“No one can convince me that I am not the luckiest guy in the world,” said Steve Huff, speaking to a room of 110 people at the Key Largo Anglers’ Club. The American Museum of Fly Fishing had bestowed on him the prestigious Izaak Walton Award, and friends and fans gathered last week to honor the man once described by this magazine as “the best fishing guide alive.” Past recipients of the award—given annually to a member of the angling community who “embodies the legacy of conservation and sportsmanship” left by Walton, the seventeenth-century author of perhaps the most famous fishing book of all time, The Compleat Angler—include Flip Pallot, Tom Rosenbauer, and James Prosek.
Huff, who will soon be eighty, has been guiding for fifty-seven years and has no plans to stop any time soon. “When I’m on the water, I feel freedom,” he told the audience. “I’m thankful that I get to get up every morning with a new problem to solve on the water, trying to figure things out.”
Few anglers could pull in such a crowd. Many of Huff’s clients—a group of men and women known to guard him jealously, like a precious diamond—were in attendance. (One client gave him a condominium as a tip after a trip.) His fellow guides were there, including Rick Ruoff, Tim Carlile, Craig Brewer, Frank Catino, and Tim Klein. David Mangum, the Panhandle tarpon guiding impresario, got stuck at an airport but furnished a beautifully shot film about Huff that kicked off the event. Angling luminaries Andy Mill, Chico Fernandez, Jim Lepage, Adelaide Skoglund, and Bill Klyn milled about. Industry giants Ted Juracsik, founder and owner of Tibor reels, and Hal Chittum, founder and owner of Chittum Skiffs, anchored a table.
The after-dinner panel also featured an all-star cast. The writer Paul Bruun kicked things off with a joke about God mistaking himself for Huff. Sandy Moret, owner of the Islamorada fly shop Florida Keys Outfitters, talked about how Huff pushed himself to try new things, often staying out on the water much later than his contemporaries. Huff’s sons, Chad and Dustin, spoke of how their father helped make them who they are, not just in their profession (they are both well-respected guides in the Keys) but as men. Jason Schratwieser, the president of the International Game Fish Association, revealed how Huff helped convince him it was time to ask his now-wife for her hand in marriage. World record–holding angler Nathaniel Linville discussed how Huff elevated the profession of guiding.
“I’m just an old guy who loves to fish,” Huff said as he closed his remarks to a standing ovation. “That’s all I am and all I ever will be.”
And that is—and always will be—more than enough.
Monte Burke is a Garden & Gun contributing editor and the New York Times best-selling author of Saban, Lords of the Fly and Men of Troy, among other books. He is also a contributing editor at The Drake. He grew up primarily in Alabama and North Carolina and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.
