Capt. Bobbi Brady: From tending bar to oyster bars

Posted on February 25, 2021

By DEBRA BUTLER
Contributing Columnist
Capt. Bobbi Brady expertly docks her 22-foot Blue Wave STL with precision before quickly tying it off to a dock at Sea Hag Marina.
Her three clients for the day step out of the boat with poles in their hands and smiles on their faces.
I ask a freckle-faced little boy in the group if he had fun.
“That’s the best fishing trip I’ve ever had in my life!” replies seven-year old Brody Thomlinson.
Brody, brother Tyler and their grandfather Ricky Moore, all visiting from South Georgia, had just wrapped up a day of fishing with Capt. Brady.
The three are soon proudly posing with their catch of redfish and spotted seatrout hanging on the Sea Hag Marina fish board.
Brady grew up in Crystal River. Her father was a shrimper, and from the time she was in diapers she was picking shrimp with her dad and brother.
Because of the plentiful and regular bycatch of fish plucked from their nets, they never had a reason to go fishing, and she had no interest in the sport.
When Brady’s father moved north to run tuna boats, she had no desire to give tuna fishing a try, something she now regrets.
After moving to Steinhatchee, Bobbi was working as a bartender at Good Times Motel and Marina’s Who Dat Bar & Grill when her future husband, Capt. Mark Brady, finally convinced her to go fishing with him.
Mark hounded Bobbi to fish with him for more than a year and would always tip her well after eating his meals.
“He’d keep asking me, ‘Come on and go fishing,’ and I’d say, ‘No, I’m good’,” she said.
Then finally, after a rough day at work, Bobbi gave in.
“He got me right in the middle of a school of reds, and I caught my first redfish,” she said.
“As soon as we started dating, he quit paying for his meals,” she added, laughing. “I think he had that planned all along.”
Bobbi soon realized how much she loved fishing. She obtained her captain’s license, and the Brady’s business, Florida Saltwater Flats Fishing Charters, soon expanded.
Brady prefers fishing over scalloping. “Scalloping’s fun, but there’s no sport in it,” she said.
Sometimes during scallop season, she will take the male members of a family out fishing early in the morning and then come back later to pick up the ladies for an afternoon of scalloping.
Capt. Bobbi has three other captains working for her, in addition to her husband, who runs charters from his locally-manufactured 26-foot Dek Kat.
According to Bobbi, “Mark’s boat is one of the only wheelchair-accessible charter boats in town.”
Brady says she and her husband consider themselves to be in the entertainment business.
To anyone considering becoming a charter captain, she recommends they work in the customer service industry first.
“Go waitress or bartend like I did, or even if it’s retail, be around people. You’ve got to think, you’re stuck with three to four people on a boat for hours on end. You’ve got to have the tolerance and patience first and foremost and then entertain them and be able to do your job without being gruff about it,” she said.
For women who may aspire to be a captain, she has this additional advice:
“As a woman, be sure you present yourself as, ‘Hey, I can take you down. I can throw you off the boat if I have to.’ You’ve got to realize that you’re going to be on the boat with grown men. Drinking men sometimes.”
She says she can feel out a group of people quickly and has no qualms about speaking up.
Being raised around shrimpers and then managing a bar gives Brady an advantage in an industry typically dominated by men.
“Some guys when they get on the boat feel like they can’t be themselves, but as a bartender, I’ll give dirty jokes right back. I’ll cuss with you, if you want me to, or I can be a church mouse if you want me to. It’s up to you,” she said.
Brady has experienced some clients blaming a bad day of fishing on the fact that she’s a woman.
She’s even had people not book fishing trips with her after finding out they’d have a female captain.
Just recently, one of those people declining a charter was surprisingly a woman.
When the lady found out that Brady would be her captain, she asked Bobbi to recommend a man instead.
On the day of the requested charter, both women ran into each other at the dock.
Brady had had a good day of fishing and ended up with more fish for her clients than the other captain who the woman ended up hiring.
When the lady approached Capt. Bobbi and mentioned hiring her the next time, Bobbi said, “No, you can just delete my number. You don’t need to fish with me.”
In addition to their charter business, the Bradys have recently added lodging as an option. When COVID-19 caused many businesses to close, the Bradys had just finished renovating one of the four rental units on their newly-purchased property, now known as Reds & Beds Lodge.
With over 30 charters and numerous lodging reservations canceled due to COVID, the Bradys worried about their future. Now that businesses have reopened, Capt. Bobbi has been staying exceptionally busy between charters by cooking meals for some of her clients and cleaning the four rental units.
“I told my mom the other day, I never thought I’d have a place that had 10 bedrooms and eight bathrooms that I’d have to clean all the time,” she
said.
Brady is no stranger to competition. Since becoming an avid fisherwoman, she has won numerous trophies.
Two years in a row Brady had the only all-woman fishing team in the entire state of Florida in the Florida Pro tournament, finishing in the top 20 both years.
Capt. Bobbi is often asked her opinion of the bikini-clad ladies featured on magazine covers holding up fish or shown in the act of fishing.
“Some of those ladies do know how to fish, and some don’t know how to cast a line. I dress the way I do because I don’t want fish slime on me, and there’s always hooks flying around on a boat. I could wear a low-cut top and probably get good tips, but I don’t want to get hooked there,” she explained.
With a grin on her face she adds, “Looks fade, but I’ll still know how to
fish.”