Capt. Bruce Hrobak

Captain Bruce Hrobak has spent more than four decades on Florida's Treasure Coast, and he's spent most of it behind the counter at Billy Bones Bait & Tackle: two shops, one in Port St. Lucie on US-1 and one on Monterey Road in Stuart, run with his wife Debra and son Tanner.

Bruce is a fisherman first. He fishes the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie River for trout, snook, and tripletail, runs offshore for blackfin, mahi, and sailfish, and builds his own rigs when the store-bought ones won't do the job, including the salted squid rigs he ties with the hooks buried inside to get through heavy sargassum.

When the estuary he's fished his whole life was hit by toxic algae from Lake Okeechobee, Bruce was invited to Washington to tell that story on a national stage. He's watched this water through the good years and the bad ones.