Tanned, weathered fingers and a flat 6-inch piece of plastic are to Buddy Clyatt what brushes and a palette are to a painter. They are the tools of his artistry - making custom nets for a range of tasks from custom fishing nets, to recreation nets, to safety nets.

"He's pretty much the best around," says Steve Harkney, a biological scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in St. Petersburg. "We've been getting custom nets from him for a long time." We have field labs around the state and when they have a net they can't repair they bring them down here and we take them to Buddy. He really knows his stuff."

Most recently Clyatt has been making a 600-yard-long, 10-foot-high trammel net for the agency to use to encircle mullet for sorting and tagging. The net consists of three walls of different mesh material deftly spliced together by Clyatt.

Starting with the three sections of mesh anchored at one end of a concrete block wall outside his business, Clyatt whips bonded nylon cord attached to the plastic "needle" tying the mesh together every six inches with rolling hitch knots.

"I can do about 100 yards a day, if I'm lucky," Clyatt said. "This is very labor intensive and hard on your eyes." Even more labor intensive are the circus nets Clyatt produces using braided rope. He said those nets are 20 feet wide by 60 feet long, with apron nets on each side. He deftly separates the braid on the cords every two inches forming the top, bottom and sides with his sturdy fingers. He then feeds similar strands through those openings, going over and under the alternating cross ropes and tying them to the primary ropes with ridge line knows to create a net with 2-inch mesh. "They are really labor intensive," Clyatt said. "I spend about six hours a day for 3.5 months of circus nets."

Other Cyatt-produces fishing nets include shrimp trawls, large haul seines and individual mullet cast nets for serious netters.

"Every net is made different. I've go a general knowledge of every kind," he said.

In a recent change of pace, Clyatt designed and constructed special netting that was attached underneath the front of pontoon boats to skim away green algae in ponds at Celebration, Walk Disney World's neo-traditional community near Orlando. He said the boats push the algae onto the shore where it is cleaned up.

In another instance, Clyatt provided safety to shoppers when he installed netting in the Orange Blossom Plaza at Lake Wales to keep pigeons out of the rafters.

He also makes nets for golf driving ranges, makes and installs safety nets and rope lines, including nets and lines for waterfront recreational area at a subdivision near Clermont in Central Florida, and is scheduled to to to Chicago to do rope work at a zoo in the Windy City. Clyatt took up net making in the 80's, his solution to retirement boredom after 30 years of operating shrimp boats in the Gulf and Caribbean. His entry into custom net-making was not planned. While searching for webbing at a warehouse near the Tampa banana docks, Clyatt struck up a conversation with Jerry Spaulding, then co-owner of Peninsular Marine & Fisherman's Supply Co.

That gave Clyatt the impetus to eventually run his own business.

Raised in the Ballast Point area of South Tampa, the Clyatt, 65 raised his family in house on the Interbay Boulevard in Port Tampa. His two sons and a daughter graduated from Robinson High School.

Several years later he sold the Port Tampa house and moved to Redington Shores in Pinellas County. He has no plans to retire and intends to continue commuting to his South Tampa shop.

"I've retired three times already and I didn't like it." Clyatt says.

This article was taken from the Tampa Tribune. This article has been altered some to fit the web.

Buddy and his wife Earlene now reside in North Carolina where they continue
the tradition and mastery of custom made nets.