InTheBite

Capt. Gary Stuve: Merritt Boat Works’ Favorite Son Still Has Fish to Catch

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By Ric Burnley

“I’ve always been a mate at heart,” admits Captain Gary Stuve. Even though the 77-year-old skipper has run some of the most famous boats for some of the most famous anglers, his soul is in the cockpit.

“I grew up as a gung-ho son of a bitch,” Stuve laughs. Stuve’s grandfather was a merchant seaman, his father a boat captain. “We moved from Staten Island to West Palm when I was a kid,” he recalls.

In the 1960s, West Palm was a Petri dish of early sportfishing, the parts were coming together to mold the future of the sport and Stuve was right in the middle of it. “I would work washing boats or paying my dues,” he says.

In high school, Stuve needed a summer job. “I read in Sports Illustrated that guys were going to Hatteras to catch blue marlin,” he remembers, “so I went to Hatteras to catch blue marlin.”

After graduation, he bounced around fishing with anyone who needed a mate. His flexibility had him traveling to Montauk and the Bahamas. “I didn’t have a family or bills, I was living with my mother,” he says.

Capt. Gary Stuve, standing to the left, and Jack Nicklaus with a 438-pound bluefin.

Stuve has always done whatever it takes to stay on the water. “They say luck is when opportunity meets preparation,” he laughs. “I’ve been very lucky to have some great opportunities.”

His first big shot came when legendary pro golfer Jack Nicklaus needed a captain to run his 37-foot Merritt. “Jack was an owner-operator,” Stuve says. But the Golden Bear needed a skipper who could drive and rig baits. “We would switch off running the boat and fishing,” he remembers.

That job led him to tuna fish with Buddy Merritt. “I learned more from Buddy in one week than I had learned in my whole career.” Stuve considers listening one of the most important fishing skills. “He was like a professor, and I was a sponge,” he chuckles.

Fishing the Bahamas and Newfoundland, Stuve fell in love with tuna fishing early in his career. “They are the spookiest and scariest fish,” he explains. “You don’t catch a tuna by accident.” Bahamas tuna fishing is sight fishing, Stuve compares it to targeting permit on the flats. Even when a bait is presented perfectly, Stuve says a tuna will turn its nose up. “When you hook one, it’s a whole ‘nother game,” he laughs loudly.

Peer pressure was another factor. “Buddy and Allen (Merritt) were my idols, and they were tuna fishing,” Stuve says. His position on the dream team led to tournament wins in Cat Cay. “That opened a lot of doors,” he admits. One of those doors led to the bridge of Dinny Phipps’ Fighting Lady. Stuve fished with Phipps all over the world for ten years.

A young Gary Stuve, middle, pictured with the daily catch of the Hatteras Marlin Club. On the left was Capt. Jerry Black, who three years later moved to St. Thomas with Johnny Harmes. Stuve’s boat didn’t catch them all, but the practice of display made for some impressive photography.

Another door opened in the mid-90s when Captain Peter Wright called from Hatteras with stories of giant bluefin tuna. Stuve recalls, “He told me, ‘The rumors were true, get up here, we need help.’” By midnight, Stuve and a “Splittail” Charlie Hayden were northbound on I-95.

That phone call led to another of Stuve’s most famous accolades—catching a record 73 giant bluefin in one day. “We loaded the boat with 14-flats of menhaden,” he marvels. The fish were schooling over a wreck 25 miles south of Hatteras Inlet. “They were biting when we got there and biting when we left,” he remembers.

To set the record, Stuve says everything came together. With 200- to 500-pound bluefin boiling behind the boat, they would bury a circle hook in a chunk of bunker and feed it into the melee. “The water is only 100 feet deep so the fish can’t run too far.” He remembers the team had 300-pound tuna to the leader in an average of seven minutes.

Stuve says advancements in tackle helped their average. Using PENN 130s capable of producing 100-pounds of drag, Stuve worked to develop a system to beat the giants. “We wanted to find the weak link,” he says. After breaking crimps, straightening hooks and snapping gimble bolts, they were able to release 600 giant bluefin in their second season. “When I was growing up, I fantasized about breaking the record of 16 fish in one trip,” he chuckles.

Stuve’s mastery of the North Carolina bluefin fishery led him to working with Dr. Barbara Block and Stanford University’s Tag-a-Giant program. Much of today’s bluefin management can be linked to Block’s research. For over a decade, Stuve’s cooperation furthered both bluefin science and fishing. All because he answered the phone.

For over 50 years Stuve has traveled the world, targeting everything from blue marlin to bonefish. Along the way he has worked for a who’s who list of owners, but one thing has remained constant: his collaboration with Merritt Boat Works. Stuve first came aboard Merritt working for Jack Nicklaus and has run a dozen Merritt boats since.

Cat Cay in 1970. Left to right it was Larry Hastings (kneeling), Charlie Hayden (standing), George Matthews and Gary Stuve.

The relationship with Merritt has kept Stuve busy on land, too. While working on new builds for Danny Phipps, Stuve developed a passion for woodworking and boat design. Stuve says his side-career started when the two were building a tuna boat and only had three months to finish it. “Roy Merritt told me, ‘You’re going to have to get involved,’” Stuve recalls.

Starting as an observant apprentice to the master craftsman, Stuve quickly jumped in with both feet. “Roy taught me, you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish when you have to,” Stuve laughs.

Working on builds with Merritt, Stuve has since made many design contributions that make boats more user friendly. His favorite touches are a reverse windshield on the tower to reduce glare from the bow. He also suggested moving the bunks from the noisy v-berth to the bulkhead for a better night’s sleep.

“We look at the last build and then make the next one better” he says.

After a lifetime in the rat-race, his current owner of 20 years has sold the sportfish and now focuses on flats fishing. “I keep an eye on his house and make sure the two flats boats are ready to go,” Stuve says.

Shallow-water pursuits fascinate Stuve as much as deep-sea adventures. “Any flats guide could be an offshore captain, but not every offshore captain could be a flats guide,” he laughs. The constantly changing nature of the flats and the fine-tuned tackle required to fish for bonefish, permit and tarpon consume Stuve’s fishing focus, now. He giggles like a kid, “When I’m poling the skiff into the wind and loving it, I think maybe I still have a little gas left in the tank.”

When I was young, I wanted to catch tuna all day and drink and fight and arm wrestle all night. – Gary Stuve

Looking back over his extensive career, Stuve attributes his total consumption with sportfishing as a contributing factor to his success. “When I’m not working on tackle at the boat, I’m working on tackle at home.” He remembers bolting a table-crimper to his coffee table so he could work on bluefin tackle while watching TV. “I once tried to work as a bartender,” he shakes his head and chuckles, “That didn’t last a week.”

In his later years, Stuve attributes clean living for his tenacity. “I quit drinking when I was 52,” he beams. After watching friends succumb to the hazards of a dangerous lifestyle, Stuve decided to give it up before he had to. “When I was young, I wanted to catch tuna all day and drink and fight and arm wrestle all night,” he says. “Quitting drinking was the best thing I ever did.”

Today, Stuve still freelances for friends and flats fishes with his boss. When he’s not working, he turns his attention to detail to landscaping his yard and working on wood projects. “I like to build stuff and tinker around.”

For fun, he grabs his paddleboard and spinning rod. “I recently caught a 100-pound bull shark on the paddleboard,” he brags. The huge fish dragged him around before he brought it onto the board for a photo. “I like the pure simplicity of fishing from the paddleboard,” he says.

Whether he’s running a 70-foot Merritt or a 12-foot paddleboard, Stuve wants to be on the water chasing fish. He reflects on his career: “I was fortunate to have good boats and good anglers; I didn’t f*ck up too much and I got a good reputation.” He’s always been eager to learn and share his knowledge, satisfied with putting anglers on fish and looking for the next door to open. “I had some great opportunities in the beginning. I might not have deserved many of them, but made the best of it,” he says.

For a full list of Old Salts, visit our directory. Do you have any comments or questions for us? We’d love to hear from you.

 

Captain Alan Card: Bermuda Icon

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By Elliott Stark

A native of Bermuda, Captain Alan Card has been fishing since the mid-1960s. A man whose reputation proceeds him, the veteran captain tells his stories with charm, understatement and appreciation for all he has seen. If chartering a day of blue marlin fishing with Captain Alan Card is anything like talking fishing with him over the phone, it is no wonder that he has been in business for decades.

Living on the island there was not much to do but fish… there were not enough women to chase,” he says with a laugh. “It was natural to fall into fishing. My brother Andrew was fishing longer than me. He was having more fun than me, so I decided to fish, too. I wouldn’t change it for anything, it’s too late to change it now anyway.”

Alan’s early days were spent in the cockpit working as second mate on the boat that his brother was working on. He then progressed to running to a private boat for a few years before turning to a full-time charter operation. Card credits Captain Walter Voss of the Sea Quest as one of his early influences. “The owner of the boat had a house in Bermuda. We traveled back and forth between the Caribbean and Bermuda. Walter taught me a hell of a lot,” he recalls. These were those days that such captains as Mike Benitez from Puerto Rico and others started to become active fishing for marlin in the Bahamas. “A couple of trips exposed me to marlin fishing. On the island (Bermuda), much of what we did was self-taught. We picked up bits and pieces from other people and from magazines – it’s not like it is today. We got the basics and off we went.”

Card started running his own charters full time in 1971. “A full day’s charter fishing back then was $75. If you got a $5 tip you were really doing great. At the time, most of the boats were locally built – not the fancy boats that come here today. We never caught blues back then. We didn’t have the tackle to catch them,” Card recalls “It wasn’t until we invested in decent tackle that we started to catch blues – once we had 80 and 130-pound line on the boat.”

Card caught the first grander blue marlin ever landed in Bermuda. The year was 1982, the fish weighed 1,130-pounds. “I also caught the first fish over 500 – that was in the mid-1970s. Bermuda used to be a light tackle spot. We used to troll for wahoo and yellowfin tuna. Every once in a while, a giant would blow up on one of the lures – it would last be seen heading west!”

Captain Alan Card runs his 40-foot Gamefisherman, the Challenger. “My son Ian has worked with me for the past 25 years. There’s just the two of us on the boat,” Card describes. “In years past, we used to fish up to 190-days per year. Now we fish between 100-120 days per year. The price has changed a lot.”

“Working with your son has some advantages,” Card begins. “He’s in his 40s… I’ve known him for a long time. He likes to work in the cockpit, and I’m up on the bridge. We do what we do. Mostly it works quite well, but like anything it can have its ups and downs. It’s unique. Mates are hard to come by here.”

“There are not as many charter boats around now – maybe seven or eight here. It’s not easy to get into it. The boats are expensive, and the economics have changed. It’s a hard life, but it’s rewarding. I’ve met a lot of good people,” Card relates thoughtfully.

Over the course of carving out a livelihood for himself and his family, Captain Alan Card and his charter operation have transformed Bermuda and the way the sportfishing world relates to the island. For starters, the words “Bermuda” and “light tackle” are no longer used in relation to one another. The island nation that sits some 665 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina is one of the world’s leading grander blue marlin destinations. “I’ve caught seven granders – all of them here. There have been 25 or 26 granders caught in Bermuda all told. The largest was 1,350 – it’s only a matter of time before someone catches a record fish here,” Card surmises.

“We have released another two or three or four that were over 1,000-pounds. Our largest was 1,289,” Card says matter of factly. “Every one of them has a mother. We’ve seen some huge fish out here – bigger than we’ve caught. I’m sort of glad we don’t see them every day,” Card says with a chuckle.

Card’s approach to marlin fishing is influenced by the ever-present opportunity to catch the fish of a lifetime. “We rig baits and gear and tackle for the biggest fish you can imagine and let everything else go. I’m not sure how many I’ve caught – maybe 1,500 or 2,000, but I still get jacked up. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember the first one.”

When asked about pranks and dock jokes, Card’s Bermuda charm and manners are on full display. “On a daily basis, we are courteous.” When pressed a bit, Card delivers a gem. A joke that illustrates just how incredible his career has been. Bear in mind that the man has weighed seven blue marlin north of 1,000 pounds. “When people ask me, ‘How many granders have you caught?’ My answer is, ‘None. All of mine are over 1,100.’” While Captain Alan Card may well be the only person in the world able to provide such an answer to this question, he relates his story with understatement and perspective.

In describing his relationship with large blue marlin, Card is no less thoughtful. “It is a privilege and an honor to see a fish like that – let alone catch it. It’s a rarity to kill a fish now. There is nothing wrong with cutting them loose,” the veteran captain provides. “The 1,199 we caught was 28 years old. They used to say that fish that didn’t reproduce. But that fish had two egg sacks that weighed 80- or 90-pounds.”

Not only does Captain Alan Card provide perspective as it relates to large blue marlin, he also gives freely of experience in regard to those considering a career on the charter docks. “Fishing can be a hell of an opportunity for kids. If you get mixed up with the right crew, you can have a 30- or 40-year career like me. It’s been a fun and rewarding career, with lots of repeat clients,” Card provides.

He also provides a road map for learning the craft. “Hands on knowledge is important, Walter Voss taught me that. He’d take me and show me things, ‘This is how you do this.’” Beyond learning from those you work with, it’s also important to pay attention to what goes on around you. “Pay attention. Watch what others are doing. If someone is getting better results, ask questions. Don’t be embarrassed or ashamed to ask questions.”

Captain Alan Card is 71 years old. He and his wife recently celebrated their 49th anniversary. As many a good man does, Card jokes about the medals his wife deserves. “They call me Santiago now,” he laughs. More than an old man of the sea, Captain Alan Card is a fishing legend whose career has transformed how the world relates with the island Bermuda. He has spent his life on the water and the sportfishing landscape is better for it.