Capt. J.R. Fairbanks usually is a study in concentration as he silently poles his flats skiff, eyes scanning the water for fish. But not this day. Not with Curt Gowdy standing at the bow, casting a popping bug and telling stories.
Fairbanks was laughing too hard.
We were in the Everglades, fly-fishing for bass and bream. Trying to anyway. When Gowdy, the legendary sportscaster and host of the American Sportsman television show, starts telling hunting and fishing tales, you just want to put down your rod and listen.
“Phil Harris is one of the funniest guys I ever met,” Gowdy was saying now, recalling an Oregon fishing trip with the entertainer who loved to hunt and fish and drink, and not always in that order. As they floated downstream, their guide told them the name of each tributary. Harris took note when they came to Rum Creek. “Phil said, ‘That’s my kind of creek.”‘
Harris was better at bird-hunting than fishing. His American Sportsman pheasant-hunting segments with singer Bing Crosby are legendary. Crosby would stay up late the night before the hunt writing the ditties he and Harris would serenade Gowdy with. What you saw on TV was the real thing: the camaraderie, the joy and the skill.
“Phil was one of the best shots I ever saw in my life,” Gowdy said. “Crosby was a good shot, but not as good as Phil.”
Sad to say, not every celebrity who appeared on American Sportsman was an outdoorsman. Agents often tried to book their clients on the show, which had several million viewers — far more than any current outdoors show — for the free publicity. Singer Ed Ames, who played Mingo on the Daniel Boone show, was downright dangerous.
“Every time he picked up a gun,” Gowdy said, “everybody dropped to the ground.”
The best celebrity fisherman Gowdy ever had on the show? Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams, without a doubt. Considered baseball’s greatest hitter, Williams was as adept with a fly rod as with a bat. He’s caught more than 1,000 bonefish, 1,000 tarpon and 1,000 salmon on a fly — an unprecedented triple crown.
“We were in Washington in the late ’50s. I was up in my room, and the phone rang about 10 o’clock in the morning, and it’s Ted,” said Gowdy, who broadcasted Red Sox games from 1951-66. “‘Gowdy!’ he says, ‘There’s a national distance casting championship at reflection pool. Let’s go over and bum around.’ I said OK, so we went over there and we’re walking around and these guys have casting baskets with all their line in there.
“One guy recognized him and said, ‘Hey Ted, come here. Give it a shot.’ So Williams straps this basket around him, plays with the rod a little bit, gets the feel of it… I think he cast about 6 feet shorter than the guy who won the national championship.”
There’s no doubting Gowdy’s ability with rod and gun. He honed his skills trout fishing and hunting while growing up in Wyoming.
Although Gowdy’s favorite pastime is fly-fishing for bonefish (“I call them the what-the-hell-happened fish, because something always happens,” he said), especially with his sons, Curt Jr. and Trevor, he’d had a hankering to fly fish for bass for a while.
Fairbanks, who guides for bonefish, tarpon, redfish and snook everywhere from Port Everglades and Biscayne Bay to Flamingo and Islamorada, volunteered his boat, Shallow-Minded, and his services for the day. He used to fish for bass in the Everglades with his father, and the same spots near Three Pines that produced a decade ago produced again.
We were armed with 7- and 8-weight outfits and weight-forward, floating fly lines. Popping bugs and Dahlberg divers, tied by Fairbanks’ wife, Joanie, were most effective. The key was throwing the flies into the shaded pockets where the bass were, letting them sit for a moment, then slowly stripping them in.
As Fairbanks poled his skiff along a quiet, narrow canal, Gowdy expertly flicked a black popping bug under the branches protruding from the shore. Every so often, one of his stories would be interrupted by a splash as a bass, bluegill or oscar nailed the fly. Too often, the other angler on the boat, enchanted by a Gowdy story, would miss a fish.
“It’s tough to cast accurately and hook-set when you’re laughing,” said Fairbanks, who didn’t even attempt to fish.
Fairbanks, of Tamarac, moved to South Florida in 1969. He listened in amazement as Gowdy told of catching bonefish after bonefish in Biscayne Bay in the 1950s, 5-pound brook trout with Lee Wulff in Labrador and sea-run trout in Scotland. Perhaps most amazing was that the man with the voice recognized all over the world so thoroughly enjoyed catching oscars in the Everglades.
Back at the boat ramp, Fairbanks heard a man say, “That’s Curt Gowdy over there.”
“No it isn’t,” said the man’s wife. “What the hell would Curt Gowdy be doing at Holiday Park?”
“He’s bigger than life, but he’s an everyday Joe,” Fairbanks said. “Here’s a guy who hangs out with presidents and he spent the day with me and you like we were drinking buddies.”
