Steve Shook has lived his fishing life in the fast lane: expensive boats, glitzy destinations, cheering crowds, famous friends, big money — over $1 million in earnings in 1998 alone.
At his peak, he shrugged off $50,000 fishing tournament wins as if they were things that other people see every day.
Most of that is gone now, much of it for healthcare for his beloved wife and fishing partner Ginger.
What’s left is what started: a no-smoking, no-drinking, no-gambling, no-cussing charter fishing guide (Gulf Coast Fishing Charters, 985-860-8634).
Heck, he doesn’t even drink coffee.
The 62-year-old’s first exposure to Fourchon came right after high school, when his track coach took several team members surf fishing.
“We caught speckled trout two at a time,” Shook recalled. “I said, ‘I’m going to go fishing and start a bait company.’”
In the 1970s, he got his bait company — Speck Buster, which he founded with his sister Judy Perkins. Six years later, they sold the company (he kept the name) and he “went fishin’.”
He moved to Fourchon in lower Lafourche Parish to start charter fishing for speckled trout and some offshore fish.
“I put the first trailer down there, even before (legendary offshore charter skipper) Charlie Hardison,” Shook said. “I saw really quickly I could make money along the coast.”
Shook developed a reputation for catching big trout on live pogies.
“I didn’t even let people see me throw a cast net for them. I was a real (jerk) about this,” he ruefully admitted.
Then in 1983, he met Ginger Kief at a store in Leeville.
“On the second day I talked to her, I gave her my Costa Del Mars,” Shook said. “I said, ‘All my women wear Costas or nothing at all.’
“On our first date at Copeland’s Restaurant, she asked to go fishing, so I took her king (mackerel) fishing. She caught a big one. I told her, ‘We can fish tournaments and make big money.’ She said that she would love to do it.”
Together, they made a team that decimated the big-money Southern Kingfish Association tour. Steve won the SKA top male angler of the year in 1998. Ginger followed with top female angler of the year five times, the last time in 2001 — and on top of that she was elected to the SKA Hall of Fame in the same year, still the only woman so honored.
They are an odd couple, appearing to be complete opposites. On the surface Steve quietly speaks with no accent, is straitlaced and easy-going.
“Nothing upsets me,” he said.
Ginger, on the other hand speaks with a lilting, melodic Bayou Lafourche Cajun accent. Her open Gallic veneer hides a competitive nature.
“Don’t be fooled,” warned Steve. “She is more competitive than me — a lot!”
By the time Steve met Ginger, he was already involved in competitive kingfishing. In the mid-1970s he went to the Miami Boat Show to meet Reggie Fountain, owner of Fountain Powerboats, to buy a boat to charter snapper trips.
Fountain invited him to fish in a kingfish tournament in Atlantic Beach, N.C.
“The guy I fished with was Clifton Moss, and he won the tournament,” Shook said. “He wanted to come over here (to Louisiana) and look at some of our big fish. He did and caught a couple of 50-pound kingfish, something very unusual over there. Louisiana has the biggest fish from Texas to Virginia. You fish all day in the Atlantic to catch one 15-pound fish.
“I called Jack Holmes, executive director of SKA and organized the first SKA tournament in Louisiana in Cocodrie, followed by another at Venice.”
After riding high for several years, the Shooks’ SKA era came to a close. The constant pounding administered by high-speed offshore boats compressed nerves in Ginger’s neck. Her problems were compounded when her vagus nerve was nicked during surgery, causing debilitating stomach problems that plague her to this day.
Ginger left the tour after winning her last female angler of the year award in 2001. Steve hung on a while longer, fishing with other partners, and although he scored some big wins the spark was gone and he left the tour, as well.
The Shooks had never abandoned their love of speckled trout fishing, even during their SKA years. Steve rejuvenated his charter fishing business for speckled trout and redfish. They also regularly fished local tournaments, sometimes sweeping all three places in speckled trout.
They won almost every Golden Meadow Tarpon Rodeo for several years, and had wins in the Leeville Fishing Rodeo, the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo, the Grand Isle Speckled Trout Rodeo, the Fourchon Oilman’s Association Fishing Invitational and the Houma Oilman’s Invitational Tournament.
As a licensed charter fishing guide, he was ineligible to participate in the Louisiana Coastal Conservation Association’s STAR Tournament. But wife Ginger, who Steve called “one of the best fishermen who ever was,” was eligible. With Steve acting as her guide, she won an incredible five boats.
By the late 1980s, the couple had 264 plaques on the wall. But things went bad.
“I got a letter uninviting my participation in future Houma Oilman’s Tournaments after winning it two years in a row,” he recalled, obviously smarting.
Then CCA leadership urged them not to enter any more STAR Tournaments.
“I got to thinking,” he said, “that fishing tournaments were family events. So I stopped entering local tournaments.”
Steve became so publicity-shy that even after catching a 10-pound, 8-ounce speckled on June 13, 2012, he refused to enter it into the Louisiana fish records program.
The fish would have placed No. 6 on the all-time list.
Still, ugly rumors hinting of jealousy floated on the bayou about Steve Shook having cheated in fishing tournaments. How could he win so many? Why did he quit entering them? One of the nastiest rumors was of him being barred from the SKA for life for cheating. One version had him injecting mercury in the king mackerel he caught to increase their weight.
About the rumors, which obviously hurt him, he gave a simple answer.
“I didn’t cheat, and I passed every lie detector test I’ve taken after a win,” Shook said.
Jack Holmes of the SKA fairly spluttered in indignation at the SKA-Shook rumors.
“Steve and Ginger are always welcome to compete in the tour,” Holmes said. “I hold them in the highest regard!”
When asked how the rumors got their life, he replied with one word: “Egos!”
