Captain Bouncer Smith: The Art of Giving Back

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 101 with Captain Bouncer Smith.

Meeting Bouncer at the Dock at 6 AM

Tom Rowland: Alright, sitting down here, 6 AM in the morning. I've been waiting for Bouncer Smith to join me, and I knew something was wrong because a fifty-two-year charter guy does not show up late. So it turns out I was sitting at the wrong place. But now I'm sitting right by Bouncer's boat, Bouncer's Dusky 33, and he brought me some coffee. I wanted to catch up with you this morning because last time we did this amazing podcast, and when we finished, we continued to talk on and on for another thirty minutes. So I wanted to hear about some of the things I heard there, the fishing to make a difference and the stuff that you're doing with kids.

Fish To Make A Difference

Bouncer Smith: Oh, boy. I love dealing with the kids. And it's an interesting thing. When you're 25 or 30 years old, a mentor will say, here, you need money to get your car fixed, let me help you out, or any number of different things that older people have saved long enough that they're able to do. And you're struggling to keep the family fed and a roof over your head. Now I'm at that age in my life where I've got time and finances to be able to give back, and there's nothing better than giving back to these kids, not just the kids that are sick, but their families as well.

Bouncer Smith: You take mom and dad and a kid who's been sick, and they've had it tough. But just think about that sick kid's brother or sister.

Tom Rowland: Right, that's very true.

Bouncer Smith: They've been literally ignored. They've been shuffled off to grandma and grandpa, whatever the case may be, because all the attention is on the sick kids. So Fish To Make A Difference was founded by Clay Barker, and the premise was Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital up in Hollywood. And we would take sick kids and the family out for a few hours of fishing. We've gone snook fishing at the inlet. We've gone fishing for pinfish with little kids in the bay. We've gone tarpon fishing and sailfishing and whatever it takes to have a good time.

Dolly and Cara: A Christmas Story

Bouncer Smith: And then I had one of the highlights of my life this last late December. Clay Barker called me up and says, we've got a little girl who is really, really in big trouble. She's got cystic fibrosis. Her father passed away this past summer of cystic fibrosis. Hers has attacked her liver, and now it's deteriorating her pancreas, and she's in big trouble. Well, I have a white beard, so I let my beard grow a little longer, and I had a full white beard, and Clay Barker asked me to play Santa Claus.

Bouncer Smith: So we had a Christmas party for this eight-year-old girl named Dolly. And one of the highlights of the night was there was a little girl named Cara who had heard about this Christmas party. She had been saving money all year to buy a brand new rod and reel. Her dad said, I can't afford to buy it for you, but I'll split the cost with you. So she was saving money all year. Her father read about this girl Dolly on the internet, and he told Cara about Dolly. And Cara said, well, you know, I did really good at saving money this year, but this little girl really needs a big Christmas. So I want to take my savings and buy her Christmas presents. I've got a rod and reel that works, and I could save up the money again to buy my special rod and reel. So she took all of her savings and she bought presents for Dolly.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Bouncer Smith: This Cara is seven years old, and she put in all her money to buy presents. And then we had this Christmas party, and we had the two girls and Clay Barker and his wife and the two girls' fathers, and it was just a great Christmas party. The girls built prefab gingerbread houses, and they had sandwiches and cupcakes. And we had a pile of presents for the eight-year-old Dolly to open up. I'm a big fan of stretching out opening presents. So they would bring us a present, and we would spend five minutes trying to guess what was in there. And I would come up with the goofiest answers, like this is probably a pony or this is a box of marshmallows or whatever it may be, and we just had a ball.

Bouncer Smith: And as we were driving home, I told Clay Barker, we've got to take care of Cara. She gave up her rod and reel, so we've got to get her a rod and reel. So Clay said he would try to take care of it. Well, he got wrapped up in other goings-on. He's got a whole bunch of grandchildren and daughters. But anyway, the rod and reel didn't get acquired. And then Clay got the flu, so that set us back some more. So the first day I had a chance, I had already found the company that makes this rod and reel on the internet, and I finally called them up, bought the rod and reel and had it shipped to me.

Bouncer Smith: And it came last Wednesday, so we contacted the father. Can you bring the daughter down here? And I contacted a lady who chipped in on the rod and reel, and she could make it. Clay was still sick with the flu, but we were down here on the dock with a big bag of ballyhoo. And Cara and her dad showed up. Now, the Christmas party, I was dressed up as Santa Claus. But she came down this ramp right here, and I said, hey, how you doing? She turns to her dad and says, I know that voice from somewhere. So I explained to her that Santa Claus often calls me to fill in for him when he's really busy. And the Christmas party is just before Christmas, so it was very practical.

Bouncer Smith: At any rate, she had never fed tarpon before, so she fed the tarpon, I don't know, 35 or 40 ballyhoo. At first she was completely intimidated, and then she got braver as time went on. And then we surprised her with her selected rod and reel, and she was thrilled with that. And then you want to see somebody infatuated. She got on the boat and she inspected every hatch on the boat.

Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah.

Bouncer Smith: But both of those little girls, to make their lives better, was such a thrill. And I'm really looking forward to taking both the girls and Clay's grandson fishing in the very near future.

Fifty-Two Years of Charter Fishing

Tom Rowland: That's cool. With a story like that, that must really motivate you to want to do this more and more. Is that a strategy that you have, of spending more time doing these things?

Bouncer Smith: That's an interesting question, because want is a big word. I'm approaching 71. I've been heavy my whole life. I've been on a boat my whole life. You cut me short. You said thirty years. I've really been doing this fifty-two years.

Tom Rowland: I know. What was I thinking?

Bouncer Smith: Well, thirty years is a long time to do that thing. Fifty-two is real long. But anyway, my body is getting very tired. So as much as I want to do more with the kids, I'm limited by what I can physically keep up with anymore. I run charters six days a week and I'm supposed to run a couple charters at night, just because that's my favorite fishing. And then trying to get a couple of kids' trips in, it's challenging, but I still keep working at it.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But Fish To Make A Difference, now that's a television show too?

Bouncer Smith: Yeah, they just became a television show here recently. We did their very first show, and we're scheduled to have another show, but they've had some production or airtime problems on our second show. But the bottom line is that they were on Sun Sports, and they were voted the number one show of the just-finished quarter of television ratings. Number one show on Sun Sports, number one outdoor show.

Bouncer Smith: It was quite an honor. And I'm sure a lot of that came back to the fact that every show was dealing with kids who had some medical challenge or another. And also, when they did the show, they did a very good job of explaining why they existed, what their goals and objectives were.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, it's always nice. I like to watch anytime that we can bring fishing into helping people. You know, the Redbone Tournament was a really beneficial tournament for cystic fibrosis. You mentioned cystic fibrosis, and that was always nice to participate in those. But the one-on-one stuff, where you have something like a Make-A-Wish Foundation trip or what you're doing, that's incredibly rewarding.

Mission Fishing Comes to Miami

Bouncer Smith: If you haven't done it, you owe it to yourself to do it. We have a new program in South Florida. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook at Captain Bouncer or Bouncer's Dusky, we'll be announcing the dates for a mission fishing trip here in Miami. They run these up in Pompano on a regular basis, but we're coming to Miami. We're going to be here at Miami Beach Marina, and we look for volunteers to donate their boat time for a Saturday morning. And we bring kids and their families from one challenge or another, and the volunteers take them fishing for half a day.

Bouncer Smith: They did one in Pompano, and it was real rough. So RJ Boyle's studios donated rigged double-hook ballyhoo. And they trolled around in the Intracoastal Waterway with double-hook ballyhoo. And who would think you would catch, you would expect to maybe catch a couple of barracudas, but they caught snook and mutton snappers and barracudas and bluefish, all kinds of stuff on double-hook rigged ballyhoo trolling the Intracoastal Waterway.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Bouncer Smith: And up there, they don't have a place like Biscayne Bay. These boats can take the kids in Biscayne Bay, and there's sea trout and bluefish and mackerel and mutton snappers and groupers. And if it's a nice day, you take them out in the ocean and target those species.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, if your body is getting tired, that was kind of what I was wondering about. If you're having trouble doing this personally, it sounds like you're kind of recruiting other people to help do this with you. Is there more of a future in that, of trying to bring the community involved and getting more of those kind of days going?

Aby Raymond, the Perfect Mate

Bouncer Smith: That, plus the fact that I have a guy who's worked with me for ten years. His name's Aby Raymond. Just the greatest guy in the world. And as long as I can get down this ramp and over this rail, all I have to do is sit here and he'll do everything else.

Tom Rowland: He does everything else?

Bouncer Smith: Everything. I mean, from rigging the rods to baiting the hooks to pulling the anchor. You know, for twenty years I didn't even use a mate, which is not surprising to you because a lot of guys in the industry work alone. Well, when I got into my fifties, I got a bigger boat, and I was getting tired, so I started using a mate. And luckily, after a few years of it, I met Aby, and we just have such a smooth program.

Tom Rowland: So you guys have been working together for ten years? And Aby's right here getting the boat ready right now. He's trying to be quiet, but he doesn't have to. So how did you meet Aby?

Bouncer Smith: He was a dock rat. He grew up going to fishing club meetings at South Pointe Park, and he graduated to hanging around Miami Beach Marina and got hooked up with the rental boat company here. He was cleaning boats for them and prepping them and fueling them up for rental boat trips and hanging around the dock. And, you know, we were a hundred feet apart, so he'd see our catches come in every day. And we had a couple other great captains here, and he just came over one day and says, hey, I'm Aby, you've seen me around. I want to go fishing with you. I said, what are you doing tomorrow? He says, nothing. I says, okay, we're going swordfishing. Let's go.

Tom Rowland: Did you catch one on the maiden voyage?

Bouncer Smith: Did we catch one on the maiden voyage? I believe we did, yes.

Tom Rowland: Really? A 200-pounder on the first track. That's pretty good. So after that, he just starts working for you?

Bouncer Smith: He worked his way up. He started part time, a lot of the tarpon trips at night and filling in when my other mate wanted the day off. And as soon as I did a few trips with him, I knew he was the future for me. And I was actually told I couldn't hire him. We have a guy on the dock here, a guy named Matt, who describes himself as the president of the Mates and Captains Union. And the only people he represents are those who are trying to go to work for me. He's really been a great help, because over the years he's come over many times and said, you know, you're burning this mate out, you've got to get him some time off. In Aby's case, he says, no, you can't hire Aby, he's got to go to college. Aby didn't finish college either.

The College Debate

Bouncer Smith: Aby and I followed very similar footsteps. We both had great parents. And when I graduated from high school, I was already working on boats seven days a week and six nights a week. And my dad said, you've got to go to college. And I said, well, I don't know if college is for me. I know I'm going to be a fisherman when I grow up. He says, no, you've got to go to college. So we finally compromised on one semester. And in Aby's case, he was dead set on being a fisherman or at least an outdoor writer. And his dad said, you've got this college program where the state's going to pay for you to go to college, you've got to go to college. No, dad, I really need to go fishing. No, you've got to go to college. And both of our fathers said, well, if you're not going to go to college, you're going to be a fisherman, do a good job of it. And I think we've both done a great job of enjoying life and just being good people.

Tom Rowland: That's really important. The college thing is always tough when you've got a paying job that you're really enjoying. It's tough to try to decide, is going and sitting in the classroom right for me right now. And that's a fine line that we've had to walk with our kids. It's like, okay, well, do you really know what you want to do right now? And if they say no, then I say, well, maybe college is a good thing for you. Because if you don't know what you want to do, that's totally different than if you are dead set on this path of being a fisherman and you have this road map laid out for you. Okay, great, take off, go down that road. But if you don't know and you're just kind of hanging around wondering if lightning's going to strike and you're going to know what you want to do, well, maybe that's somebody that needs to go to college and kind of work it out.

Bouncer Smith: So I'm approaching 71 years old, and I can tell you, in hindsight, I wish I'd gone to college.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Bouncer Smith: Well, I've been a very lucky, successful businessman. But if I'd gone to college, I would have been better at knowing about running a business. I could have known a lot more about approaching sponsors. I have a few sponsorships, but there are guys in the fishing business, as you know, that are not only getting materials, they're getting financial help with their businesses, which I've almost never gotten because I never went to college. And as I've gotten older, it wouldn't apply in my case, but a kid today learning about how to use the internet for advertising, all the electronics of today, a guy today could really help himself by going to college.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Bouncer Smith: But that being said, I have a good friend who has two sons. One son is really book smart. He went to college and he's doing a really great job with the college education. The other son could figure out how to fix anything, but he couldn't stand books. He didn't go to college, and he's doing great as well in life. So college isn't for everybody. But a little bit, like a junior college two-year program, I don't think any kid should pass on that.

Tom Rowland: Well, education is for everyone, and that education can come in many forms. Sometimes it's college, sometimes it's real-world experience, and sometimes it's learning on your own on the internet. You can pretty much learn anything, and there's all kinds of online classes people can do. But education is super important to continue.

Maritime School and a Life at Sea

Bouncer Smith: That's one thing I'd like to pass on. You talk about helping kids. One thing I'd like to pass on to those kids is the importance of an education, one type or another. Using Aby again as an example, one of his best friends went to a maritime school. And Aby and I have watched him go through the ranks, from being on a ship that only knows one ingredient, curry, to now he's a licensed ocean sea captain. He can operate any ship in the world except for sailing ships.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Bouncer Smith: Again, that was a different avenue as opposed to a business degree or a medical degree. He went to maritime school, had the school of hard knocks working his way up, but now he knows what ship he's going to be on all the time. He sends us pictures fishing from a 900-foot ship. He's out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on an oil tanker catching 100-pound yellowfins from 90 feet in the air, and he drops the grapple hook down, hooks them, they hook it up to the ship's winch and haul them on board.

Tom Rowland: He's the most popular person on the boat as soon as that happens.

Bouncer Smith: That's for sure. The last one he caught, he's in charge of overseeing the transfer of the oil from the oil rig to the ship. So he gets it started, goes over, hooks a big yellowfin tuna, gives the rod to another guy, goes back to overseeing the transfer, comes back two hours later, there's no fight. He takes over, winds it up in ten minutes, because by now the tuna's as tired as the angler. Winds it up, hauls it up on the deck, and goes back to transferring oil.

Tom Rowland: Does he have a lot of good recipes for curry tuna?

Bouncer Smith: Well, now he's on much more advanced ships, and he has his own cupboard in the galley because he's a gourmet chef. He prepares all kinds of meals, and it's not even his job. He just tells the chef, hey, I'm making tuna or I'm making my ear.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. So that maritime school he went to, was that like an academy, like the Merchant Marine or the maritime?

Bouncer Smith: Right. SUNY Maritime.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Because there's also each one of the branches of the military, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, they all have academies. But then the Merchant Mariners also have an academy, which I didn't know until I started looking at schools for my son. And there were some amazing opportunities there to go out on those ships and become welders. They taught you how to do all kinds of things. And the guy was talking to my son, and he was like, listen, most people go and they get a loan and they go deep into debt. If you come here, you're going to get paid. And as soon as you get finished, you're going to get a job that pays around $120,000. And the swing between that and being $100,000 in debt when you get out of school, trying to work your way out of this giant hole, the swing is amazing. Those kids are getting out and getting this amazing job and traveling the world. It sounded like a pretty cool opportunity to me.

Bouncer Smith: As long as you don't need a family life.

Tom Rowland: Right, yeah.

Bouncer Smith: There's that. If you work on a ship like this guy, he's got a really great job. He doesn't spend a penny when he's on the ship. So he's making over six figures, and he's not spending any money for months at a time, but he can't see his girlfriend. He can't go to birthday parties, weddings, funerals, whatever it is, you miss it for three months. There's nothing home for three months, and go fishing every day and diving, and you live life large for three months. But it's part of the price of that quality of job.

Making a Fabulous Life

Bouncer Smith: You take a guy like Aby. Aby makes a decent living. You'll never get rich being a fisherman. But I heard an expression recently that this young man in the fishing industry said, I'm making a fabulous life. I may not make the most money, but I'll enjoy every day of my life, and I can still pay my bills.

Tom Rowland: Well, they say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Which I don't necessarily agree with, because I love what I do and we work harder than anybody I know. And I may be talking to the person that has the story of working the hardest I've ever heard.

Bouncer Smith: No, he's over there. He loves it when it's one-foot seas and the sailfish or whatever's biting like crazy. But when he comes to work in the morning, he says, you know, it's blowing 25 knots, which is 30 miles an hour, are we really going fishing? I says, yeah, we're going fishing. Oh, no, this job ain't no fun today.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But finding that, I mean, when you're talking about working with kids and trying to instill the value of education, there's also instilling the value of finding something that you really enjoy. Some people call it finding your passion. What do you think about directing these kids to understanding that there might be more than sitting in a cubicle somewhere?

Giving Back and a Life of Opportunity

Bouncer Smith: Well, using myself as an example, by being in the fishing business, I raised a son and was happily married for thirty-five years. We always had a roof over our head, we always had dinner. I'm in a position now where I actually have enough income and reserves that I can do things for other people on numerous occasions. A prime example, and I'm not patting myself on the back, but the other morning I went out to breakfast, and I'm sitting there and four coasties come in, four guys in the Coast Guard. Now, they're not getting paid right now. They have to work, they're not getting paid right now, but they're out there watching out for our well-being every day. And as any full-grown adult knows, most guys in the military are sacrificing their time, their family life, and they're not making a real big paycheck. So I called the waitress over. They had just sat down. I gave her $60 and I said, those guys' breakfast is on me, and don't say anything about where it came from, just pay for their breakfast.

Tom Rowland: Nice.

Bouncer Smith: So having an opportunity to give back is great. But where I was headed was, being in the business that I've been in my whole life, I was fortunate enough to work for eight or nine different captains very early in my career. Some of them were great marlin fishermen. Some of them were great salesmen, because a fisherman has to be a salesman. Some of them were great entertainers, and some were just hardcore fishermen. But the bottom line was I learned a lot about a lot of different methods to get me started in the game. And then I developed a lot of stuff on my own. And because of the career I've had, all expenses paid, I went to Italy and taught how to fish for swordfish. I go to the Cayman Islands every year and I run a swordfish tournament. I took a boat down to Cozumel in the early days of Cozumel, when that was the sailfish capital of the world. I took a boat down there and brought it back, fortunately. That was a story in itself.

Bouncer Smith: I have fished all these different places. I spent five summers in Ocean City, Maryland, a summer in Oregon, Illinois, North Carolina. I've fished Cape Cod several times, and I get to go fishing every day right here. And then I go on vacations, and I go fishing again. I can't get enough of it. My vacations are Oregon for sturgeon and Springfield, Missouri, for the hunting and fishing museum, and then we've got to go smallmouth bass fishing over there because we never caught one of them. It's just such a great career opportunity. I've been to St. Thomas numerous times. You get to see as much of the world as you want.

Work Ethic and What It Takes

Tom Rowland: But there's something to it, though, that there's more to it than just liking it and wanting to do it. Like, the last time we talked, you have an amazing work ethic. You're not afraid to put in the work. And sometimes with the younger people, they need to understand the difference between just liking something and liking something enough to where you're willing to do things that other people would never do or never expect you to do, like work all day and then do a night trip for ten days in a row. When I talk to a lot of young people, the work part, the ethic part, of just it takes hard work. Yes, we live in a world right now where you could make anything happen. You can be anything, do anything. You live in the greatest country there is. There are no limitations, but you still have to put in the work. That seems like, if you were to give someone advice on that, what did it take to do all of those things you just said, all the travel and all of that? That didn't just come because you're a nice guy. That came because you're a nice guy and you have an incredible work ethic. And for fifty-two years, you've been putting it out there.

Bouncer Smith: What you say is very true, but I have to go back to Aby again. Aby is 30 years old. He knows that he has to make a living. He knows that he's doing what he really loves to do. And there are days this guy is going to make me go out in those five- to seven-foot seas. And his work ethic is, if I have to do the job, I have to do the job. He knows that. But let's turn it around a little bit. He was working for me, and he quit because he was working seven days a week and a few nights a week, and he was about to get married. And his future wife says, I'm not going to be married to somebody that's never home.

Bouncer Smith: So he also had the ethics to understand that married life, a commitment to a spouse, requires that you know when to fold. You can't just go fishing because you want to go fishing or because it's how you make a living. You also have to commit to the fact that if the boat's going fishing on Sunday, I don't care. Not, oh, I'll put up with it and I'll stand with the wife, I don't care, this boat's going fishing. I'm going to spend time with my wonderful wife. And if the boat catches a giant swordfish while I'm gone, that's life. I've got to spend a day with this beautiful woman. And she's going to give me children over the years and seventy years of happiness. So I have a commitment to her as well.

Bouncer Smith: And it's very important in life. It's something my sister talks about all the time, I think, because we always talk about getting a dog. My sister and I are both dog people and we share our condominium. And repeatedly we talk about the commitment of owning a dog or the commitment of having children. So many people today say, you know, I think I'd love to have a son and a daughter. And then from the time they're born until the time they go off to college, they're raised by somebody other than mom and dad. And if you're going to have kids, you have to have the commitment that you're going to be home at night at a reasonable hour so you can play catch with the kids or go to their baseball game or their ballet recital, whatever it is. And it goes all through life, commitments to having fun, making a living. That's just part of the game.

When Aby Quit and Came Back Better

Tom Rowland: So how does that conversation go when Aby, you get him up to speed as your mate, working seven days a week and a few nights, and then he says he wants to maybe spend a little more time at home? How does that go? I mean, as an employer, you've now gotten this person up to speed, but you care about them. You see, like, if he keeps going on this road, that girl's not going to be around anymore.

Bouncer Smith: Oh, no. He didn't ask if I thought he should quit. He said, I did quit.

Tom Rowland: I quit.

Bouncer Smith: And it took me about six months to get the knife pulled out of my back. It wasn't just a knife, it was a full-blown machete. But I found a real good kid to replace him for a couple of years. And he went off and he was still in the fishing business, but he learned a whole other style and sales approach and approaches to the whole game. And then he came back, and he was better because he had another teacher in between. So we both came out ahead in the game.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Bouncer Smith: He knew how much fun I was to work for now. And he knew he only had to work five, six days a week, and he could almost always convince me not to work on a Sunday. And now life is really good. Like I say, we don't even have to talk to each other. I tell him we're going kite fishing, and that's all I have to say. Or we're going anchor fishing for mackerel. I don't have to tell him anything else.

Tom Rowland: So, Aby, what is your favorite style of fishing with the Bouncer?

Bouncer Smith: He's like most fishermen. His favorite style of fishing is catching.

A 100-Pound Cubera on the Old Man's Rod

Bouncer Smith: But Aby and I have so many lucky opportunities. We had a great trip this summer, and you brought it to mind. We had a serviceman who had served his time in the military, got an educational fund from the military, and went to a school in Key West where a lot of the school was learning about diving. And I don't know where he's going, but...

Tom Rowland: Probably out on Fleming Key.

Bouncer Smith: Maybe, wherever it was. That big tower out there. But anyway, he was learning a lot about diving, going to school in Key West on a military scholarship, and he was from the Panhandle of Florida. And then he called me up and says, I see you're really good at this cubera snapper fishing, and my dad and I want to go. I'll bring the lobster so we don't have to buy lobsters, and we'll meet at your boat and go fishing. So we agreed on a date, and it was the last day we were cubera snapper fishing in 2018, a mistake on my part, I might add.

Bouncer Smith: But they showed up, and dad brought his favorite grouper fishing rod. It's a seven-foot solid glass rod with a Penn Senator 9/0 full of brand new 80-pound monofilament. And I said, well, you're more than welcome to bring it along, but to be quite honest with you, we use these six-foot Penn stand-up rods. They're easier to deal with. They don't give the fish the advantage. And we use dual-speed Penn Internationals, because you can shift into low gear and still wind when the fish is pulling really hard. And we use braid because it's easier to feel the bottom. But you can bring it along and we'll give it a try if it works out that way.

Bouncer Smith: So we had caught numerous cubera snappers on this trip now, and I told Aby, let's drop a lobster on his rod, see if we can get lucky. Well, I'll have to show you the picture, but this old man had a smile that went right past his ears on both sides. On his solid glass rod, with his 9/0 reel, with his monofilament line and all the handicaps, he and his son tag-teamed a 100-pound cubera snapper on his own rod. And in the picture, his son is holding the cubera snapper, and he's holding the rod, and his arms are in the air. His smile just keeps right on going. Damn near took the top of his head off, he was smiling so much. So not all of our rewarding trips are eight-year-olds. Sometimes they're 78-year-olds.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, that's important for somebody like that to catch something on their own rod. That's awesome.

Cubera Snapper Season

Tom Rowland: So the cubera snapper, did you have a really strong season this year? What is the season?

Bouncer Smith: Extremely good. We fish the full moon in September.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Bouncer Smith: And the reason we do that, we've gone down there even when they were biting. Let's drop a chunk of bonito. No, no bites. Let's try blue crabs. Nope, no bites. I have learned over the years, if you really want to be successful, you go down there with lobsters. And so we have to fish the mini season a couple of times, it's fallen near the full moon, and that is really good. But they seem to be smaller on the mini season. But anyway, the mini season in July, the full moon in August and September have proven to be very effective.

Bouncer Smith: This past year I wasn't real sure how good it was going to be, because there's been a lot of pressure on them in the last couple of years. So I didn't book any cubera trips in September. I only booked them in August, because then you're fishing the earliest in the season and less pressure's been put on them. And it was phenomenal. We had one trip with 10 fish, and I think we had another trip with eight fish. The other trip we ran, we never put a line in the water. We were a camera boat for a TV show, and they caught a few fish. It wasn't quite like fishing with us, but they caught a couple anyway. And then on the mini season, we took RJ Boyle, and we had quite a few bites on that trip too. But on the mini season, again, the fish were much smaller. Makes them harder to hook on a live lobster.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Bouncer Smith: Than when they get bigger.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I would imagine. Well, it takes a big mouth to eat a lobster.

Bouncer Smith: No doubt.

Tom Rowland: And those fish have the jaw structure to just tear the thing apart.

Bouncer Smith: Oh, yeah. You better believe it.

Tom Rowland: I would imagine that, you mentioned smallmouth bass, they eat a lot of crawfish. And sometimes the crawfish is big enough to, you know, they can just eat the whole thing, but other times they bite it and tear it apart. And I would imagine that with the jaw structure of those things, they're biting it and tearing it apart all the time.

The Who's Who of Fishing at the Dock

Bouncer Smith: Okay, this is the world-famous Marty Orostiki.

Tom Rowland: Well, I thought that I recognized him coming down. I used to see him at Sunset Marina, when he would be fishing.

Bouncer Smith: Yeah. Good morning, Marty. How are you doing?

Tom Rowland: Marty, how are you? Alright. Well, we won't keep you too much longer. I really appreciate you meeting me down here at 6 o'clock in the morning. Wow, this is like the who's who of fishing all of a sudden, sitting here at the Miami Beach Marina, but I know that you guys are ready to go. So I hope you have a great day today, Bouncer. Thank you very much.

Bouncer Smith: Days are great. Just some are greater than others.

Tom Rowland: I believe that.

Bouncer Smith: We go fishing every day. So I really thank you for coming up and spending time with me so early in the morning.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it was a beautiful environment.

Bouncer Smith: Temperature was perfect and everything.

Tom Rowland: It's perfect. Not quite as...

Bouncer Smith: Not quite as perfect as the dining room in the condo, but not too shabby.

Tom Rowland: This is the best dining room there is. Alright, well, you guys have a great day, and I'll be watching your Instagram page to see what you caught today.

Bouncer Smith: You betcha. We'll be there.

Tom Rowland: Alright. Thanks.