GROWING UP GARMANY A Southern Fishing Tradition

When Robert Garmany was just a 13-year-old kid first learning what it feels like to fight a determined 300-plus-pound blue marlin, he contemplated quitting an hour into the grueling battle. Once the exhausted teenager announced that he couldn’t keep on fighting, his father, Capt. Bobby Garmany, roared down from the bridge of Boodaddy, “Garmanys do not quit!”

With lightheartedness and reverence, Robert recalls: “I’ll leave out the rest of what he said, but from that moment on, I knew our dad had a different standard of excellence for his sons than anyone else around him. I knew I had to finish the battle.” Courtesy of his father’s assertiveness and his own determination, Robert pushed through and released his first blue marlin, reinforcing a lesson that still resonates today as one of the proudest moments of his life.

All three of Bobby Garmany’s sons—Robert, William and Thomas—have carried their father’s high standard of excellence into adulthood. Now in their 20s and 30s, they each have successful careers in sport fishing and other outdoor-related industries. Bobby’s sons have established themselves as skilled, hardworking and decorated young men—something all three sons attribute to their father and the lessons he shared with them as kids.

THE JUDGE

Anyone familiar with Charleston, South Carolina’s sport-fishing community knows that Capt. Bobby is undoubtedly one of its cornerstones. Throughout his 35-year career as a professional fisherman, he has worked for many, , , , and now the Charleston-based He is a regular competitor in the South Carolina Governor’s Cup Billfishing Series and is tied for the most overall wins by a captain, having won the series on different boats in 1995, 1999 and 2016. Bobby has fished all over the world but currently spends summers along the Atlantic Coast of the United States and winters in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. As committed to the stewardship of marine resources as he is to maintaining boats and finding fish, he currently serves as an adviser to the South Carolina Governor’s Cup as the chair of its Tournament Committee, a body that proposes series rules and encourages the conservation of billfish species. His past and current contributions to the future of sport fishing will benefit his sons, future generations of Garmanys, and the billfish community as a whole.