"It was just part of the fishing life," Gadabout said. In the summer months, the biting pests drove men wild. It was before the day of repellents and spraying. The mosquitoes came in swarms and netting was the only protection. They thought I had a lot of money because I had a floor," he chuckled. "It sure wasn't much, about 10 by 12, but compared to what some of the others were living in, it wasn't bad.
Gadabout was one of the few fishermen with a shack at the inlet and it had a wooden floor, which made others envious of his "luxury." "Then, down the road a piece, you'd probably have to pull him out. I always knew I'd get stuck, so I carried a shovel and a rope and would just hope someone would come along to pull me out. "I had a Model-T Ford and you talk about a bad road. The most demanding leg of the whole trip was the 15 miles of winding, sand-rutted road, rattlesnakes and sandspurs between Melbourne Beach and the inlet. If you didn't watch where you were going, you'd run right off the side and into the drink," said Gadabout with a laugh, typical of his personable way. You didn't do much sightseeing when you crossed that bridge because it didn't have any rails. "It was a day's trip from Tampa to Melbourne where a wooden bridge spanned the Indian River. He'd make the cross-state trip to Sebastian for weeks at a time, sometimes staying for more than a month. Gadabout, who was later tagged with the unusual nickname by a Schenectady, N.Y., radio station manager wanting a catchy name for his fishing show host, had a home in Tampa during the '20s and '30s and fished many parts of Florida, including Lake Apopka, north of Orlando, which in those days held some of the biggest bass in the world. I guess the average trout was about eight pounds and I caught a lot of 12- and 14-pounders." "I used nothing but top-water plugs like the ol' Dalton Special, Creek Chub and Heddon baits. There was a good market in those days, anywhere from 18 to 22 cents a pound, and it was nothing to catch 200, maybe 250 pounds in a night. "The place was practically deserted but, boy, could you catch fish," he said with a big grin spreading across a still-youthful face accented by the ever-present mustache. "When I first came to Sebastian in 1924, it had just been dug and you'd think you were seeing things if you saw another fisherman. "I did a lot of exploring and fishing when I was young, looking for out-of-the-way places where you could catch plenty of fish, but I don't think I ever found anything quite like Sebastian Inlet," said Gadabout, who'll still grab an invitation to go bass-bugging with a fly rod and a big No. Johns River near Welaka in North Central Florida, Gadabout is content to spend his evenings sitting out on his back porch overlooking Lake George, talking about the good ole days, but particularly Sebastian. Now living in Georgetown, on the banks of the St. His trademark was a fly rod and a red and white Piper Tri-Pacer, which took him from Maine to Key West and from the Outer Banks to Baja. "Gadabout" Gaddis was known to millions of America's armchair fishermen in the 1950s and early '60s as "The Flying Fisherman." His famed syndicated television show by the same name that reached 40 million each week centered on casual fishing adventures. I could sit for hours with this grand old man of fishing, now 86 and in his twilight years, listening to his many stories and reminiscing of what the sport of angling was really like in his heydays. Maybe it's because I know Sebastian as it is today and Gadabout knew it almost 60 years ago that the East Coast inlet always comes up in our conversations when we visit. Long before it became Florida's most popular - and often populous - state park, there was a Sebastian Inlet that only a few old-timers ever knew.
Bill Sargent wrote this FLORIDA TODAY column in June 1980 about his friend Gadabout Gaddis, who had the first television fishing show in the 1950s and early '60s known as "The Flying Fisherman." In this column, Gaddis recalls his early days at Sebastian Inlet.
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