Back Story: No more casts for the casting expert
If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. In the parking lot of Breakaway Lodge on the Apalachicola River one hot summer morning, Shag Shahid put on a casting demonstration. He stood a volunteer with his back turned and his feet slightly spread apart about 10 yards away. Then Shag asked the volunteer to hook his shirt pocket open with his right thumb. Making the underhand flip cast for which he was famous, Shahid zipped the small casting plug through the volunteer’s legs, snubbed the spool and made the plug swing up and land in the man’s open shirt pocket. It was a simultaneous display of depth perception, hand-and-eye coordination and casting exactitude that approached the supernatural – I’m not sure which skill was the most important in the execution of the trick, but Shahid had them all in spades.
In my mind’s eye, I still see that moment – even though it occurred more than 30 years ago – as I contemplate the passing of another fishing industry icon. Shahid died last Saturday at a hospital near his home in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., from complications that followed a recent stroke. Shahid was 86 when he died. He left behind his wife of 56 years, Lola, and two sons, Kevin and Wade, the latter a regular on the EverStart Southeastern trail.
During the 70s, Shahid won widespread acclaim as a “trick caster,” though that term somehow undervalues the level of perfection he achieved and doesn’t quite do justice to the amount of time and effort he put into his craft. Shahid will forever be associated with Lew Childre, the man who brought to market the Lew’s Speed Spool bait-casting reel. In large measure, it was Shahid’s fishing and casting exploits with the reel and rods he helped designed that quickly elevated the Speed Spool and Speed Sticks in the fledgling specialty bass-fishing tackle market. Shahid’s showmanship also won him fame at a time when fishing seminars and consumer shows were packed with anglers eager to soak up anything that would help them catch bass.
Of Lebanese stock, Shahid was born to immigrants in Charleston, S.C. He served in the Navy during the Second World War, played some minor league ball in his home state during the early 50s and eventually moved to Birmingham, where he opened a restaurant and met and married Lola. By the late 60s, the Shahids had resettled in Fort Walton Beach, where Shag had a BBQ restaurant, and gradually become immersed in the regional fishing scene. Encountering Childre in the early 70s, and going to work for him as a rod designer and marketing representative, changed the course of Shahid’s life.
Shahid was built as solidly as an oak vat with arms the size of fence posts. Each of his hands was so large it could smother a Speed Spool. He never lacked for self-confidence and, though not boastful, was always ready to back up any claim. Yet he was a gentle soul, possessed of a charm and personality manifested by twinkling eyes and a broad smile. He seemed always jovial and eager to share time with kindred spirits, whether at a tackle show or a boat ramp.
His personality endeared him to the mighty as well as the meek. He took presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush bass fishing, though at different times. Shahid counted among his friends fishing industry icons such as Jim Bagley, Wilson Frazier, Al Jackson, Tom Mann, Gary Dollahon and many others. He was a favorite and good-natured target for practical joker Bill Dance, who was a pal, and a sounding board for every important tackle manufacturer in the land.
Beyond all that, beyond his reputation as an expert caster, Shag Shahid was a bass fisherman of the first order, an equal to the greats whose exploits on the lakes and rivers of the Florida Panhandle during the 70s and 80s passed into local legend: Carl Dyess, Dow Gilmore, Jerry Odom, Sibley Perry, Bobby Smith and Danny Griffith among them.
It was in that context that I first met him. On certain spring days, back in the 70s, a window of opportunity for big bass opened on the Apalachicola River below Jim Woodruff Dam. Not everyone knew about it, and it wasn’t the kind of information that a fisherman readily shared. If the river settled to a certain level, the big female bass that staged behind the pilings of the U.S. Highway 90 Bridge – and out of the swift current until it was time to move up – were accessible with the few available quick-diving, deep-running crankbaits of the day. If the water was too deep, the crankbaits couldn’t reach them.
The late Joe Webb of Fort Walton Beach and I hit it just right one year. We cast Rebel Deep Wee Rs upstream parallel to the pilings, then cranked like mad to get them as deep as possible before they swept past the downstream pilings. We caught bass up to 8 pounds and lost several other big fish that pulled free. Webb and I had been fishing for a while when Shag showed up, alone in his boat, sitting in the front seat, running his trolling motor, slowly moving up the river, casting and cranking. His target was a sunken barge near the bridge, and he was fishing it with one of his Shags, a Hellbender-type lure that he designed and made more for his own use on the river than for public consumption.
“Catching anything?” Joe yelled at him.
“Not yet,” Shag hollered back through clenched teeth holding a half-smoked cigar. “But I will.”
He did, too, and that’s another good way to remember him.