2000fish's Blog – Steve Wozniak's hunt for fish species

DATELINE: NOVEMBER 6, 2023 – VERO BEACH, FLORIDA

Over the years, I have had some wonderful fishing trips to Florida. This will not be one of them. This will be more a sad tale of my dim-witted persistence, where the hope for 10 or more species was crushed into a desperate struggle for at least one. For that, and several other more important reasons, this blog is going to be a downer.

It started innocently and with the highest of hopes. Chris Moore and I had been looking for a pre-holiday trip, and thought we would skip Puerto Penasco this time. He found some budget tickets to Orlando, and, in talking between us and Dom Porcelli, we found a good number of targets we could chase in a few days. These ranged from very doable, like lesser amberjack or remora, to completely foolhardy, like mountain mullet. Still, it seemed like there was a shot at a few good ones and a chance to see Dom, so we set it up.

In the middle of all this, real life intruded in an awful way. Marta’s Mother, she of the endless hospitality, passed away. She was 92 and we can’t call it unexpected, but it was shattering. Anka lived an incredible life, hailing from a small village in Montenegro, spending her childhood under Nazi rule, suffering worse as the communists took over, then marrying, moving to the US without knowing a word of English, and raising five children. She was a force of nature, a woman who changed thousands of lives for the better, a woman who always had time for an injured animal, and still somehow always found a little humor in every situation. 

Anka Bulaich – 1931-2023. Read the obituary here – it’s one of the most moving tributes I’ve ever read.

The service was on November 1. It was attended to standing-room-only levels, and it was the most beautiful sendoff I have ever witnessed. (Until Marta asked me to say a few words with no warning.)

   

Anka and some close friends.

One of the photoboards Marta and her brothers put together. These always feel so incomplete, because for every photo you put up, you remember 20 others that were just as good.

Marta was in problem-solving mode, so she had something to keep her mind off of the loss, but I knew she was in pain – I lost my own Mom 12 years ago, and it’s rough. I tried to just cancel the Florida trip, but Marta would have none of that, and insisted I go so she could have some alone time to decompress – and a few days to catch up on work. 

I flew out on a redeye to Fort Lauderdale, checked into the hotel, and took an Uber up to join the guys at Phil Foster Park. We had planned to do the next two days on Dom’s boat, but, to put it lightly, the weather had turned against us. And not just in a “Brayden’s gonna puke” way – more like a “No boats on the water” way. Ten foot swells. 40mph wind. We were unexpectedly shorebound, and in conditions that were not going to make it easy.

Not that Phil Foster wasn’t fun. There’s a lot to catch, and Chris and The Mucus each scratched out a few.

I caught a cowfish. Cowfish are cool. (Ryan Crutchfield and I are tied for the world record on this, but confidentially, his was bigger.)

One of the more attractive grunts – and a porkfish.

Chris even got himself a bonefish, which I hopped a fence to land.

At dinner that night, we had to scramble to make plans B-Z because the boat was out of the question. The Mucus slowed things down by going through the five stages of boat cancellation grief:

• “It looks like it’s laying down.” (No, it’s not. Math isn’t negotiable.)
• “I’m sure we can find someplace sheltered.” (No, we can’t. Straight north wind.)
• “The swells are getting smaller up by Daytona beach.” (No they aren’t.)
• “Can’t we just try it for an hour and see how we do?” (This is why smacking kids upside the head shouldn’t have gone out of style.)
• “It really does look like it’s laying down.” (See #1 above. Rinse, lather, and repeat.)

Dom took us out shore fishing the next morning, first to a lagoon reputed to have fat snook. (They really are called that, so no, it isn’t snook-shaming, and if this even crossed your mind, you’re reading the wrong blog.) The guys added the species, but even that small, protected water was a mess with the wind.

A fat snook. I got my first one in Brazil in 1999.

We then moved to some neighborhood creeks to the east, and Chris and The Mucus both added an Eastern Happy Cichlid. (A fish Pat Kerwin had introduced me to several years ago.) 

I made friends with a horse.

Which animal would you rather have breathing on you? $10 Bass Pro gift certificate for the most creative answer.

We parted ways with Dom in the early afternoon and headed for South Beach in Miami. We caught plenty of fish down there, but nothing exciting – the water was as churned up as I’ve ever seen it. 

I don’t mean to make this post such a bummer, and we haven’t even covered all the bad news yet, but this would be the last time any of us would fish with Dom Porcelli, who passed away a few months later.

I wonder now, if we had somehow known, whether we would have done anything differently. The fishing was bad, but I still wish that day could have lasted forever, just for the conversation. I was so far behind in the blog when Dom died that there were eight more episodes involving him posthumously. This is the last, and it feels for me like having to say goodbye for the final time. We all miss you, Dom. 

We spent the next day hopping from shore spot to shore spot, but the wind was relentless and any sight fishing, which might have gotten me something new, was out of the question. We tried everywhere from Fort Worth Pier down to Boca Raton, and while I caught 82 fish, they were all repeat customers. The guys managed to tack on a few new ones, so I could take some solace in knowing that I was supposed to be glad for them.

Sunset over South Beach. We got to enjoy it pretty much undisturbed by fish.

There are probably good pictures of all of us, but not together.

The next day was similarly disappointing, and I was beginning to get desperate. I have had some awful trips, but never one that was a complete strikeout. The stars were aligning for me to catch absolutely nothing new. I was certainly grouchy, and I may have approached insufferable. But we soldiered on, and I kept fishing hard for just one random critter.

After dark on Boca Inlet. The rich and famous got to watch us catch nothing.

I stayed up very late that night chasing some pond creatures, and I thought I had scored with a golden silverside. Sadly, it turns out that the silverside I caught with Martini in 2015 and had counted as a brook silverside had been split into this species, so I was even, except for the mosquito bites. And now I needed a brook silverside, a fish I had passed up in the midwest dozens of times.

Our last day took us north, hunting some of Ben Cantrell’s old Florida spots. The wind, if anything, was worse, and everything we tried, from creeks to rock jetties, did not pan out. There were plenty of standard fish, especially catfish in Sebastian, but nothing new to report. I was as miserable and desperate as Cousin Chuck at a high school dance. (Especially considering he’s around 70 years old.)

We had some kind of awful sub sandwiches for dinner, and then, more out of duty than hope, we headed to a small creek where, according to some vague online rumors, there was a population of spinycheek sleepers. The guys both had a dozen or more new species on the trip, but this was going to be my last chance to avoid unspeakable shame.

This photo is the only redeeming thing that came out of the sub place. As The Mucus slowly, dutifully chewed his sandwich, I asked him what was in it. He said “I literally have no idea.”

We examined the water carefully, and one by one, we started spotting the target fish. Getting them to bite was another story, but after a couple of hours, we all had one, and yes, The Mucus pointed mine out to me. Triumph at last.

There is no explaining this to a non-species hunter, but this single catch, especially as late in the game as we were, makes me remember the entire trip as a success, even though it was a 2017 Cleveland Browns-level disaster.

And I caught another fat sleeper, one of the cutest fish in existence.

We kept at it for a little while longer. There was one other fish there, a goby, which seemed terrified of light, sound, movement, and bait. But we had nothing better to do, and we kept playing goby-spooking pong where we scared them back and forth across the creek to each other. Sometime after midnight, I actually had one hold still long enough to present to it. It stayed put, albeit with apparent disinterest in my bait. I always view this as a good sign, as I believe fish that hold like this will eventually bite out of boredom or annoyance. It took quite a while of gently touching him on the nose (not a sentence I ever thought I would write,) but in the wee hours, he finally eased forward over the bait. I struck, and landed the fish hooked cleanly in the mouth. It was a lyre goby, so-called because The Mucus says anyone who says they have caught one is a lyre. Yet there we were, and I have two words for you, Mucus – River Redhorse.

I somehow had two species at the last second, taking me to 2239 lifetime. I felt inexplicably triumphant.

The only redeeming feature to this entire mess is that I thought it would be the last time I would have to fish with The Mucus for two years. He would be heading off on a church mission shortly after Christmas, the best present I could ask for, except maybe the Stella 500 Marta refuses to get me. I have very limited influence in the Mormon community, so the letters I wrote trying to get him assigned to Yemen or Cleveland fell on deaf ears, but he would still end up on another continent, so that was a plus.

Ah, who am I kidding. I’ll kind of miss him. 

Steve

POSTSCRIPT – LOSING A HERO

I returned from Florida on November 7, which gave me three days to plan something for my Great Uncle Ted’s 99th birthday. The youngest brother of my grandfather Steve, (who was killed in WWII,) Ted was a decorated veteran who was in combat from Normandy to Mortain, on to Aachen and the Battle of the Bulge. He was the humblest man I have ever known, and while I am sure many of his worst experiences were never shared, he knew that merely surviving the war had been luck – beating the odds by a wide margin in many cases. He knew and lived by the fact that every day is a gift. I had met Ted a few times as a kid, but I was only reacquainted with him in 2007. Marta met Ted that same year. He had to go in for unplanned heart surgery when I was on a trip to Singapore, and Marta went to visit him in the hospital. She got to the right floor, but before she could find a nurse to direct her to the room, she saw a patient and knew it was him, from the eyes alone. She said “It was like seeing an 82 year-old version of Steve, except better looking.”

Steve and Ted, circa 2008.

Ted and I became very close over the next 16 years – the nearest thing to a father figure I have had in my adult life. We got out to lunch or dinner weekly for many years, often joined by Marta, and Ted’s wife Donna. They made fun of us ruthlessly. He was just as stubborn and just as competitive as I am – indeed, only a week after he went home from that heart surgery, he had to be rushed back to the hospital because he burst a staple. While lifting a washing machine. I shamelessly admire him for that, and while he did have to go to the ER, the washing machine got where it needed to be, and that’s the important thing.

It was my privilege to learn so much about the Polish side of my family, about his experiences in the war, and especially about my grandfather. We spent many late nights talking about the war, and over time, he trusted me with many of the brutal details of those awful 11 months and two days of his life, from June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach, to May 8, 1945, on the banks of the Elbe River. One story I will never forget was about Raymond, a private in Ted’s platoon. Raymond was from rural Tennessee, a good soldier, and a deeply religious man. As their unit fought through the hedgerows and the casualties began to mount, Raymond would sing a hymn every night for the dead. Ted said he had a beautiful voice. Just before Christmas of 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, Raymond was killed, just yards away from Ted. Ted told me this story 74 years after it happened, but he still choked up. “That night,” he said, “There was no one left to sing for him.”

Ted came home to Detroit later in 1945, suffered from what we would call PTSD today, but then somehow put it all behind him, married, had four kids, ran a successful business, and ended up out in the San Francisco Bay Area from the early 1960s onward.

Ted was in his eighties when we met up again, and I always regretted that I never went fishing with him. But he looked at every fish picture I ever thought was worth showing, he read every blog, and he gave me a few pieces of gear I will treasure forever. He also gave me plenty of advice that I will carry with me for life. I’ll never forget when I told him I was having a bad time at work. He heard me out, and then said “Well, is anyone shooting at you?” I smiled and told him no, that no one was shooting at me. He smiled and said “Then it really wasn’t really that bad of a day.”

I had to take his word for that. I’ve never been shot at, and this was a man who, on August 7, 1944, was awakened from his foxhole in Mortain, France by the entire Second SS Panzer Division coming down the road in a surprise attack. As he recalled, they all seemed to be headed directly toward him, but in a week of pitched fighting, the Germans were driven back, setting the stage for the Falaise Gap and the collapse of the German Army in France. 

Ted had not been in great health for a couple of years – he was in his late 90s after all – but his mind remained incredibly sharp. He could recall the addresses of his childhood homes, give the stories of so many relatives I had never met or only faintly recalled, and he could name every man who died next to him in combat. He passed away quietly, on his 99th birthday, about two hours before I was going to head over to see him. He was one of the few men left alive who had fought in WWII – “The Greatest Generation” – and he had lived a good life, leaving behind two surviving children and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In “Saving Private Ryan,” Captain John Miller’s last words were “Earn this.” That was the only thing all the men who didn’t make it home asked for – that those who survived made the best of the opportunity that came at such a high price. My Uncle Ted never forgot those men, honored and thanked them every day of his long and generous life, and now he rejoins them. I hope that Raymond and my Grandfather are waiting to welcome him home.