Lee fights the sea for a bit of fishing glory

OUTDOORS By JEFF KLINKENBERG
St. Petersburg Times, Sunday, May 27 1979

Jim Lee is afraid of things that go bump in the night, which is why he doesn't like to operate his boat after dark. Bad things can happen. A large freighter may suddenly looming the gloom. .
But one of the worst things happened one night a few years ago when his boat struck something floating in the gulf west of St. Petersburg. Lee feared he'd torn a hole in the bottom of his boat. He was even more frightened because the floating object resembled a mine.
"The Coast Guard wanted me to haul it in," said Lee, whose boat weathered the incident. "But I wasn't able to find it in the dark. And maybe that was fortunate."
Lee was operating his boat in the dark again this week end during a unique contest that pitted human beings against fish and the sea: The eighth annual Old Salt Loop Fishing Tournament that ends today. "It's a test of nerves, skills, boats and weather," said Lee, who has fished in seven of the contests. "It separates the men from the boys."
Spectators can see how men, boys and boats survived the experience when competitors weigh their fish beginning at 4 p.m. today at Maderia Beach Municipal Marina, 503 150th Avenue N at maderia Beach.
Sponsored by the Old Salt Fishing Club, the tournament is a two-day, two-night competition that occurs far offshore in the Loop Current, a wide stream of warm Caribbean water that enters the cooler Gulf of Mexico through the Yucatan Channel, loops through the eastern gulf and then exits below the Florida Keys.
As it swirls through the gulf at 2 1/2 knots, the Loop Current retains its Caribbean identity. Warmer than adjacent gulf waters, the current contains large concentrations of plankton, the microscopic organisms that begin the food chain. Plankton attract tiny grazing fish, which attract larger fish that are eventually devoured by large predators like billfish and tuna that are otherwise rarely caught in the gulf.
the Position of the loop is always changing. For anglers who wish to sample the fruits of the loop, that is the problem. Although the current is sometimes as close as 50 miles, it often meanders as far as 200 miles from the coast.
That has happened this spring. the main loop is about 200 miles from St. Petersburg. Old Salters this weekend had to fish in what they call eddies - sections of the current that broke off from the main loop and spun closer to shore.
Lee, a 42-year-old Tampa businessman, is know as much for his fishing ability as his penchant for turning bad luck into good fortune. Lee's 65 pound-sailfish , a tournament record, still provokes groans from friends who remember the catches circumstances in 1973. Lee was fishing in a small boat with engine trouble when he caught the fish. And before he landed the sailfish, while his boat was undertow because the engines were operating at all, he trolled a bait and caught king mackerel and bonita.
Lee caught another sailfish last year, making the most of a potential disaster. Lee was slowing down his boat, preparing to catch bottom-dwelling fish,when a sailfish surfaced, slashed the one bait being trolled and headed for Mexico. the sailfish wrapped the line around a buoy Lee had dropped to mark the location of a reef. "I was sure i was going to loose that fish,"said Lee, who did not.
On several occasions, Lee could have lost something more valuable than a fish. Once while navigating at night through the shipping channel, he was nearly run down by a large freighter. during another loop tournament, Lee and a friend decided to return to shore because of rough weather and an unpleasant thunderstorm heading in their direction. Although they made the 50 mile voyage back to St. Petereburg without incident, Lee's engine lost oil pressure just as the boat slipped into the dock. Part of his engine had rusted through.
"You've got to be ready for anything," Lee said. that's why he also carries a swim mask. He had to us a mask last year when some fishing line wrapped around his propeller. In rough seas, he pulled on his mask and hopped overboard to clear his prop of the line.
"The water was 200 fathoms-about 1200 feet deep," Lee said. "I never looked down. I was afraid I might see something that might like to eat me."

Bad fishing: enough to make a man switch jobs

by outdoors editor
Jeff Klinkenbeerg
St. Petersburg Times Sunday, September 28, 1980

Sport fishing is declining, says Jim Lee (left), new executive director of the Florida League of Anglers. And as the fish go, so goes the environment.
Things are bad alright. Fish are dying in the St. Johns River like love bugs on the interstate. Exotic weeks are growing in lakes like roaches in a dirty kitchen. Salt water? Don't ask. What were once life-filled mangroves are not eight-story condos. Once-clear bays and bayous are the color of lentil soup.
Fishing Stinks. What fish remain are pursued by a growing army of recreational anglers and divers. Commercial fishermen, meanwhile, are using airplanes and miles of nets to catch fish they are peddling at a frightening rate.
Fish are like the canary in the coal mine," Jim Lee says. "When fish start to go it means our whole ecosystem is in trouble. It means the quality of our water, both fresh and salt, is deteriorating. Well, our fish are starting to go. And we're in trouble."
Lee, 44, hopes to do something about it. A former Tampa salesman, Lee recently was appointed executive director of the Florida League of Anglers, a statewide conservation organization. Founded in 1972 to represent poorly-organized recreational fishermen, the FLA as it is called, now seeks a more ambitious conservation role.
That's where Lee fits in. As director, Lee will head new FLA efforts to educate the public about things that endanger public health as well as the fishery.
"Saving the fish is important,but only the tip of the iceberg," says Lee, an avid angler and member of St Petersburg's Old Salt Fishing club. "It goes much deeper than that. If our fish go, it means we lost our freshwater. What are we going to drink?"
It may mean people will one day drink treated sewage. Much of Florida's bodies of fresh water, including famed lakes Okeechobee, Tohopekaligia and Apopka, and the Kissimmee and st. Johns rivers, are already dead or dying, destroyed by urban, industrial and agricultural waste.
WATERS FERTILIZED by pollution grow weeds which crowd out other life. Tainted water, meanwhile, pours downstream to the overdeveloped coast, mixing with polluted salt water, destroying marine life, frustrating anglers who can't catch fish like they once did.
Jim Lee can't catch fish like he once did. An active salt water fishermen for 10 years, Lee is known for his ability to catch sailfish and king mackerel. But something happened to the huge schools of king mackerel about six years ago. They stopped showing up in large numbers in Sun coast waters. Many things were blamed, including polluted water, changing migrating patterns, and sophisticated commercial netting operations that accounted for millions of pounds of fish. It was the FLA"s efforts to limit commercial netting in 1978 that attracted Lee to the organization.
He worked at first as a volunteer. Using his sales and business background, he helped organize two successful auctions that raised money for the struggling FLA. He also spoke at meetings and testified at public hearings about the fishery. When Walt Hunley resigned as FLA executive director earlier this month, Lee was offered the job.
"I hated to leave my business," says Lee, Employed at Tampa's Craft Equipment Co. "They had been good to me and I had been good to them. I'm a good salesman. But I took the FLA job because it was something I could do and because it was something that needs to be done."
His grasp of facts, articulate manner, low-key demeanor, and sales ability should make him an effective director. Or so hopes the board that hired him. As director, Lee will travel the state, representing the once-strident FLA to a public that knows little of issues and is suspicious of organizations that cry doom.
The FLA was created in 1972 by Lyman Rogers, an Ocala fishing tackle entrepreneur who had headed Conservation 70's, an effective statewide conservationist lobbying group in the 70s. But FLA died from lack of support. Rogers tried again in 1978. With issues clear-recreational fishermen were worried about declining catches-Rogers successfully built membership.
But FLA failed in its early efforts to curtail some commercial fishing methods. Sometimes shrill, sometimes bullying, and frequently out maneuvered by experienced commercial fishing lobbyists, FLA met with little success in the Florida Legislature, where salt water fishing laws are made. But things started to change in 1979.
ORGANIZED BY Rogers, FLA worked to eliminate commercial fish traps, the controversial devices that many conservationists feared were ruining the South Florida reef fishery. FLA members sent thousands of telegrams to their legislators, and Rogers and assistants appeared at hearings to debate commercial lobbyists. But FLA narrowly lost the issue.
In 1980, FLA was even better organized. People continued to send $10 membership fees to PO Box 23672 Tampa, FL 33623. With that money-and funds raised through auctions-FLA hired a lobbyist to fight for its cause. Club members, meanwhile, worked hard with friendly legislators while trying not to alienate undecided legislators. The strategy worked. A law banning the traps was passed.
"We've learned a lot,"Lee says. "As the new kid on the block it meant we had to get our nose bloodied a few times. But then we found out that the Legislature would listen to us if we presented our case well and had facts to back us up. If you rant and rave, they won't listen to you."
The FLA will return next spring to the Legislature with other proposals. It will ask the Legislature to prohibit in state waters the commercial netting of king mackerel while establishing a five fish-bag limit for recreational fishermen. It may also ask for netting bans on Spanish mackerel, red drum and spotted sea trout-fish in short supply.
"COMMERCIAL fishermen think we're against them," Lee says. "we're not at all. We're not against hook-and-line fishing and not against all netting. We just want some modest restraint, that's all. The problem is that none of the commercial guys are willing to admit that there's a shortage of fish, that they have to slow down. That bothers me."
Other things bother Lee as much: the increased coastal development, the declining water quality, public apathy. The FLA, he says is working to address those problems through education programs and participation in the legislative process.
"Our society faces many monumental problems that won't be solved by my generation," he says. "These problems will have to be solved by my son and his children. The problems are basic but the answers are complex. But we've got to start now.

Tampan Named F.L.A. Director

By Herb Allen, 1981
Tribune Outdoors Editor

Tampa's Jim Lee a native Floridian and lifelong fishing enthusiasts, hunter and conservationist, has been appointed executive director of the Florida League of anglers, a growing statewide organization to saving Florida's fresh and saltwater fishery.
Lee replaces Walter Hundley, who resigned the F.L.A. post recently to accept a position with the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch.
"I've accepted this position because I believe in what F.L.A. is attempting to do," said Lee. "As an education-conservation organization, we must slow the erosion of our natural resources on two fronts.
"First we must reduce the amount of fish taken - specifically king fish, Spanish mackerel, red fish and speckled trout by gill netting operations within the territorial waters of Florida, while at the same time, encouraging recreational anglers to limit their bag of the same species.
"Secondly," he continued, "We must preserve and restore our estuary and coastal habitat areas.
"Seventy-five percent of marine fish utilize the coastal estuaries sometime during their growth cycle and there must be an end to the pollution in our rivers and creeks, as well as an end to the destruction of our coastal habitat with a realistic setback zone that will protect these areas."
The new executive director emphasized that F.L.A. has made "landmark inroads" by the recent anti-fish trap law which was passed in the 1980 session of the Florida Legislature because of help from many F.L.A. members.
Lee is considered to be one of the state's better offshore saltwater sports fishermen and somewhat of a pioneer in helping to develop the bill fish potential along our west coast.
He has served in various F.L.A. posts, is a member and director of both the Golden Triangle Sport Fishing club and the Old Salt Fishing Club.
Prior to moving to Tampa, Lee was active with the Offshore Sport Fishing club and the Captain's Club in Jacksonville.
He anticipates moving the F.L.A. office from its present headquarters in Winter Park to Tampa by Oct. 6.

WHO BURNED DOWN ELDORA BOATHOUSE RESTAURANT?

Published December 07 Florida Outdoor Adventures Magazine

In the year 1877 the indian wars in Florida had ended. Two families started a settlement near Turtle Mound, a state archeological historical indian site. It lays just South of New Smyrna Beach. The two families brought in building supplies by a paddle wheel ferry to the area called Oak Grove. They built two large two-story houses complete with widow's walks. They also built a boathouse for a 20-foot boat or more. The homestead was called Eldora after the two sisters, Ellen and Dora Pitzer. They were pictured in long black dresses and high button shoes in the family album that was mysteriously left behind.
Sometime prior to the late 1950's the old boathouse had been turned into a small restaurant. The plinki-tinki sounds of the old upright piano played by 'Curly' was fun to hear. Eldora lived again! Clientele came from all over Florida and South Georgia. Many prominent sportsmen, women and politicians flocked to the little restaurant. The restaurant served buckets of tasty oysters on the half shell. Positioned over the water, the patrons would toss the oyster shells out of the open windows into the river. Causal dining at it's best. Crab cake, shrimp, and oyster sanwiches were also served. Eating an drinking beer at El Dora was just plain fun.
In the late 1970's the boathouse restaurant burned down. The old family album was lost in the fire. Gone were the pictures of Ellen and Dora posing with their men-folk in front of one of the houses. Pictures of the women raking the neat, but barren dirt yard were also lost. Rebuilt of concrete, the restaurant was reborn, but was never the same. Later the original boathouse iron door latch was recovered from the Indian River waters and presented to Judge Lon cornelius (a longime patron) on a plaque which graces a wall in the Cornelius home. It is a reminder of past generations and the good times at El Dora.
In the late 1980's one of the houses was also destroyed by fire. The state has re-built the remaining house as an historical site. it is known as the State House at El Dora. Now you can restore the famous El Dora crab cake, like the ones served at the once famous Eldora boathouse restaurant.

HERNANDO BEACH SHARK-SEA STORIES

Janurary 08 issue Florida Outdoor Adventures Magazine. By Jim Lee

The angry hooked shark headed straight for the boat. Lawrence Carlswell reeled frantically, but couldn't gain line fast enough. The captain put the motor in gear, moving the boat slowly forward.
The boat lurched, knocking Larry to the deck. The captain yelled down from the fly-bridge. "Your shark rammed the boat. Here he comes again." The captain shouted excitedly. The shark charged the whirling prop and grabbed it with his teeth. The boat shuttered and the shark, cut and bleading, sank to the bottom. "Good grief" Larry exclaimed a bit shaken. I've never seen an enraged shark before, and I hope I never see another one."
The captain moved the boat westward a couple miles and anchored the boat. Larry decided to grouper fish instead of fishing for sharks. He was leaning over the side so he could lower the chum box to the bottom when the captain shouted. "Here comes another shark." Larry was perched on the gunwale and was so startled at the captains bit of information and promptly fell into the sea. Larry, fearing the new shark was another "enraged" shark, clawed, scrambled and willed his way up the side and over the gunwale and into the boat. The captain came off the bridge laughing. " It is only a cobia he declared.
Anger surged in Larry and he saw the cobia swimming near the boat. Larry grabbed the 6 foot gaff hook and immediately gaffed the 40 pound fish. A 40 pound fish is a formidable adversary. He almost pulled Larry off the deck. The captain grabbed the gaff and together they managed to pull the fish into the boat, as the thrashing of the fish beat both the anglers several times with the gaff. Bruised and out of breath, Larry gave the fish to the captain. Later the captain told the story to friends over a martini, inspiring the recipe for cobia Vermouth.