Port Saint Joe, Florida. Fly guide. Certified real estate appraiser. Two professions that don’t usually share a résumé, but Jeremy’s never lived by the usual script.
The water found him early. His grandmother fished the Dead Lakes for bluegill and stumpknockers, fly rod in one hand, cane pole in the other when the mood struck. She’d fill the boat either way. At 12, a Carolina J12 with a Honda 9.9 turned wading into range, and while other kids chased sports, he chased water.
Four years ago, he fell 20 feet out of a tree stand and landed on his neck. His oldest son had just been born, and he was buried in office hours that weren’t the life he was built for. He’d always said he’d guide full time eventually, always had a reason to wait. The fall took the reason away. He survived, stopped drinking, dropped 80 pounds, and started guiding for a living. No slow transition. He just went.
Tarpon is what he’s obsessed with now, and he’s honest about the cost. “There’s not a fish that will break your heart more than a tarpon,” he says, and he means it as a compliment. Broken leaders, pulled hooks, trout sets, a season slower than most this year. None of it changes the approach: adapt to what the day gives you, keep moving through the setbacks, make your shots count when they come.
What drives him isn’t the fish on the line. It’s watching someone else feel it for the first time. He keeps a PT Barnum line close: the noblest art is that of making others happy.
“There’s not a fish that will break your heart more than a tarpon.”
I got a firsthand look at that. On a recent trip to Port Saint Joe, dodging weather that kept popping up out of nowhere, Jeremy put me on the largest tarpon I’ve ever fed. But it wasn’t just the fishing. He brought me into his family and his town, and by the end of the trip I felt like a longtime friend rather than a client. Watching his fishing life and family life sit side by side, and seeing how deep his love runs for the community he calls home, was eye-opening. I’m already planning the trip back.
Even his bucket list says something about how he’s wired. Not a marlin, not a GT. A milkfish, a pick he got from a South African guide in Patagonia who’d spent years failing to catch one. Jeremy wants the fish that humbles the best guides in the world, not the one that photographs well.
Family is the tradeoff he doesn’t romanticize. Tarpon season plus three months a year in Louisiana doesn’t leave much room for fishing on his own time. He’s waiting for his kids to grow into it, into scouting water with him, into poling the skiff themselves someday.
Off the water, he’s fighting for it too. He’s behind the Bay Saver Program’s push for a lock system on the Intracoastal Waterway near home, aimed at restoring proper water flow and cleaner water for the fishery he depends on. It’s the same instinct that got him through the fall: something’s broken, so you go fix it instead of waiting for someone else to.
Ask him where he’d fish tomorrow if he could go anywhere, and he doesn’t name a destination. He names his grandmother, one more afternoon on the Dead Lakes catching bream, a few more questions he wishes he’d asked her.
Treat people the way you want to be treated. Effort always yields a positive value. Life comes from you, not at you. Simple lines, but he’s built an entire second life proving he means them.
Sean Nguyen (@vin_nguyen)