Miami, FL— Captain Bob Branham and the late Captain Costs Curtis will be inducted April 22 into the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Circle of Honor, which acknowledges famous anglers, fishing guides and preservation leaders who have actually made considerable contributions to the preservation of the bonefish, tarpon and allow fisheries.
” It’s fitting that these 2 pioneering guides of Biscayne Bay will be preserved in the Circle of Honor,” stated BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “Not just did they assist develop South Florida as a first-rate fishing location, they likewise played an important function in saving the resource and structure BTT into the reliable company it is today.”
A Fort Lauderdale-area local, Branham started his fishing profession in regional canals and running a part-time flats assisting organization with assistance from his fellow honoree, Curtis, a recognized guide who sent out Branham his overflow organization. Branham later on left his day task to start assisting full-time in 1981.
An early supporter of prohibiting webs in Biscayne Bay, Branham signed up with the board of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association, and quickly ended up being a well-regarded intermediary in between its members and BTT, engaging guides in the company’s preservation and research study efforts. As a member of the BTT board, Branham has actually contributed his time to assist researchers on tarpon tagging explorations and to gather bonefish for broodstock in the company’s bonefish generating research study.
Innovator, respected guide, and enthusiastic conservationist, Curtis was born in eastern Oklahoma in 1925. He piloted F-7s for the Army Air Corps throughout The Second World War, had an effective profession as a marketing professional photographer, and after that had a life-altering encounter with bonefish on the flats of Miami’s Biscayne Bay in the early 1950s. By the late ’50s, he was assisting anglers to bonefish, tarpon and license.
As his credibility grew, he got the attention in 1960 of then U.S. Interior Secretary Stuart Udall and Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges who employed him to assist them in the Bay. From that eventful journey, and under Curtis’ subtle preservation impact, momentum developed to develop Biscayne National forest, securing the Bay’s fish-rich waters from what would have been a dreadful petroleum refinery on its coasts. Keeping in mind a decrease in bonefish populations in the bay in the 1990s, Curtis assisted discovered Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited, which later on ended up being Bonefish & Tarpon Trust.
Curtis is credited with establishing the very first poling platform for flats skiffs in the 1970s, and developed the Bimini Twist and Curtis Connection fishing knots. His yellow Hewes Bonefisher called “Insect” was such a component at Biscayne Bay’s Old Rhodes Secret that the location is permanently referred to as “Curtis Point.” He died at age 91 on October 24, 2016.
The BTT Circle of Honor is housed in the Florida Keys History and Discovery Center, situated in Islamorada, Florida, and includes an every year turning exhibition on those honored along with academic material about the significance of the flats fishery.
