Casting a Way of Life
Each morning Mike Metz arrives at Castaway's Fish House in southwest St. Petersburg to rekindle his life's rhythm. His passion is timeless. But the waters outside his world have changed.
Story and multimedia by Andrew Astleford * Photos by Mike Higdon and Andrew Astleford
Mike Metz arrives barefoot. His soles slide against Maximo Marina’s damp boardwalk. It is a little after 8:30 on a Thursday morning, more than a half hour after Castaway’s Fish House was scheduled to open its rusted door. Metz, 47, Castaway's owner for 2 1/2 years, approaches the fish house's entrance near the edge of the Intercoastal Waterway. His shaggy salt-and-pepper beard hangs from his chin. The top button on his light green T-shirt remains unfastened, revealing a thin patch of dark chest hair. A steel Green Bay Packers ring chimes from his keychain, a reminder of a time when he dreamed of Florida beach sand to replace Wisconsin snow.
Once in Castaway's Fish House, Metz lifts 10 plywood panels from screened windows to reveal a view of the harbor. Boats bob above the clouded water with names such as Miss Judie, Hideaweigh and Kickin’ Back II. Under an overcast sky, a man scrubs the back deck of a white yacht named Halen Kai. To the east, traffic on 37th Street South hums.
Since 2001 Metz has worked at Castaway’s Fish House, a quaint wooden shack that sells fresh seafood market-style. His passion for a fishing lifestyle remains timeless despite a changed world.
Near a weathered wooden wall in Castaway's before customers begin to arrive, Metz leans against a sink and gazes toward the rippling water. Metz grew up in St. Pete Beach. As a boy he fished with his uncle, Harry, on charter boats and piers throughout the area. They caught grouper and snapper, kingfish and cobia, redfish and tarpon.
"You are born into it," Metz says.
Early on, Metz’s life changed. When he was 12, his father, Walter, an area fire chief, became upset when developers wanted to build beach-side high rises that failed to meet fire code. City officials, Mike Metz says, embraced progress; Walter Metz pushed back. Tension grew. Frustrated, Walter Metz moved his family to Wisconsin, the home state of his wife, Maryann. That February they settled in Richland Center, a small rural community in southwest Wisconsin.
Metz's fishing expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico? Gone. Weekends spent watching snappers squirm at the end of a line like earthworms in a crow's beak? Gone. Those thick, sticky Florida summer afternoons? Gone.
“It was (expletive) cold,” Metz says, smiling.
After graduating high school in Wisconsin, Metz joined the U.S. Coast Guard. He was stationed around the country at locations such as Alaska and Hawaii. He finished his duty in 2001.
Then, later that year, he returned to the St. Petersburg area. He partnered with a boyhood friend, Chris, to operate Castaway’s. Before long, Metz grew comfortable. He had missed Florida; he had missed the beach. As a kid, he had planted his palms in the warm, soft sand.
But Florida had changed. Government fishing regulations had tightened, coastline had been dredged, high rises had been filled.
“Anybody who remembers what it used to be like," Metz says, "they ain't around any more."
Metz tries to remember. Each day, as he has done since he began at Castaway’s, Metz works barefoot to remind himself that life here is one of timeless experience. One afternoon, in the waters nearby, a man and his wife tried to steer their new sailboat from disaster. They scrambled to control the rudder, a device that provides navigation. Seconds passed. The sailboat inched closer to the shore.
Then, the couple's mast grazed structures nearby. Their sailboat continued gliding, directionless.
“Use the rudder!” the crowd in Castaway's cracked at the couple's ignorance. “Use the rudder!”
“It's tight knit,” Metz says now. “When I was a kid, there would be a bunch of fish houses dotted along the coast. But developers sucked them up and bought the property and put up condos.
“The Yankees, they just bought up everything, dredged it and filled it and taxed the hell out of it."
It is a little after 9, and Metz must prepare. Each morning he approaches the rusted door to open Castaway's, rekindling a childhood passion. Beer must be stocked, coolers must be drained, black grouper ($17 a pound) and mangrove snapper ($12 a pound) must ice. There is much to do.
Yachts sway in slips. Overhead, the sun burns through deep blue clouds.
And tomorrow Metz will arrive to work, barefoot.