Patagonia: Everglades Retirement Party

Steve Huff was looking for something different. Less fishing pressure; more bugs and humidity—the perfect amount of pestilence. “I decided that living near South Florida’s best snook fishing might not be so bad,” the career flats guide says of shifting his focus from a rapidly expanding Florida Keys fishery to a slower moving Everglades experience. “Snook, of course, became my prime quarry.” That was more than 20 years ago. Thirty years before that, in the fall of 1968, Huff completed his first charter trip as a rookie captain. “A failure of a day,” he recalls. But it was a defeat he’d recover from in time, eventually going on to win all the major flats-fishing tournaments, and ultimately becoming one of the most respected saltwater guides in the sport. In 2018, Huff will retire from that storied career. And fishing for himself, he says, is his only goodbye wish. That, and “making more giant snook a priority.” It was the pursuit of those long lateral lines that led Charlie Greivell and me to the Gulf Coast Visitor Center in Everglades City last January for a backcountry camping permit. With permissions in hand, we embarked on a 25-mile trek to the “chickee,” where Charlie and I would set up camp and meet Huff and Kyle Giampaoli. They pulled up at first light the following morning, having navigated the Wilderness Waterway in complete darkness. Following breakfast, we steered south through winding rivers and around thick mangrove forests. Huff eventually killed the motor and hopped onto the platform. I asked him, “How long have you been doing this, Steve?” But his answers would have to wait (see below).The sound of snook popping bait along the shoreline pulled us away from the conversation. Poling toward some unfinished business, Huff replied: “Let’s get going.”