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I would have to vote for Steve Shiraka for this award.
I first met Steve back in Worcester in 1976 when #^&#^&#^&#^& Pleska opened his first tackle shop on Grafton Street. A group of the younger guys became friends and usually fished together. Steve and I fished together many times not just for stripers, but also trout, bass, pickerel and perch through the ice, whatever. Steve was to put it mildly, always a little more passionate , a little more inquisitive and a little more experimental than just about anyone I ever met. He had the fever which never subsided and his favorite species was the striped bass which brought him to relocate to the Cape full time in 1983.
But one guy being nuts about fishing does not qualify him to be worthy of much more than a nutty fisherman award. What set Steve apart was his willingness to share his time and knowledge with others with his seminars, advice and writings on fishing websites and also On-The-Water. He had a respect and a reverence for the history of the sport and the people who came before him. To the local striped bass fisherman, he gave some of the best writings on plug history, the people who used them, and the places they traveled. You could see his passion for the game and he shared it.
Frank Woolner was dead-on accurate on most of his assesments of striped-bass fishing. One prediction in his Saltwater Sport Fishing book in 1973 Woolner had wrong though was that wooden plugs would be a thing of the past with the introduction of injection molded plastics. Plastic was better and wood was just about dead except for a small group of fisherman who rediscovered the needlefish and some others who championed the traditional lures for special application. Steve was at the forefront of the line helping to keep the tradition alive and others used their skills to help resurrect the craft.
Heck, I have been striper fishing for thirty something years and I would never even have seen a "Flaptail" lure if it weren't for Steve. It seems like the small community we have here at S-B became his favorite place to talk stripers and we are all lucky for the knowledge he shared with us. This is a little long winded I know, but I believe Steve is worthy of the recognition.
Ed
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