An Excerpt from the book: Big Fish Better Boats. The History of Sportfishing and Boatbuilding on the Outer Banks by Bethany Bradsher, with Foreward and Interviews by Capt. Charles Perry.
Not every old-timer who made a living fishing off the Outer Banks had the experience of catching a grander, or winning a major fishing tournament, or setting up in a plethora of giant bluefin tuna. But every captain, mate, or boatbuilder who spent time there in the 1950s or 1960s has at least one priceless Lee Perry story. As the captain of the Deepwater for a quarter century and a fixture at the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center and in various boatbuilding shops, Perry was a character without equal along the coast. The phrases he coined, often in blustery, lisp-accented enthusiasm when he had a good bite, are still part of the everyday vernacular on the Outer Banks. Odds are excellent that a weekday lunch at Sam and Omie’s will be punctuated by at least one Lee Perry tale.
Photos Courtesy Capt. Charles Perry
Lee had a speech impediment resulting from a childhood cleft palate repair, and that characteristic, along with his tendency to talk faster when he was excited, meant that some charter clients might spend the whole day on his boat without understanding much of what he said. He also had cataracts, and to correct his vision he wore thick glasses that resembled the bottoms of Coca-Cola bottles.
He was at his most animated when at the bridge of his fishing boat, said Charles Perry, who was Lee’s first cousin. When he hooked a marlin or another big fish, he loved to share his enthusiasm with fellow captains over the radio, and everyone in the fleet would gather around so they wouldn’t miss a syllable.
“Fishing excited him as much as anyone could get excited, Charles Perry said. “The last blue marlin he saw was just as exciting as the first blue marlin he saw, I promise you. Sometimes he would get so charged up that he forgot he was holding the mic button down on the radio. He’d talk nonstop for three or four minutes.”
All of us would be laughing. He was hilarious. “We’d sit up on the bridge and listen and laugh and laugh.”
It was during one such outburst that Capt. Lee coined one of his most enduring “Lee-isms.” He almost always ate crackers while he steered the boat, and on one particular day, when his crew brought in a big marlin, he took to the radio to describe his reaction to the catch. “Soda crackers all over the bridge!” he shouted, thus originating one of the region’s favorite descriptive phrases for a big fishing day. And as Charles Perry discovered to his delight in Costa Rica in 2021, the expression isn’t limited to the Outer Banks; he couldn’t believe his ears when he heard a stranger over the radio exclaim, “Soda crackers all over the bridge!”
If a young angler was going to sign on as Lee’s mate he needed to come in with a healthy self-esteem, since Lee was known for withering criticisms of mates on slow fishing days. Mike Merritt remembers walking out to Lee’s boat at the fishing center one day and overhearing Lee telling a charter client that he wouldn’t be able to hook a marlin that day because of his mate. “He can’t hook ‘em!”
Lee said, “I’m not going to take you marlin fishing because the damn boy can’t hook a marlin.”
Lee was also legendary for hiring, firing and rehiring mates at a dizzying rate, depending on that day’s results. Sunny Briggs mated for him in his early years on the waterfront, and he learned not to take the “layoffs” too seriously. “I fished with him for five seasons, and I got fired a lot, Briggs said, “He would fire and rehire daily. Once it happened to me three times in a day. You would hook a good fish, and he would say, ‘Good job, you’re rehired.”
Photos Courtesy Capt. Charles Perry
Regular charter clients got to know Lee and his idiosyncrasies, and he had a polarizing effect, Briggs said. “Lee had charters who would either fish with him once and say, I’m never going to fish with him again, or they would fish with him and they didn’t ever want to fish with anyone else.
“He made me a better person,” Briggs said. “People say, ‘How can you see someone who’s bent out of shape with you, cussing and carrying on, and just look at them and smile.’ And my answer is, ‘I worked for Lee Perry. I’ve heard it all, and it made me thick-skinned. But he was a good man. He was a unique character but he had a heart of gold, and he would help anybody.”
Even if Lee was easy to mess with, the more established he got on the waterfront the more readily he would give it right back. When he reported a blue marlin catch on the radio, a fellow captain would respond by saying “shark” to get him riled up, suggesting that what he had caught wasn’t really a marlin. Lee grabbed his radio and hollered, “Whoever sharked me, come on over here to my boat. I’ll cut your heart out!”
Lee didn’t just enliven offshore fishing trips; he also added spice to the long days spent building boats in the off-season. When he worked with Omie Tillett in Warren O’Neal’s shop, Lee was on the receiving end of numerous practical jokes. He was an irresistible target for such pranks, because his reactions were unforgettable. On one particular afternoon, Lee and Omie were assisting Warren on the construction of the Sea Byrd. The two men were in the cabin together, doing framing work, and Omie repeatedly dropped nails in front of Lee, knowing that every time Lee hit one with his knee, he would jerk up and hit his head on the ceiling in the cramped space. He also glued Lee’s toolbox to the floor.
From outside the cabin, Warren heard repeated loud thuds, mixed with expletives in Lee’s unmistakable voice. After a few of the thumps, Lee would crawl out, examine his nail pouch and then re-enter the cabin, when the events would start again. “Loud stammering followed the next wallop and Lee climbed out of the hull,” Neal Conoley recounted in his book Carolina Flare. “He stomped over to his workbench, removed his nail belt and reached down to pick up his toolbox. In anger, he jerked up on the toolbox but it wouldn’t budge. Lee mumbled a few words, gave the box a swift kick and hobbled out of the shop.”
Mike Merritt loves to retell another Lee Perry classic: the pudding story. Back then, they kept the epoxy glue in big cut-off gallon milk jugs; Omie would tell everyone in the county to save their milk jugs and drop them off at his shop. When you mixed up the glue in the jug, it had a pale yellow color and looked like vanilla custard. Lee would often comment, “Omie, it looks like pudding. It looks like you could eat it.”
One day a local captain named Alan Foreman was there, and he and some of the other guys went to lunch at a local deli. They passed a grocery store and saw a six-pack of Del Monte vanilla pudding in the window, which gave Foreman an idea. He bought the pudding, and when he got back, he secretly dumped three of the cups into an empty epoxy jug, then grabbed the wooden stick they always used to stir the glue and walked out in front of Lee.
“You know something, Lee?” Alan said. “This stuff looks just like pudding; I declare I believe you could eat it”
“You better not eat that, boy” Lee replied.
“I believe I’ll eat it.”
“I’ll bet you five dollars you won’t do it.”
When Alan put the stick full of “epoxy” in his mouth, Lee cried out, “Ohhhhh my god, you’re gonna die! Omie, he’s gonna die!” Then he reached into his pocket, found some crumpled bills and held them out to Alan. “Well, I’ve got three dollars here, but if you’re still alive tomorrow I’ll give you the other two!”
Lee died in 2019, but it is a certainty that his influence will be felt for generations in and around Oregon Inlet. In a county that is renowned for colorful characters, Lee elevated nonconformity to an art form without ever trying to do so. He was hilarious, gullible and good-natured, and in his one-of-a-kind way he helped give the Outer Banks fishing culture its distinct character.
Order Big Fish Better Boats directly from Charles Perry at BigFishBetterBoats.com to get a personalized inscription.
