12 minute read
Honoring Conservation Heroes
BTT Honors Angling Legends and Conservation Heroes
At the 11th Annual Florida Keys Dinner, BTT will induct Captain Rick Ruoff and the late Captains Joe Gonzalez and Travis Holeman into the BTT Circle of Honor.
By Mike Conner
Advocacy comes naturally for individuals who deeply care about something enough to dedicate themselves to keeping it. You just fall into it, because you must. And so it goes for sportfishing, as evidenced by the growing number of non-profit organizations working to restore and preserve fisheries and vital, connected ecosystems the world over.
It is the gamefish themselves that are central to the cause, and it involves preserving the wild, but threatened habitats that house them.
That’s certainly the case with bonefish, tarpon and permit, which have a rabid following. A growing army is seeing to it that we have these fish, and the thrill of stalking them, for generations to come.
It’s called passing it down. Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s heralded Circle of Honor shines a light on guides and anglers who sacrifice the most of themselves to do just that.
The light this year shines brightly on three most deserving guides and anglers, Captain Rick Ruoff, and the late Captains Joe Gonzalez and Travis Holeman.
Though these gentlemen hail from different places and came up the ranks in different ways, their personal touchstones in fishing directed them all to the same place—a prestigious roster of difference-makers who we as anglers and fellow guides should celebrate.
CAPTAIN RICK RUOFF
Captain Rick Ruoff was born in Ohio. He wasn’t born in salty, sun-soaked Florida. In fact, it took him a while to find the Florida Keys, where he honed his fly-fishing and flats guiding chops from 1970 until he begrudgingly left his beloved Island home and waters in 1997.
Ruoff’s longtime friend Carl Navarre, BTT’s Chairman and the former Publisher and CEO of Atlantic Monthly Press, met him in the 1970s when he himself guided for three years in Islamorada.
“We were both deeply involved with the Everglades Protection Association, when the grassroots organization fought to outlaw commercial netting in Everglades National Park,” said Navarre. “That is when Rick’s leadership abilities, personality and intelligence became apparent and local guides eventually elected him Commodore of the Islamorada Fishing Guides Association (IFGA) in 1976, a position he held for 15 years. And to think that he started out as the nineteenth skiff guide on the charter booking pecking order at Bud & Mary’s back in the day, when the charter rate was $35 a day!”
“Rick was one of the few inshore guides with a college degree,” Navarre added. “That sure set him apart, as did the fact that, unlike most flats guides, he avoided tournaments and competition altogether.”
“Competition just whigs me out!” Ruoff admitted on a recent Mill House Podcast.
Though he played on sports teams in school and was a good athlete, fishing was simply not a competition for Ruoff. Neither was the pursuit of world records. Ruoff claims he competes with himself on the water, mainly to see how much more he can learn out there every day.
Navarre fondly recalls he and Ruoff’s “afternoon sessions” with Islamorada’s heralded monster bonefish.
“Even after a long day’s charter, Rick and I headed out to cast flies to big, tailing bones. We did not target mudding fish—it was big tailers only. There were certainly more of them then, and over time we tallied a lot of 10-pound-plus bonefish on fly,” said Navarre. “We honed our techniques. We were developing the sport, and fly evolution was part of it.”
Former Islamorada guide Capt. Harry Spear, who now lives and builds skiffs in Panacea, Florida, also shared countless hours on skiffs with Ruoff, and first met him at an IFGA meeting, when they were in their twenties.
“We discovered we had two common interests—fishing and girls!” said Spear. “We were also both heavy into flies, and I had just fashioned an epoxy permit fly, and did well with it. I tied a smaller version for bones, and one day on Cross Bank, Rick and I spanked the big fish with it. That day started our intense mission to catch huge Islamorada bonefish—it’s what we did together. We owned bonefishing at that time.”
In 2021, Ruoff joined BTT’s Board of Directors, where his biology background and angling knowledge have proven an invaluable asset. He has played a critical role in the identification of bonefish spawning sites in the Florida Keys.
“I thought that I knew all about the resource; until the population crashed,” he said. “I discovered neither I, nor anyone else, knew where or how bonefish spawned—a major gap in our knowledge. BTT has come up with the amazing science to determine the dynamics of bonefish spawning. I am so proud to be part of the BTT science effort that has unraveled these bonefish mysteries, and will witness their rebound.”
Ruoff has passed along a wealth of fishing knowledge to his friends, customers, and mentored quite a few guides both in the U.S. and abroad—he trained guides in Los Roques, The Bahamas, Christmas Island and elsewhere. And he hosted many fly fishers of all skill levels on group trips to those waters, serving as a personal “tutor” on the bow.
He left the Keys in 1997 to live in Montana where he still lives today, fly fishing world-class western rivers for trout and bird hunting over his dogs.
CAPTAIN JOE GONZALEZ
Captain Joe Gonzalez, who passed away unexpectedly in 2022, was a brilliant flats guide and tireless conservationist. But he may best be remembered for his friendly demeanor, sense of humor and willingness to share his deep knowledge of his local waters.
A Florida native, Gonzalez began fishing his home waters of Biscayne Bay at a young age, exploring the Florida Keys and The Bahamas during his summer breaks. He went on to guide professionally for more than 30 years, splitting his time between the Keys, Everglades, and Biscayne Bay, where he focused his considerable skills on putting clients on large bonefish and permit. A consummate teacher and mentor to many young guides, Gonzalez shared his fishing knowledge as a regular seminar presenter and appeared on numerous fishing TV programs. In 2014, Gonzalez was honored with the Jose Wejebe Professional Guide Award.
He was patient, and especially encouraging—his trademark words from the poling platform to anglers on his bow during the heat of things were, “Stay with me! Stay with me…”
A consummate angler, Gonzalez was also a passionate and committed advocate for flats fishery conservation. He darttagged over 1,300 bonefish, more than any guide for BTT’s bonefish research program. He was also instrumental in the success of BTT’s Project Permit, dart-tagging more than 130 fish. Gonzalez was a regular participant in BTT’s International Science Symposium, where he served on the Bonefish Panel.
Capt. Carl Ball, a veteran flats guide who lives in Ft. Lauderdale and plies the shallows from Biscayne Bay to the Keys and beyond, also tagged an impressive number of bonefish and permit for BTT, and regularly ran into Gonzalez at the Key Biscayne boat ramp, and did occasional group charters with him.
“We shared our general observations, swapped charter stories, but not to the point where I’d ask, “Where are the fish, Joe?” That was just not done, but I’m betting he would have been free with specific intel, given his generous nature,” said Ball. “I’ll never forget the way he reacted to something that really impressed or surprised him. He’d say, ‘Oh Mylanta!’ which I suppose was his code for ‘Oh My!’”
Ball says Gonzalez set a great example for the other guides on the Bay, not only for his dedication to the fishery, and his kindness to his customers, but as a great family man.
NOAA Fisheries Biologist and BTT board member Dr. Michael Larkin got to know Joe while a graduate student at the University of Miami.
“I was working on bonefish and started reaching out to bonefish guides. In our conversations Joe’s name would frequently come up. So I first reached out to Joe through a mail survey of bonefish guides asking questions about Florida’s bonefish population,” said Larkin.
He was all in, so Larkin took the relationship a step further and invited him to participate in the bonefish tagging project.
“Joe was friendly and agreed to tag bonefish, but at that time I was not sure he was committed to the tagging project,” said Larkin. “Two weeks later I got a phone call that woke me up at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. It was Joe telling me he had a trip starting in an hour and he needed more bonefish tags. I told him that I already gave him 50 tags two weeks earlier and asked him what happened to all the bonefish tags. He replied that he already tagged 50 bonefish, so was out of tags. My eyes almost popped out of my head, I jumped out of bed, and I responded “I am on my way!”
“Capt. Joe went on to tag an astounding 1,324 bonefish for our study. I am now a grown man in my 40s and I don’t think I have even seen 1,324 bonefish in my lifetime,” said Larkin.
Joe’s tagging went on to produce over 60 recaptures, providing new insight of bonefish growth, mortality and movements. One specific bonefish that Joe tagged, near Key Biscayne in 2005, was recaptured almost a year later at Andros Island in The Bahamas. According to Larkin, this intriguing recapture sparked new interest in bonefish tagging in the Florida Keys, which helped to provide better understanding of bonefish movements in the Keys.
Said Larkin: “Though I went on to get a Ph.D. in bonefish at the University of Miami, I will never know as much about this great gamefish as Joe Gonzalez did.”
CAPTAIN TRAVIS HOLEMAN
Captain Travis Holeman was 46 years old when he passed in May, 2021. A Texan, he fished Texas waters and the Louisiana marsh before delving into Florida’s Charlotte Harbor and the Florida Keys. He became a nationally recognized fishing and hunting guide who appeared on numerous TV shows including the ESPN2 Redfish Cup series, Madfin Shark series and he cohosted the award-winning Chasin’ the Sun series on Discovery Channel. Holeman was very involved in fisheries conservation and conducted fishing clinics and educational programs all over the U.S. and abroad.
In 2015, Dr. Luke Griffin and Dr. Jake Brownscombe, BTT collaborating scientists, needed to place as many acoustic telemetry tags in permit as possible for BTT’s Project Permit. They reached out to Holeman after hearing about his knowledge of the Lower Keys, and offshore permit fisheries especially.
“We met at Summerland Key, and Travis recommended that we get the biggest bang for our buck by concentrating on the rock piles and wrecks that permit frequent—we knew very little about them and their locations,” said Griffin. “We were able to catch good numbers consistently with Travis, hold them in a big live well, insert the tags, and install the receivers right there.”
“Travis was also instrumental in our acoustic telemetry projects on tarpon, which I led, and on permit, led by Dr. Jake Brownscombe, my colleague at Carleton University. But Travis was especially dialed in on permit, their whereabouts and when to find them shallow or deep,” said Griffin.
According to Brownscombe, Holeman was the key to the success of the Project Permit. “I doubt the project would have reached its fullest extent without Travis’s knowledge and generosity with his time.”
He served as a “bird dog” for the researchers and narrowed down the best aggregations to tag over 300 permit. Scientists now better understand the connectivity between offshore permit spots and the flats of the Keys, and Project Permit research was instrumental in the establishment of the no-fishing closure during spawning season at Western Dry Rocks.
“After Travis helped further the permit project, we then received funding for the tarpon work, and, of course, Travis, along with brother, Bear, helped tag the first among many tarpon for the project,” said Griffin. “And if his willingness to put in hundreds upon hundreds of hours on the water with us was not enough, he twisted industry arms to get tackle donations, and solicited his charter customers to donate money for expenses.”
“He was a big guy, and he had a big personality,” said Griffin. “He was generous, funny, and just a joy to be around.”
Holeman made clear that fellow anglers needed to be handson to conserve the fishery. He once said, “The only people who have a dog in this fight are the ones who participate, so manufacturers, guides and anglers have to get involved.”
Mike Conner formerly guided fly and light-tackle anglers from Florida Bay to the Indian River Lagoon, and has written features for numerous outdoor publications. He currently serves as Conservation Editor for Florida Sportsman magazine.
