. His son is still a guide in Islamorada and very good. Jim and I - Jim came to me when he wanted to be a guide. He said, “Stu, where should I start? In the Lower Keys like you did?”

F L O R I D A B A Y 0 9 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO I said, “No, Jim. You’ll get more clients out of Islamorada, and you’ll do really well.” And that’s what he did. But, being a guide was a means to an end. Getting laid off from Pan-Am was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Number one, I never would have come to this full-circle and met my wife. Never would be here right now. No telling what I would have done. I used to say, “Gosh, too bad that I was 5 or 6 years too young to fight in World War II. I should have stayed in the Navy.” If I stayed in the Navy and flew fighter planes and supersonics, and then I stayed in the active reserves, the weekend warriors we called it for a number of years. Then, they took our fighter planes away and that was cutting into my fishing time. So, I got out of the active reserve. I would have retired as a Commander, possibly even a Navy Captain, but that didn’t happen. (Coughs) I’m sorry, excuse me

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO HAYDOCY: Let’s see. Do you remember the big seagrass die-off in ‘87, the late 80s? APTE: Yeah, when they cut off our freshwater flow from the Everglades. We had such an amount of saltwater in the backcountry, it killed our seagrass. We had lots of areas that had no seagrass, just white bottom and that’s not very conducive for habitat which we need for many species: bonefish, tarpon, that’s the thing that we need. HAYDOCY: Did you notice any differences in the fish population or migration patterns after that? APTE: I don’t remember how it all came about but I know it gave a problem to the migration of fish because what happens - fish come by because they have a source to eat. You know, when you take their livelihoods away from them, it takes the guide's livelihood away because there’s not going to be any fish.

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 1 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO HAYDOCY: We are going to switch over to some stories, your fishing stories about the bay. So, what was one of the scariest things that ever happened to you on Florida Bay? APTE: Being a guide, even a fisherman, even an angler can sometimes be scary. I can remember a time fishing in the Lower Keys that I hooked a big tarpon with a baitcasting outfit. It was with a big plug that had two sets of treble hooks. We got the tarpon to the boat pretty quickly, my friend on the boat Ray Donesburger, who was my best client over the early years, he became a good friend. He had the fish in the lower jaw and I was reaching for it and the fish jumped up on my hand and impaled a set of the treble hooks between my first finger and thumb of my left hand. Very painful. The fish was still attached to it. It was only about a 65 or 70 pounder, and shaking its head and all.

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 2 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO Ray Donesburger grabbed that fish, he’s left handed, he grabbed it with his his right arm holding it under there. Somehow or another got his sidecutter pliers out of his sheath and cut the fish loose from me and turned the fish loose. Now, I still had that set of big treble hooks through my hand. Ray wanted to take me into the hospital. I said, “No, no, no, we have too many fish around, Ray. We’ve got to stay here and it’s your turn.” I cut the barbed part of the hook off and slid the thing out. It was really painful. I didn’t have any feeling in that part of my hand or fingers for a couple years. That was not a happy time. HAYDOCY: Switching over to happy times, do you remember funny stories of fishing on the Bay? Anything that tickles you? APTE: Just after I got out of the Navy, I hadn’t gone to work yet for Pan-Am or anybody.

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO A friend of mine, Jerry Kirk, who was the fireman in Coral Gables, had a lot of time off to fish and he was a good angler. So, the two of us fished together, a lot. We were staying on Conch Key at a place called Popeye’s. You could get a cubicle, not a room, but a cubicle for like $1.50 a day. I had my new boat that I got right after I got out of active duty and we would fish every day. Well, this one day, after about a 30 minute run by boat to a group of islands off of Islamorada, I hooked a tarpon on a spinning rod. That fish was a big fish. I fought it, fishing 8lb test line, monofilament line. During that fight which lasted all that day, into that night, that fish took me clear across Florida Bay to Flamingo. It went to one through of the channels going into Conchy Channel in Flamingo. We had two gaffs in the boat. Jerry had gaffed that fish at one point, we know it was over 150 pounds on 8lbs spin.

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 4 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO It jumped up when he did and the gaff hit him in the head with the handle, almost knocking him out. The fish shook and threw the gaff out of his hand. The next time he went to gaff it with the little hand gaff, that was an hour or so later. This fish took all day into that night and got off and swam away. It was kind of funny, it was a hoot. HAYDOCY: That’s a long day on the water. APTE: It was. And the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes back then. That night, because it was into the dark that I was fighting that fish. That night, we were so covered with mosquitoes you couldn’t see any part of you without the dark mosquitoes. HAYDOCY: Back when you first started fishing guiding, what were the types of fish you were targeting? And, how did you see that change?

F L O R I D A B A Y 1 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T WO APTE: Well, we don’t have the many different species that we used to have here but we still have a fair amount of fish, not like it was. I remember, one time I was talking to a young group of anglers. Young, they were in their 20s. One young angler popped up and said, “Well, Mr. Apte, I don’t know how it was back then, but I still think it’s pretty good right now.” I said, “You know, you’re right, because right now, these are the good old days of tomorrow.” Remember that. HAYDOCY: What was the most gratifying experience you had out on Florida Bay? APTE: Most gratifying. I guess the most gratifying experience I had was getting a second gaff into Joe Brooks’ world- record tarpon on fly. It took me out of the boat twice. At that time, Joe Brooks was the angling editor of Outdoor Life Magazine.

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He had a film guy in the boat with him taking pictures of it all from Outdoor Life. The picture he got that I like, actually it’s on the cover of one of my books, my last book. I got a release gaff into that fish cause it was ripping off the main gaff when I gaffed it. It jerked me out of the boat twice. Looking up at Joe, after I got that other gaff in it, I went, “YEEEEHAW!” They got a picture of all teeth and that was gratifying. HAYDOCY: That’s wonderful. We’ve talked a little bit about some of your work with the EPA at first but I see you are wearing your Bonefish Tarpon Trust gear today. How did you get into conservation for the fishery? APTE: I’ve always been interested in the proper conservation of our backcountry, our fish, our fishery, our habitats, it’s important.

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We want to have the same type of fishery for our children, grandchildren, your children’s grandchildren, and now I am a great-grandfather. Matter of fact, my oldest great-grandaughter just graduated college and is a teacher. Her younger brother is in VMI on a $195,000 scholarship, Virginia Military Institute and he is graduating from that as an officer in the military. It’s important, I have had both of them when they were maybe 6 years old, 5 years old, or thereabouts out on my seawall here catching snapper and catching the other fish that I had down there. It’s important for our children, our grandchildren, our great- grandchildren to be able to experience what we have experienced. HAYDOCY: What is your hope for the resource? For Florida Bay?

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APTE: I hope that they’ll finally curtail the terrible flow of garbage water into Florida Bay and have it done good, with good freshwater, which the fishery needs. The Florida Bay needs it. I can remember back in my early years of fishing Florida Bay you would go across toward the mainland and there would be a white pothole, and there would be snook and redfish in there. I used to cuss the redfish because I’d cast a fly to a big snook laying in there and redfish would run in and grab it away. It was great, but it wasn’t.

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CHAPTER THREE

EDDIE WIGHTMAN

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HAYDOCY: It is Monday, November the 23rd (2020), we are recording the oral history of Eddie Wightman for the Voices of the Florida Bay Project. Eddie, could you please say and spell your name for us? WIGHTMAN: Eddie, my real name is Charles. But it’s Charles E. so I’ve been Eddie forever because my dad was Charles and there couldn’t be two of them. But anyway, the last name is, W-I- G-H-T-M-A-N Sr. HAYDOCY: What year were you born? WIGHTMAN: 1941 HAYDOCY: And where were you born? WIGHTMAN: Miami, Florida HAYDOCY: Did you live in Miami? WIGHTMAN: I lived there for 8 years before my parents moved to the Keys. We moved to the Keys because my wife’s brother had a little motel on Lower Matecumbe and we’d been coming down on weekends forever

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(laughs). HAYDOCY: Did you learn to fish down here? WIGHTMAN: I did learn to fish down here. HAYDOCY: How did you learn to fish? WIGHTMAN: I was self-taught. HAYDOCY: Did you have any family member, mentor, or friend who you learned to fish with or alongside? WIGHTMAN: (Chuckles) That’s funny. My parents owned beauty shops. They wanted me to take over the beauty shop chain and I go, “there is absolutely no way that I am going to be in the beauty shop.” HAYDOCY: Can you tell the first time you fished Florida Bay or the backcountry here in the Keys? WIGHTMAN: You know I thought about that for a long time and there’s no way that I can pinpoint it because it was a product of evolution. All the kids back

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(when we were little kids, that’s all we had. We only had the water and boats to play with. I probably went - someone took me back into Florida Bay, not very far, probably Petersons or a place like that, probably when I was 12 or 13, but can I remember the day? Absolutely not. It’s been 75 years ago. 70 years ago HAYDOCY: Do you remember what the water was like? What it was like being there? WIGHTMAN: Yeah, sure can. It was pristine. That’s the best word I can think of. Back in those days, algae blooms didn’t exist. We didn’t know what they were. And, the water from here, you didn’t run into any dirty water until you got over to Flamingo and it’s always dirty there. It’s not polluted, it’s not algae, it’s just muddy. In the early days the water from here back through Twin Keys, back through Rabbit Keys, all back through there was crystal clear. And

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E loaded with Thalassia or Turtle grass. That was the predominant grass at that time. HAYDOCY: And so - WIGHTMAN: Big, huge, big meadows of it HAYDOCY: So do you - why did you start guiding? WIGHTMAN: Why did I start guiding? Well, it’s because that would have been what I would have ended up doing anyway because my first love and still is today was fishing and I always liked light tackle fishing I didn’t gravitate to the ocean. My youngest son today, he went the other way, he’s an offshore yacht captain. So, it’s just, it’s kind of in your blood. And, at that time this was, I went through Hurricane Donna in 1960 and my parents lost their home and lost all their money and I happened to be going to the University of Florida at that time. And they had no money, they were

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 4 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E they were broke so I went and bought a little secondhand skiff that I made-up myself - built myself and I started guiding and before that I used to be down at what is still Bud N’ Mary’s. I started going down there when I was 10 or 12 years old in the afternoons and at the time they used to have rental boats, little 16 foot flat bottom skiffs with little outboards and people would rent them. They'd basically go and fish the channels and they would troll for barracudas. Well I’d go down and clean the boats, just those little rental boats, and they paid me a dollar a boat, no probably wasn’t that, it was probably 50 cents a boat in those days, just to be down around the boats. And then I gravitated from that up to working on the charter boats as a mate, all the while fishing the backcountry myself and learning it. HAYDOCY: So can you tell me about the guide community? What was the guide

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E community like when you first started out down here? WIGHTMAN: (Chuckles) It was small and very close-knit. When you first started in, even though I grew up here, you know, if the good fishing was down here, I would go like, “Timmy, where should I go today?'' and he would go that way (gestures in other direction), he would send me in the opposite direction. We were very close-knit, I was trying to think last night about how many there were and there probably wasn't more than a dozen total instead of the hundreds there are today. HAYDOCY: What type of tackle were you guys using when you started out? WIGHTMAN: That was before the days of fly fishing. Most everybody used spinning and a few people used casting tackle, but fly didn’t get very popular til years later. Now, fly rods were always used up in salmon fishing and trout

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 6 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E fishing, but they weren’t widely used and popular in the Keys for big game fish like they became. Now it’s the only tool to use if you’re going to be a backcountry angler. HAYDOCY: Did you ever have another career that you considered? WIGHTMAN: Not seriously. I liked what I was doing. My wife claims that I didn’t find guiding, guiding and fishing found me (chuckles). I didn’t go looking for it. It just latched onto me because that was in my DNA. She claims I think like a bonefish (chuckles). HAYDOCY: Do you want to explain that a little bit? WIGHTMAN: I don’t know, I can. You’ll have to ask her (chuckles). Because bonefish became my forte and I got pretty darn good at it. HAYDOCY: Were you, I know the answer to this but, were you involved in conservation efforts for Florida Bay and

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 7 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E for the Everglades? WIGHTMAN: Initially back in the early '60s and '70s you didn’t have to be, there was no real need for it in those days. It didn’t come along - It really started up later, and one of things when they started, when the seagrass dies off and the algae blooms started, I was very active in Coastal Conservation which became Florida Conservation. And, of course I was always some kind of an officer or something in the Guides Association. HAYDOCY: So can you talk a little bit more about some of those conservation efforts? Maybe start with some of the seagrass die-offs that began on the bay. WIGHTMAN: Well, we kept telling the guides know every square inch back there and we went to the park service and we told them our concerns that we thought seagrass was dying off and they basically kind of blew us off for a while

F L O R I D A B A Y 2 8 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E until it became so apparent that they had to send biologists out to study the very areas that we told them were disappearing. And then it just kinda just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I’m not really good on dates, I’m pretty good at faces but dates I’m not good at. It started probably with the big recorded one in what '87 or' 85. It actually started a good while before that and we started seeing these algae blooms, this dirty water coming out of the Rankin Bay area. At first it was just localized in Rankin, especially up in the northern end of it, and then got larger and larger and larger and at its apex the algae blooms came clear up to Islamorada’s shoreline and went through the bridges and went down as far as, as far as I know, went down to Big Pine Key. Batches of it, not solid. You could go and drive across Long Key Bridge and the water was green, different times. Not all year, every year, but it happened.

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C H A P T E R T H R E E

So, it was an escalating- you know it was a perfect storm that started storming more. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a biologist, I’m just a fishing guide. All I can do is see, okay, that used to be thick turtle grass and now it’s not anymore, it’s mud. And I track - I think like a fish, not like a piece of grass. So, my job was, my job and my avocation was to know where the fish go and why. Which I did pretty well and then I found out when the algae blooms started and grasses started dying off, the fish left. They were gone. They wouldn’t live in that stuff. There was nothing for them to eat. They couldn’t live there. Being a bonefisherman primarily and a tarpon fisherman, I was, by then I was primarily fly fishing and artificial fishing, but you had to see the fish. It wasn’t like I went down to Channel 2 and soaked a mullet

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E and you just couldn’t see the water was just terrible. It was just awful. And it killed, as you well know, the history of the seagrass die-offs. And we haven’t made great strides getting that freshwater flow. We are closer than we used to be. But you know we have had these CERP projects going on for what? 25 years, and there was like, I forget how many there were but there were a lot of them, and only 5 have been completed. They didn’t not do the projects, they just didn’t fund them. HAYDOCY: So, Eddie, can you explain to me what Florida Bay was like after those die-offs? What was it like fishing Florida Bay after that? WIGHTMAN: It was tough because the whole bay used to be pristine. I could go anywhere and fish. Then, after the die- offs and algae blooms, everybody was piled into the few little places like around Flamingo that still had a few fish.

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So, you didn’t have the flexibility that you did. It was tough because the area shrunk drastically that actually had a few fish left to it, and it got hammered. I mean everybody that went fishing in order to catch something went to the same place. So, it got hammered. Before, you know in years past, you could go anywhere, you could go to the south, you could go to the north, you could fish around here, it didn’t matter if you knew what you were doing. The reason my boat’s name is “The Loner”, the reason I got named “The Loner” was because some of the guides like Flip Pallot, in those days, they could never find me. I’d see them, but they would never know where I was. Back then we used to have CB Radios and everybody had what they call a handle or name and Flip started calling me “The Loner” and it stuck. But I never believed that all the fish, all the fish in the bay were where all the

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 2 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E fisherman were. So, I started going in the opposite direction and I learned things they didn’t know. It’s worked for me. But, as years went on and before I quit guiding you know, it just got too crowded. I have to be by myself fishing. I don’t like fishing near people. So, by then I think I was on serious burnout. I was on 53 years of guiding nonstop (chuckles) HAYDOCY: And when was that? WIGHTMAN: I don’t remember. It’s been 8 or 10 years ago. HAYDOCY: We had another big die-off in 2015… WIGHTMAN: It was hard to know when I actually stopped guiding because I just stopped fishing a little at a time and just kind of tapered off and I had really watched my money over the years and I made some good investments, and I had a good real estate portfolio that would sustain me and Carolyn’s business was

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E very active and that could sustain us. You know I've already had one big melanoma on my back and the dermatologist said you better think about doing something else. You need to get out of the sun and I said that’s probably the handwriting on the wall for me. Getting too crowded anyway. (chuckles) HAYDOCY: Now I want to switch gears to some fishing stories. Do you have a funny Florida Bay story you could share? WIGHTMAN: Not specifically, I was trying to think about a funny Florida Bay story and the only funny stories that I can really think about were not individual funny happen like somebody fell overboard or something but during the early days of the tarpon tournaments and some of the bonefish tournaments the guides used to play pranks on other guides and there were a

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 4 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E couple times when Jack Brothers, he was a famous guide in those days, and one day - he was kind of a grumpy old guy they called him grumpy - and one day I forgot what the guides were but it was in a tarpon tournament and everybody in those days it was a rush start and they chained his boat to the dock. And, he was there just gunning it and gunning it and swearing up and down and calling him every name under the book and that was just one of them. Another time one of the guides they took his propeller off at the dock so he couldn’t go. And you know little tricks like that. Another one, there used to be a guide, what was his name? It escapes me. Anyway, they put a black cat in his forward hatch and locked him in there and he got out to Sandy Key basin and opened the hatch to get something and the cat jumped out. (chuckles) Those kinds of things. Just, you know, just pranks, harmless

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E pranks. That’s the funny stories I can remember and there were many of those. HAYDOCY: What about a scary story or scry situation? WIGHTMAN: The scariest story, I had to think about that. I’m glad that I got the questions from you because it gave me time to think about it and try to cull out what was scary. The scariest time was that, it was in the wintertime and I can’t remember the year. I went online to try and find the winter storm that tore up Islamorada and the signs and everything and I couldn’t find anything on it. We were all out fishing and this storm came in and it blew in 75 miles an hour and it blew so hard that you couldn't have stayed out in the open. I took my skiff and I was out near Rabbit Keys at that time, and I took my skiff and I drove it as hard as I could at full throttle right up into the mangroves and

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 6 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E tied it off on the downwind side and I rode out that 75 mile an hour wind with my clients in the boat. That was pretty scary. And then it blew for I don’t know, three hours like that and it was just screaming and when we finally got back to Islamorada there it tore up billboards, they said it had little twisters in it, it really did a lot of damage. It irritates me I can’t remember, but it was in the wintertime it was like March or April or something like that. But, yeah I drove it straight through up into those mangroves, that was our lee to get out of it. Then when it let up enough where I thought I could get home, I untied it and got it back out of there, came back out from around and Rabbit and the bay was just as white as milk. You couldn’t see a flat, you couldn’t see anything. It was still blowing 30 then. And I go, you know I don’t know what else is coming behind us but this is a little eye here. I

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 7 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E need to take advantage of it. So, I could see the islands but couldn’t see any flats but the way that the wind had blown enough water in where I just took off from Rabbit and headed for Barnes Key and I knew the big flat was there I just trimmed it up and floored it right over the top of it. And, by the time I got into Islamorada because I know where the banks are, I have it blueprinted on my mind. I know where the flats are. So, by the time I - so the only thing I could do as it was blowing like mad, one side was a little calmer than the other side because the flat was making a lee so I just go to the calmer side, and I got into what is now Indian Key bridge and the seas were running right in front of the bridge, the seas were running about four feet, and I had to just really watch what I was doing to get that 17-foot skiff across there and get it back to Bud N’ Mary’s. That was pretty scary. But, I didn’t think

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 8 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E it was scary at the time I was too busy trying to navigate it. HAYDOCY: What about your most gratifying experience out on Florida Bay? WIGHTMAN: You know there are just too many to pick out. When you’ve seen a million beautiful sunsets or sunrises how do you pick one out? And, you know some of the catches I made and some of the anglers I had and you know especially when I eventually as I guided I always liked challenges and I quit doing all kinds of fishing except fly fishing. That’s all I did primarily. I’d take a spincaster once in a while. But, taking the guy, from giving me his first lesson to turning him into an accomplished tarpon fisherman, that was pretty gratifying. Most of my clients have died now, I’ve still got one client that’s still alive, he’s 92, and I fished him for probably 45 years every year, but all the

F L O R I D A B A Y 3 9 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E rest of them have died. But, that was pretty gratifying: taking people, because I became a fly fishing instructor too. Not a Sandy Moret type but I would instruct my clients and take somebody that was a northern trout trip fisherman, never fished on stream more than 6 feet wide, and teach them that’s not fly casting as we know it. This is powerfishing and then converting them over so that instead of going like this (motions) they started doing a double haul and could catch a tarpon. Little nuances that you find your niche. HAYDOCY: This question wasn’t on the list but I think you can handle it. Looking forward, what are your hopes for Florida Bay? WIGHTMAN: That it sees some meaningful degree of restoration and that’s gonna take - we have the means to do it, what we’ve lacked all this time is political will. If we can turn the political

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R T H R E E will around, it can happen and it can be restored. Not to back where it was but it can be a lot better than where it is now, and if it’s not restored it can get worse. So, I think all the past couple years back when Steve Friedman ran on the water ticket and it’s gotten to a point now where it’s a political talk point. It didn’t used to be. They would shy from it. But now people are paying attention and they know that people, voters are out there watching them. And, I think that, you know, we’ve got to keep it up and we’ve got to double it and triple the effort. And, if we do that, it’s all about the votes and the politics. If we can get the political will turned around to saving Florida Bay and the Everglades, it will happen. But it’s all about the political will because they make the decisions that make it happen.

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CHAPTER FOUR

BILLY KNOWLES

4 2 C H A P T E R F O U R

Haydocy: It is August 26th, 2020 at the Lorelei and we at Florida Bay Forever are interviewing Captain Bill Knowles. Could you please, for the record, state and spell your name for us? Knowles: Bill Knowles. B-I-L-L K-N-O- W-L-E-S Haydocy: What year were you born? Knowles: I was born in ‘40 Haydocy: And where? Knowles: Miami Haydocy: Did you live in Miami? Knowles: I did not. Haydocy: Where did you grow up? Knowles: Right in Islamorada. Haydocy: Is that also where you learned to fish? Knowles: I’m sorry? Haydocy: Is that where you learned to fish? Knowles: Yes. Haydocy: Who taught you how to fish? Knowles: Well, there was my father and

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R a very good friend Captain Cecil Keith. Just a handful of other people, but I really learned by myself. I went and did it. It was what we did. When we were like 12, 13 years old we would go out to Brush Keys and camp out for the weekend, a bunch of the boys. We all learned how to fish that way. That’s basically how I learned. Haydocy: And you come from a long line of captains in the Keys? Knowles: My father, uncle, some cousins. Yes, we were all fisherman. Haydocy: Do you remember the first time you fished out in the backcountry of Florida Bay? Knowles: Yeah, I was with my father and my cousin. We were redfishing around Captain’s Key and it was just so beautiful. Big schools of redfish. We were out of the boat walking on a hard flat throwing to them, and having a great time. That’s where I really got into it is right there. F L O R I D A B A Y 4 4 F O R E V E R

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Haydocy: What was Florida Bay, what were the Everglades like when you started fishing here? Knowles: It was beautiful. It was nice and clean. There was no - we didn’t know what an algae bloom was back in those days. We didn’t know - the only fish kills we had were from the cold. If we had a bad, cold winter, we would have a fish kill. But, it was not from the water. It was from the cold. Now, back there, they could die from anything. Haydocy: When did you start guiding: Knowles: ‘59 Haydocy: What was guiding like back then? Knowles: It was great. There wasn’t anybody out there (laughs). There were only maybe 12, 13 guides in Islamorada. That was it. I guided til ‘61. I still guided beyond that but I took a private job working for the Navarre Corporation. I did both. I did offshore and back there.

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But, we spent a great deal of time back there. It was the place to be. We had a big houseboat and we would go back there and anchor up and fish for 2-3 days at a time. Not even come back, we didn’t want to come back. My boss didn’t even want to come back (laughs). It was so pretty. Green, the bottom of the grass was beautiful and all that kind of stuff. Haydocy: What kind of fish were you targeting and what type of tackle were you using? Knowles: We were doing a lot of fly fishing for tarpon and we would do some bonefishing, fly fishing for bonefish. But we did all kinds of fishing back there: redfish, snook, trout. Mainly with spinning rods and baitcasting rods and stuff like that. Haydocy: Did you ever consider another career? Knowles: No. No. Why would you want to do anything else when you had the

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 6 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R very best? That’s the way I looked at it. And I still today - if somebody came up and offered me a job in an office for $100,000 a year, I’d say keep your job. I don’t want your job. I want my job. I like my job. Haydocy: So you were here in 1987 when the first bad seagrass die-off happened on Florida Bay. Do you remember that? Knowles: Oh yeah. Haydocy: Can you tell me about what you remember from that? Knowles: Well, you’ve seen a lot of dead floating grass. The bottom turned brown. There was a considerable baitfish kill when that happened, like pinfish and stuff like that. I’ve seen miles of pinfish dead. That was after all of that happened. That’s the problem. The problem is that the Everglades is messed up bad and it needs to be fixed. If you go to the bureaucracy and you try to tell

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 7 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R them something, they’ll change the subject on you. They won’t listen to you. So, how do you get it fixed if that’s happening? That’s what we don’t know. Haydocy: So were you involved - there were a lot of conservation efforts and efforts to try and fix the Everglades after that seagrass die-off - were you involved in any of those efforts? Knowles: Not really. I know we did a few things at trying to help. We went and got a bunch of the boats and went and cleaned the islands. The islands out on this side of the park. We cleaned the islands and tried to get all of the trash off of them to make sure that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the problem. The problem is something that we don’t know what it is. I couldn’t answer that. To say what it is. I would say the water is terrible. The water has been terrible for years. That’s about all I can say about that. It’s got to be fixed, kiddo. It has to

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 8 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R be fixed. And it’s not getting fixed too fast. Haydocy: So, in 2015 there was another die-off and you’re still a guide. So, can you talk about what that one was like? Knowles: It’s hard to say because you’re really expecting this. It was a lot of dead grass around and this and that and the other. I didn’t see that many fish in ‘15 dead but I’m sure there were in places. It’s hard to say. You get up in the North country up now, up west of Jewfish Creek on the west side of that, the water is not too bad. That is a little bit better than it is down this way. Why? I don’t know. But, I go up there every now and then to look around. It’s a little cleaner. There’s a lot of places up there that I like to go pole and the water is pretty decent. It can get crummy, but not like down here. Haydocy: Alright, now it’s time for some fun fishing stories. Do you have a

F L O R I D A B A Y 4 9 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R funniest fishing story out on Florida Bay? Knowles: (Laughing) Do I have a funny fishing story out on Florida Bay? Let’s see. Haydocy: I’m sure there’s more than one (laughing). Knowles: Golly. I really - that’s hard for me to answer. Well, the funniest one I can think of is I had one angler and he thought he was the greatest thing since apples. He says, “do you want to have a casting contest with the flyrod?” I said, “son, just bring your checkbook.” He started laughing. I said, “You’re not that good.” He says to me, “I’m better than you.” I said, ok. So, he takes the flyrod from me and he starts to cast, and he cast so hard he went back and just kept right on going into the water (laughs). And I’m standing there just laughing my head off. I said, “You’re pretty good.” He says, “Oh, shut up.” (Laughs) That was

F L O R I D A B A Y 5 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R probably the funniest one I’ve ever seen. He just went over backwards. Haydocy: It’s the last time anyone got into a casting contest with you, I’m sure. Knowles: Yeah. Nobody stepped up to the plate after that (laughs). Haydocy: Do you have a scary time on Florida Bay? Sometime when you were scared out on the water? Knowles: No. Myself being scared, no. But, I had clients on the boat that were scared to death. We left Flamingo - we left the Cape and we were fishing up in West Creek. I was noticing the top of the mangroves were really blowing and I said to the boys, I haven’t heard a boat in an hour. We stuck our head outside and you couldn’t see up the shoreline. It was so black with lightning everywhere. Finally I get to Rabbit Key. I found my way to Rabbit Key. From Rabbit Key, I know where I am no problem. This guy - one of the guys really loses it and I

F L O R I D A B A Y 5 1 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R turned around and smacked him across the face and I said just sit down and shut up. I’ll get you home. I was nervous. I was nervous not for the weather, for the lightning. Lightning bothers me. That’s when I get scared. But, I don’t let anybody see it. I try to get them home safe. We got back to the dock here at the Lorelei. It took me 2.5 hours to get from the Cape to here, which is an hour run. When we tied up to the dock, it was blowing 65 or 70 and the lightning was everywhere. A tornado went straight up the outside of the Keys It was probably a water spout but when it went ashore it went north of Tavernier a little bit. It tore up boats upside down, big boats. That’s what we missed. It took the big barn doors off of Bud N’ Mary’s barn. They never found those. They probably weighed 4,5, 600 pounds a piece. It just tore them right off the building. That was a day to be scared. Yup.

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Haydocy: Do you have a most gratifying experience? Just a day where you loved Florida Bay and fishing out there? Is there one that sticks out? Knowles: I had a whole bunch of those. Back in the old days, I used to leave here at daylight in the morning and go to Arsenicker, that’s as far as I went, with my clients. We fished til 10 o’clock. We would catch a couple of tarpon on fly. Come home. Then we’d go back out at 4 or 5 and fish til dark. Those were the great days. Those were days where you would catch 4 or 5 tarpon a day on fly. You’d be lucky to catch 4 or 5 tarpon a week on fly now. Yes, that was great. Those were great days on the water. The water at Arsenicker was beautiful, green. The water was clear. The bottom was green. It was beautiful, it was the place to be. I haven’t fished there in the last five years. It’s just not worth it. Haydocy: Are there a lot of places that

F L O R I D A B A Y 5 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R have changed like that? Knowles: Oh yeah. The routing of the fish have changed on account of boats. There are way too many boats back there. Not necessarily a lot of guides, but a lot of private boats. You have to run to get your spot. And by the time you get there, there might be a private boat sitting there because he popped a number off of you the day before when he went by. The plotters ruined the backcountry. Everybody can go back there now. You can put a plotter on your kayak and go anywhere you want to go. The only place I’ve found that a lot of people don’t go is way back up in the ‘Glades, up in the rookery and places like that. That’s where I get peace of mind. I go up there a lot. I love it up there because you don’t see a lot of boats. You might see a boat or two a day. That’s it. That’s what I like. That’s about it. Too many boats, too much pressure.

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It changes the routing of the fish. 9-Mile, the first part of 9-Mile used to be one of the greatest places in the world. Now you’re hard pressed to see 5 or 6 schools in a day come through there. Every now and then you’ll get a good day in there, but not usually. There’ll be a lot of people who will contradict that. That’s fine. I can’t really say because I don’t go there anymore. I’ve got a handful of little places I go and that’s as far as I’m going. That’s basically that. Haydocy: Before we started the interview we were talking about a meeting right out of here, to talk about the Everglades and water management. Can you tell that story again? Knowles: Yeah. There were some folks that asked me to say a few words at a meeting with the water people, big sugar was there and everything. I’m not a speaker. I said, I’ll say a couple words and I’m out of here. I got up there and I

F L O R I D A B A Y 5 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R said, “Everybody, the Everglades is broken. It needs to be fixed. And it needs to be fixed now, not 20 years from now. Now.” And that’s been 15, 20 years since that happened, since I did that. It’s still not fixed. So, you talk to people with powers to be. I went to a meeting in Key Largo at the government building. A bunch of us went up there and questions were asked. Every time somebody asked a question, they immediately changed it. They went on to something else. “Well, we can’t say nothing about that.” They’d go to something else. It’s because they don’t know. They know it’s broken, they don’t know how to fix it. You know how to fix it. I know how to fix it. But, they don’t know how to fix it. If they ever - what I was telling you earlier - if they ever put a bridge in from a county line down to Jewfish Creek, take that road out of there, let that water run freely through there, that would fix it. That

F L O R I D A B A Y 5 6 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F O U R would fix a lot of it. It’s not going to fix it all, but it would fix a lot of it because you would have the flow that used to be there, there, that is not there anymore. You’ve only got the flow coming through the bridge and a few little culverts along the way. That’s it. That’s my theory. I could be all wrong. But, my father said if they put a bridge in there to start with, we wouldn’t have had a lot of these problems, because there would have been a lot of flow. The plug in Flamingo? I don’t know what good it does. I don’t know that it’s doing bad, I don’t know that it’s doing good. I don’t know. I have no idea. HAYDOCY: Then looking forward, what is your hope for the bay? What do you hope the future is for our water out here? KNOWLES: Well, as I told a lot of young guides, I’ve been doing it for a lot of years. I don’t have a lot of years left. But,

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I would like to see a bunch of these young guides grab this and fight as hard as they can fight for it. Because, a lot of the young guides now - younger than me, but not as young as a lot of them - that are talking about quitting. They’ve made some noise about quitting. They don’t really want to quit, but they want something to fish for. And, it’s getting harder and harder and harder. They should put some kind of regulation on to keep a lot of these private boats out of the park, that go over there and run all over the flats and this and that. I can’t say anything right now. That’s about all I know.

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CHAPTER FIVE

STEVE HUFF

5 9 C H A P T E R F I V E

HAYDOCY: It is Monday, December the 14th at Sandy Moret’s house. Emma Haydocy is the interviewer for the Voices of the Florida Bay Project. Could you please say and spell your name for us? HUFF: Spell my name? HAYDOCY: Yes sir. HUFF: (Laughs)S-T-E-V-E Steve Huff H-U-F-F HAYDOCY: Steve, what year were you born? HUFF: I was born 1945, December. HAYDOCY: And where were you born? HUFF: I was born on Miami Beach. I spent my youth in Miami proper. HAYDOCY: How long did you live up there? HUFF: I lived there - my mother because I wasn’t the best student in the world - I got sent to military school out of high school and I did two years of military college in Georgia and I came

F L O R I D A B A Y 6 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E back and went to the University of Miami. I studied biology, got a degree in biology. Everybody says Steve’s a marine biologist because I took a lot of courses in marine biology but my degree is actually in biology. When I left there, I moved to the Florida Keys and decided to become a fishing guide. I always wanted to be since I was a little kid. I wanted to be a fishing guide. That was it. HAYDOCY: How did you learn to fish? HUFF: Basically, in my youth, my mother and father were divorced when I was 10. The last time I saw my father he came by the house and I had never fished and he left a fishing rod there. He said, “Someday you might want to go fishing.” That’s the last time I saw him. He took off and was gone. I went across the street and I caught a snook that weighed about a pound, maybe 2. I can exaggerate, nobody’s going to know.

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(chuckles) I thought that was like, the coolest thing in the world. I did it all by myself, nobody tied any knots. I didn’t know how to tie a knot. I tied a bunch of overhand knots to make the lure stay on the line and I caught this little fish and I was totally smitten. I started riding my bicycle all around Miami trying to catch fish and sneaking into people’s backyards on canals. I got arrested a few times doing that stuff. I don’t know how you arrest a 12 year old for wanting to catch a fish. That’s basically it. My dream at that point was to catch a bonefish. I started reading a lot about some of the heroes of the sport back in the day. Stu Apte was my hero, actually. I just always read about all these unbelievable catches he was doing at the time. Gosh, I’d say, it’s superhuman, that stuff. My dream was to catch a bonefish, which also I caught on my own wading up at Long Key at maybe 16 years old,

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C H A P T E R F I V E just got smitten with fishing. Sometimes, the one that gets caught is the angler, you know? That was me. Then I started meeting other fishing guides and they helped me out some. Told me, you might try this or try that. That was it. HAYDOCY: Do you remember the first time you fished on Florida Bay or in the backcountry of Everglades National Park? HUFF: I was probably around 16. I had gotten a little boat. I got up the nerve because it seemed like it was a million miles away, but right north of Long Key where I used to hang out, at this little hotel called the Edgewater Lodge. I would mow the lawn and clean up around there and then they’d allow me to go fishing (laughs). They gave me a room at the motel actually to just do yardwork or maintenance work. The older couple that owned it. I got the nerve up to go out to Arsenicker Keys

F L O R I D A B A Y 6 3 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E which seemed like a million miles at the time. It was only about nine miles out across there. There were all these fish tails popping out of the water, I didn’t really even know what I was looking at. I was just totally a goofball (laughs) I was still trying to figure it all out. I still am, actually. You know, when I hear somebody say, “I know the Everglades, or I know Florida Bay,” I say, “That’s amazing, because I’m still working on it.” I’ve been there my whole life. Because it’s so vast, and so complex; currents and tides and all that stuff, trying to figure out what’s going on everywhere out there. God bless these people that know it because I’d like to say I still don’t. It’s a work in progress all the time. HAYDOCY: Did you have a mentor, friend, or family member who taught you to fish in Florida Bay? HUFF: No, not really, no. I just was trying to poke around on my own

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C H A P T E R F I V E forever. Then, when I moved down here to guide, I met a guide in the Lower Keys and he was fairly busy. He sent me some clients for a while. Then I spent a lot of time down in the Lower Keys but up here as well. I was always trying to get over around Flamingo where there were a bunch of redfish at the time and the grass was lush. It was beautiful over there. But that was so long ago, '70s, early '70s. HAYDOCY: What was the guide community like when you started guiding down here? HUFF: What was what? HAYDOCY: The guide community. HUFF: I have to give you this little story because I think it was 1973, somebody got up the nerve to ask me to fish the Gold Cup Tarpon Tournament and I was not from Islamorada. I was living in Marathon. Previous to that a couple of years there had been a guide caught

F L O R I D A B A Y 6 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E cheating in a bonefish tournament. It was a big deal. It made the front page of the Miami Herald. The guide community here - guides from another area were like a pariah. They didn’t trust anybody. I think they were all totally up and up straight guys. I mean, what have you really done if you’ve cheated in one of the tournaments? You really haven’t done anything. So, I was not well received. I did fish that Gold Cup Tournament in ‘73 I think, and I wasn’t sure I didn’t have leprosy. No one - they didn’t even walk close to me. But there was one individual and his name was Jim Brewer, Craig Brewer’s father, who was really an excellent guide but he was just not stuck in the status quo of the spots they fished. He was ranging out and trying different places. He came to me - we actually did catch a nice tarpon in that tournament - but he came over to me and said, “You know what, these guys

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C H A P T E R F I V E are just a bunch of assholes. Don’t pay any attention to them. Just do your thing. They’ll get tired of looking at you pretty soon.” And it did. It took a while, but I was blessed to have known some of these guides - Cecil Keith and Jimmie Albright, and some of those guys. There was a guy by the name of Clarence Lowe too, who was renowned as far as being like a world class tarpon guy so I did get to know those guys and eventually become friends with those guys. In fact, Cecil Keith fished with me several times, caught his first permit with me off Key West one time. We became buddies. They were all probably like I am. I don’t know, I’m pretty friendly, and when I see a new guide come around, I go, “You know what. Good for you. It’s a great life.” I’m the luckiest guy I know. I’ve done exactly what I’ve wanted to do my whole life and I have a great family. I have two sons that are fishing guides and

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I think they’re world-class fishing guides. I’m very proud of them. It’s all good. HAYDOCY: What type of tackle were you using when you started out down here? HUFF: I had gotten a fly rod and I had caught a few fish with the fly rod, but the real tackle of the day was a spinning rod and bonefishing was a shrimp and redfishing was a jig or a shrimp. Spinning rod was really the deal, but slowly but surely the challenge of catching the fish with a fly rod and the euphoria of having done it I think gets to everybody that’s got blood in their veins. It’s generally metastasized into a fly fishing pursuit. If you want to go catch a fish you can walk out to this dock right here and put a line out with a shrimp and reel something in. A snapper or something. I think everyone that fishes gets bitten by that bug, wants to

F L O R I D A B A Y 6 8 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E continue to challenge themselves. Fly fishing is certainly the most challenging. I do think that I know and I have fished many anglers who have caught blue marlin and everything and travelled the world to catch the biggest and the best, and at the end of the day, they all wind up here on Florida Bay with a fly rod in their hand. It’s the ultimate challenge for an angler. That’s where the buck stops right there. Even then, you catch a couple of great, big tarpon which is like balls-ass exciting and then you want to catch them on a lighter line and then you catch them and you want to set a world-record. You are continually trying to pursue and get better at it all the time. That’s it. So, fly fishing has kind of taken over. Originally it was spincasting and most of the people I took were spin casting but at the end of many years they all now have a fly rod. That’s it. HAYDOCY: What was the bay like?

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HUFF: The bay was - I mean you look at it today the bay is flat calm here and you look out across Florida Bay and it looks like it did fifty years ago but when you pump a bunch of toxins into it over time it affects all the seagrass. Which all the stuff, the bait, all the way down the food chain affects the amount of gamefish and the patterns of the gamefish. People always say, “We used to kill them in here.” I say, “You know, how many times does a fish need to go to an empty restaurant before it quits going there anymore.” Or, how many times does he have to go down this bank to get a hundred lures landing on his head. You can actually, in fact, myself as an individual I found a couple of spots over my career that were - nobody was fishing - myself even sparingly I would go there maybe once a week and I would always scan for another boat and everything else and I manipulated a

F L O R I D A B A Y 7 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E huge volume of tarpon. I pushed them a couple miles from up where they were real shallow and happy. After a couple of years of that they were in a next little deeper basin and the next after that. I remember I had a class in school, it was called conditioned reflex, maybe you know what that means but you can teach an earthworm not to cross an electric wire. Earthworms are not brilliant creatures, so if you pick on these fish too much and harass them too much they get really smart and timid. It’s all good, it’s just much more challenging. I say, to catch a fish here on Florida Bay it’s certainly more challenging. There’s been tons of grass die-offs and red tide has been around since the beginning of time. However, it’s exacerbated by toxins and other things that they’ve dumped into the water. We’re at the bottom of the exhaust pipe here and anytime somebody flushes a toilet in

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Orlando some part of it ends up in Florida Bay or the Everglades somewhere. It’s all headed this way. The whole core of the state is a big pipe heading this way. You know the River of Grass and all that stuff can only handle so much and the population of Florida since I’ve been guiding has what, quadrupled at least, in the wintertime, maybe times 10. All those people take a crap every morning (laughs) and some way or another sends it south. Every raindrop that falls on an asphalt parking lot winds up in the watershed and it’s all got to go somewhere. It just doesn’t vanish. Florida Bay is unfortunately, and the entire Everglades are just the recipient of less than quality water, have been for so many years. It’s got to reflect itself, the quality of the fishery itself. HAYDOCY: Did you ever consider another career? HUFF: No. No, I just like to fish and I

F L O R I D A B A Y 7 2 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E became bonded with so many of my anglers. Some people got on the boat and you could care if you ever see them again but if you have a similar mindset eventually you become really, really close to these people and they become your best friends. For me, guiding - I mean you wait at the gas station and you wait at the bait shop, you hang around waiting, waiting, waiting, when you get into a little boat and push that throttle down and you head out into this country out here, nobody owns you. You own your life and you go wherever you want to go 2 miles or 20 miles, when that wind hits my face every morning, I go, “Goddamn. I’m blessed with another day.” HAYDOCY: Were you involved with conservation efforts for the bay? HUFF: I think I was like - I don’t remember exactly but in the ‘80s I was president of the Florida Keys Fishing

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Guides Association and we went to so many meetings. Actually, we were talking to the park service mostly. Department of Natural Resources and everything else. We see it. See it deteriorating and at the time I had tried to get some of the guides that had been here for their whole life, fishing out there. Albright and all those guys who had this incredible knowledge of where everything was and what was going on at the time. I tried to get the park service to adopt some regulations to address these problems that they were seeing. They saw it from the beginning, but they didn’t have a PhD and they said that these people are not qualified. I mean, spend every day in a place. So they’d send a scientist down from Maryland who had never been here before to. They weren’t willing to adopt any of the local knowledge at the time. That was going to be the baseline. They wanted to start the baseline at that time

F L O R I D A B A Y 7 4 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E recreational fishing,what it provides for the economy versus commercial harvest and all this stuff. They don’t pay any attention to it. They could care less if there is ever another snook in the world, all they care about is money. I must say it just wore me out. Trying to draw attention to what I consider to be a major problem and they didn’t pay any attention at the time. It was sad, but you adopt your fishing practices to deal with the demise. You try to find new spots, different lures, and more sophisticated ways to catch those fish, more sophisticated lures, and retrieves and all this stuff. You really think you get onto something, but really it’s just to figure out the new behaviors of these fish. That’s it. HAYDOCY: Can you tell us what you remember about the seagrass die-offs that started in the late-’80s? HUFF: Back then, the seagrass was black.

F L O R I D A B A Y 7 5 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E and I said, “You guys are going to study this to death.” And they have. It’s not dead, but it’s certainly a shadow of its former self, I believe anyhow. Everybody studies these gamefish and their travels but these gamefish are eating stuff and if that stuff is not there, they just don’t come there anymore. The bait, the amount of bait availability and how hard they have to work to get that bait and all that stuff has changed a lot. They wouldn’t listen at the time. We went to so many meetings. We hired - one time the Guides Association hired a bunch of buses and the whole Guides Association and all of their clients and everybody that was around - we bussed to some meeting in Miami I remember. It all fell on deaf ears. You know what, if there’s one thing I have learned in all of these conservation meetings - the fattest wallet always wins. So, we were trying to prove the value to the economy for a day of

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It was so green it was black and long turtlegrass. Carpet, basically for miles and miles. When it started and you go out there and it was just white clay. The real problem with that and I’ve seen it a lot lately is that once that grass, which was totally lush, from - I think there’s a certain depth that turtle grass - thalassia will survive but in the channels it’s obviously not growing at the bottom but all these shallow areas up to about 6 or 7 feet, maybe 8 feet, just lush. You go out there and there’s no grass, but the problem is there’s nothing to hold the bottom together so the slightest breeze it gets turned to mud and grass needs sunlight penetration to grow. It’s got to have photosynthesis or it’s not going to grow. You always have wind in the winter. You have these fronts coming through so it has no chance of coming back and plus it’s cooler water so it doesn’t grow as well. In the summertime

F L O R I D A B A Y 7 7 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E it takes, after a grass die-off probably 5-8 years to get any kind of viable grass population back and it’s continually silting over too. It takes all the grass away, any kind of turbidity settles on the grass and there’s no penetration, and it takes forever, many many calm summer days to regenerate. It’s there, in some kind of root form or something. There’s lots of different kinds of grass: shoalgrass, and different varieties of grass. Shoalgrass I think grows shallower, starts growing and thalassia then can take over but it's still a very complex thing. It’s no easy heal job. I don’t remember what exactly caused those die-offs, I think it was a red tide mainly you know back then because I don’t know if grass survives either. Red tide I think just takes all of the oxygen out of the water. HAYDOCY: What was Florida Bay like after the die-off? HUFF: Florida Bay has gone through

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C H A P T E R F I V E periods of depending on - maybe not the entire bay synonymous with the whole thing at one time. It’s gone through lots of periods where it's just in a recovery mode all the time. You could actually see these fish stay ahead of it. You could see this rank water - and I used to fish in these bonefish tournaments all the time. You would find them one day in a spot and then this rank water would overtake that spot overnight. You were actually finding fish because of it, because you would go to the edge, because you knew they weren’t going to be in it, they couldn’t survive in it. You just fished right up to the edge, you’d follow the fish as the rank water moved them around. There’s always been fish in Florida Bay and there always will but it’s not the same place and it never will be the same place. I hate to be a doomsayer but the real truth is, it’s never going to be what it was. It doesn’t mean it's bad and I think if you

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C H A P T E R F I V E see it through the eyes of somebody that’s never been there before they go, “Holy crap, this is unreal.” The real truth is it’s a shadow of its former self. It used to be silly. The fishing was so great. I also don’t want to throw my days on Florida Bay away. I’m happy to go again, in fact I was going to go tomorrow with my sons but we can’t get over there because my son has to pick his kids up at school. We would have to come in early and we were going to go over to Flamingo. I try to get over there now a couple times a year. I have a real spot in my heart for bonefish. I come down here every summer and run around to these places where I used to have so much fun. There’s nothing there (laughs), there’s no fish anymore but it doesn’t stop me from poling it and thinking back about how cool it was at the time. It’s sad. You can see it. You can see this rank water and these die-offs pushes the fish right in front of it and

F L O R I D A B A Y 8 0 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E boom they’re gone. Then it heals a little bit and they come back a little bit. It almost looks like they’re a little gun shy too. There’s some places that will never ever - that first die-off that you talked about - I mean everybody that tarpon fished one of the top tarpon places - a place called Sandy Key Basin - and I don’t think a tarpon has swam in there in 20 years. They just don’t come in there anymore. Also, with a lack of seagrass the topography of the bottom gets drastically changed. It washes the banks away. It reroutes the channels. It makes channels where there was no channel. It’s an evolution and I’ve watched a lot. I’ve seen entire islands just vanish. Gone. Where there used to be an island with flats around it, there’s no island and not flats either. That’s a lot of wind driven - and of course hurricanes have a major impact as well. HAYDOCY: Alright, now we get to do

F L O R I D A B A Y 8 1 F O R E V E R C H A P T E R F I V E fishing stories. What’s the funniest story or a funny story out on Florida Bay? HUFF: In those Gold Cup Tarpon tournaments - in the tournaments years ago, we used to gaff these fish to kill them and bring them in. Tragic as it was. It’s incredibly thrilling to reach out with a hunk of steel on the end of a pole that’s eight feet long and there’s a fish by the boat that’s green or hasn’t been on there very long and reach over their back and slam that into them. The adrenaline rush is outrageous. Your heart is beating out of your chest and you’re probably not going to stay in the boat. I’ve been drug overboard a number of times and been towed around underwater for a while. One time Sandy was trying to help me - I was fishing with Sandy and he grabbed the gaff and tried to help me pull up but the gaff went through my arm. You’re always swimming around or being towed

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