CORBETT set out to become a grouper
{ “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,”
he says. “I really have. I couldn’t
} have had no more fun.”
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fisherman, in part because he and the
Wolfs had figured out where to catch
them.
“We had always trolled, and anytime we
wanted to catch a grouper for somebody we’d slow down
and let the trolling line sink. When we’d speed up we’d
catch grouper,” he says. “It was close to shore, 8-10 miles,
12 miles, and nobody grouper fished in there. The grou-per
boats went 50-60 miles out. Just like I thought, there
was plenty of fish there. So we started grouper fishing.”
When hook-and-line methods didn’t bring in enough
fish, he tried something else. Corbett devised a trap that
he baited with a jar full of mud minnows.
“I would put that gallon pickle jar so it looked like a
school of fish in there,” he says. “The groupers couldn’t
stand that. They went right in there to it. It was like an
oversized crab pot, except it had one entrance way in
it. It was about the size of the bed of a pickup truck. It
worked good.”
Even then, Corbett wanted to make sure he was doing
things by the book. He invited officials to see what he
was doing.
“Anytime you do something like that and the feds get
wind of it, they’re going to send people to come out and
see what you are doing. They are very curious,” he says.
“So I took observers, and it wasn’t long after that they
closed it.”
He had heard rumors of people long-line fishing
for sharks so he tried that next, selling the meat to
Hieronymus Brothers Seafood on Airlie Road.
“It wasn’t long before a bunch of people started get-ting
into it,” he says. “We might have done it for two
years before they stopped us. They stopped us because
there was a bunch of the bigger boats that came from the
Gulf and they weren’t selling the meat. They were fin-nin’
sharks. We got grouped right in with those guys. We
were selling everything. We would cut the jaws out and
sell them to the local shops here on the beach. We sold
the meat, and we sold the fins. There was nothing that
went to waste. But the big boats, they weren’t interested
in anything but fins, because they were big money.”
Back surgery in the ’90s put an end to grouper and
most offshore fishing. Now, at age 57, he prefers to
stay close to the shore, gill netting for roe mullet and
crabbing.
“I very rarely go past the sea buoy anymore,” he says.
“In spot season, I may go in the ocean 40 or 50 foot. My
business now is pretty much crabbing, and I do love to
roe mullet fish.”
Corbett is sometimes asked if he regrets never going to
college. The answer is a quick no.
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” he says. “I really
have. I couldn’t have had no more fun.”
Sammy Corbett works his crab pots with his brother, Justin Elliott, in the
creeks near his home in Hampstead.