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

DATELINE: OCTOBER 24, 2025 – MODESTO, CALIFORNIA

We don’t know when our time will be up, and I’m fine with that. I, for one, don’t want to see it coming. But as you get to my age, opening emails and texts can be a bit of an adventure – every one of them can have unexpected bad news. Or be from my sister.

Dave Sharp was a Sacramento River Delta striped bass and sturgeon guide, one of the old-school shad fishermen who put me on hundreds of stripers and sturgeon over the years. He was part of the “Jolly Jay” Sorenson gang, true outdoorsmen who knew the area by heart and could pull fish out in almost any conditions. I met him on December 13, 2002, a particularly blustery day on the Delta. I was fishing with Spellman and his cousin Nick, and we still managed to scrape up limits despite vile weather.

That’s Dave at center. It was the start of a great friendship.

Spellman’s cousin Nick, a good guy who has since passed away, brought a fly rod. I told him I would kiss his %#$ if he caught one on it. He did. We compromised.

Over the next 15 years or so, I tried to be a regular on Dave’s boat. His health started tapering off a few years ago, but we kept in constant touch on email and text – he seemed to know about stuff I had caught before I had told anyone. (Turns out he monitored the party boat radio chatter.)  It had been a couple of weeks since we had spoken, so I fired him off a text with photos of my Bull Huss shark from England.

He didn’t respond quickly, which was strange, and then, a few hours later, I got a text from a 209 number I didn’t know. I knew it had to be Dave’s wife, and I could draw conclusions from there. For about five minutes, I let it sit there, and I thought about every good memory I could with Dave – his life flashed before my eyes, so to speak. The stripers with Eminem, the accidental sturgeon on a 15 pound leader, Spellman eating dinner then breakfast at Taco Bell and forcing us all out of the heated boat cabin.

I looked at the text, and it was what I thought it was. Dave had passed away at 75.

That’s Dave at center. He loved putting Marta on fish that were bigger than mine.

He was a good angler and a good guy if there ever was one. There was one way and only one way to butterfly a shad, and while he wasn’t as adamant on the topic as Jolly Joy, he politely refused any alternatives. I think back to all those daybreaks heading out onto the water, full of hope for what could always be a perfect day, and coming back after dark because he always fished way past what any of the new wave of guides would ever do. (When the hell does a “full day” end at 2pm??)

When I first met him, Dave was guiding part time, working at UOP as a day job, and at the tail end of a marriage to a woman who was, from all accounts, vile. He got through that, found new lawn furniture and a new place to live, and shortly thereafter, a new wife – Cathy – who brought him nothing but joy for the last 19 years of his life.

A lot of those years, Dave guided the Delta, and in the spring and fall, I was on his boat whenever I could be. Looking back at 20 years of photos, I fished with Dave 31 times, come rain, shine, or flatulence. That’s over 300 hours on the water, and over the years, we ended up with 447 striped bass t0 21 pounds.

My personal best striper in California, caught with Dave in 2004.

A classic Delta sunset, one of dozens I would see with Dave. My house, by the way, is directly on the other side of the mountain you see.

We also got some big sturgeon, one of which changed my life. (We’ll get to that in a moment.)

My first sturgeon with Dave. This is not the one that changed my life.

There were plenty of trips with longtime fishing buddies like Spellman and Scott Perry, but more random friends, and even Marta, showed up on occasion.

A very young Mark and Steve with limits of Delta stripers. Note the Delta Quest Sportfishing hats, courtesy of Dave.

Scott and Heidi Williams, dear friends from my Macromedia era. Scott took the famous green Speedo photo of me in Rio de Janeiro, and that’s all I am at liberty to say.

Marta’s first trip with Dave; her second fishing trip overall, 10/23/2004. Unfortunately, she caught the two fish on the left. And yes, I still think my Akubra hat looks cool.

Aaaaaaand the unfortunate photo from 11/28/04, a day on which I got two 14-pound fish, but Marta stumbled in an 18-pounder. Note that she got a Delta Quest hat right away – it took me a year to earn mine.

Looking at all of trips together, there were a couple of big gaps where we didn’t fish. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but going back to my logs from that era, it was all on me. Checking some of those spring and fall dates, I saw insane things like “May 5, River Thames with Roger Barnes,” followed by “May 9, Botany Bay with Scotty Lyons.” I flew over 100,000 miles this year, but I have to admit it gets old. In the decade 2007-2017, I averaged 226,000 a year – that’s 19 complete days of flying, every year, for 10 years. I still love the travel destinations, but when I look at those years, when Dave and I only fished a few times, it becomes clear that Marta stayed with me because I wasn’t around enough to push her completely over the edge. Every fishing log from that era is jammed with international trips, just a few days in between.

A random sample from 2007. Six weeks, three trips overseas, seven countries. (And six new species.) The France trip in June was taking Marta and my Mom to see Normandy on the 63rd anniversary of the D-Day landings.

I added 1078 species and dozens of countries in that decade, and while my local fishing suffered, that was really the window in which my life list took on some weight. It was just always nice to know that Dave and my home waters were always there when I finally got back.

In talking to Spellman and some of the other buddies who fished with Dave, so many stories came up that it would be impossible to repeat them all here – especially because most of them involved one of us acting juvenile and Dave shaking his head sadly but with a soft smile. One of the things he said most often to me and Spellman was “You two are idiots.”

The idiots. I owned that hat for more than 20 years – I had it put to sleep in 2019.

Of course, the miracle sturgeon of November 21, 2006 comes to mind. Fishing was tough that day, and I had scaled my leader down to 15 pound trying to get bites from wary stripers. Dave warned me and warned me that I needed 40# in case a sturgeon hit, and I didn’t listen. Naturally, I hooked a sturgeon. Dave stood behind me, mentioning that my leader was 15# and I was screwed. He told me it would break any moment now, and that perhaps I would listen to him in the future. During the 45 minutes or so I spent fighting that fish, being reminded every second that the line would likely break, I swore up and down to the Fish Gods and any other Gods that would listen that I would use a heavy mono leader in the Delta from that day forward.

I landed the sturgeon, all 5’3″ and 78 pounds of him, and I have kept my word on leaders to this very day.

A couple of years ago, while I was netting a big sturgeon on a friend’s boat, I noticed my line had wrapped around the head and even the 40 pound was barely holding. I called Dave and thanked him. We kept in touch on email and text until just a couple of weeks ago, (remember I’m publishing almost a year in arrears,) and he was a fervent reader of my blog – always the first to respond when I posted something interesting. He especially loved east coast striped bass – “Man, I wish we had fish that size out here.”

After 2017, Dave scaled back a bit on guiding, but we still got out with him now and then.

We fished with Dave long enough where Connor Spellman somehow went from a temperamental rug rat to a high schooler, and he joined us for a number of trips with Mr. Sharp.

Connor’s first striper – a solid 10-pounder. It took me a long time to catch a 10-pounder.

My last trip with Dave, November 2019. We were joined by Spellman and my college buddy Mike, who has put up with me for 43 years. Limits for everyone.

Despite spending what amounts to a month on the water together, I never did get a new species with Dave. But I got hundreds and hundreds of bass, including most of my biggest stripers in California. The green sturgeon was our only realistic shot at a newbie, and that’s a fish so rare that Dave only saw one of them in his career. So I’m good with that – at the end of the day, I love catching fish, and that’s what we did best together. His favorite week of the year was always Thanksgiving – and looking at our trips, a lot of our very best fish seemed to happen at that time of year. Just as I will never think of Christmas without thinking of Jolly Jay, I can never see a turkey without thinking of Dave.

That came out wrong. You know what I meant.

Dave and I at Jolly Jay Sorenson’s memorial, September 24, 2021. It would be the last time I saw him.

I love fishing our Delta here in California, and everything I know about it came from Dave and Jolly Jay. They were the last two of the old guard, and it’s staggering to think of how much knowledge passed away with them. I was blessed to take away a few of their insights that will serve me well the rest of my life. I regret that they’re gone, but I’m glad I had the chance to know them.

Steve