DATE: Saturday, November 1, 1997            TAG: 9710310117

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY  AND BOB HUTCHINSON, STAFF WRITERS 

                                            LENGTH:  172 lines

WANCHESE WATERMAN ENDING LONG CAREER OF GUIDING ANGLERS CHARTER CAPTAIN OMIE TILLETT SPENT 50 YEARS AT SEA.

SCANNING THE iridescent Atlantic, Omie Tillett squints behind dark glasses. The sun is starting to float from the sea. The craggy captain is searching for a sign.

``There's a board out here. We'll try that,'' he calls from the cockpit of his 53-foot boat. ``These fish'll lay around anything floating. You boys get your bait up.''

Ten minutes later, a 40-pound tuna bounces across the back deck.

Omie Tillett knows how to find fish.

For 50 years, this Wanchese waterman has carried charter parties into the Gulf Stream. He's helped anglers catch king mackerel and sailfish and 700-pound blue marlin. Six days a week, he's awoken at 3 a.m., dressed in the dark and spent 12 hours on the Atlantic.

Now, the Old Man of Oregon Inlet is about to retire.

He wants to slow down, he says. Travel to Florida for a church revival. Take his wife rockfishing under the bridge in his little boat.

``Comes a time you have to lay down your life's work,'' says Tillett, 68, who was named Captain of the Year this week by the Oregon Inlet fishing mates. ``Leave it for the young people. Take time for yourself.''

Tillett has spent the past half-century giving to others.

He and his dad started a small fleet of boats that took the first group of people fishing offshore. He taught at least 10 of Oregon Inlet's captains and mates how to tie lines when they were boys. He built seven sleek 53-foot boats by hand.

And each morning at sunrise, he leads anglers in a prayer, preaching over a radio microphone from behind his silver steering wheel:

``We thank you, Lord, for another beautiful day. For this group of fishermen together on the water. For the safety of our families we've left back on shore.''

Fishermen at Rudee Inlet heard Omie's invocation in 1990. The prayer ritual caught on with Virginia Beach charter captains that summer. Anglers say Omie's influence may not have saved many souls, but it's cut back on swearing, fighting and drinking at the docks.

``His prayin' has toned down rowdiness around here, for sure,'' said Charles Haywood, a mate in the Oregon Inlet fleet. ``All the BS stops when Omie's around. He's the best man in the world to learn from 'cause he don't mind teaching you.''

Once Tillett retires, the other captains reckon, someone will take over the 6:30 a.m. airwaves service.

But no one will ever be able to influence them like Omie.

``Pops is one of the good ones. He has a wealth of knowledge. He always takes time for everyone,'' says Dicky Harris. The 42-year-old Outer Banks fisherman has worked with Tillett half his life. He's buying Tillett's boat, the Sportsman, after Omie ties it up for the last time next month.

``I'm gonna change the name, though,'' Harris says. ``There's only one Sportsman. And that's Omie. They ought to retire his name. I wouldn't want to try to fill his shoes. It can't be done.''

Tillett's father, Sam, took folks fishing around the Outer Banks during the Depression. He took his 10-year-old boy along to rig bait. Omie dropped out of school in the eighth grade to work as a full-time mate for his dad.

By the time he was a teen-ager, Omie Tillett was running his own boat.

After World War II, Sam Tillett and his son ventured out of the shallow sounds and started ferrying sports fishermen offshore, 20 miles or more into the Atlantic. They and about a dozen other local captains caught the area's first tuna, marlin and dolphin fish. Omie Tillett has taken hundreds of folks from all over the world fishing - and caught thousands of saltwater fish.

``My first boat was a 36-footer named Tony, after my brother,'' Omie Tillett said last week while hunting king mackerel. ``Didn't have a big enough gas tank to make the Gulf Stream trip. Had to bring extra gas cans along. Didn't have radios. So only went about 30 miles offshore. Charged $65 a day.''

Offshore charters now cost $900 for a six-person party. Captains often go 70 miles or more chasing marlin. And the 50- to 56-foot boats have built-in coolers, bathrooms and bunks.

``Faster boats, more modern equipment, better tackle have all helped fishing,'' Tillett says. ``There's not so much guesswork involved any more. But fishing will never be the same as it was.

``There's just so many more people out there on the ocean. The fish are getting smarter. And there are so many rules. You've got to have rules, though. Got to put speed limits on the roads, don't you? Man can't control himself.

``When I started out, fishing was at its peak. Now, we're all in trouble. Everything changes.'' Sam and Omie Tillett opened a little eatery on the south end of Nags Head in 1950. Waitresses served fresh seafood. And bartenders booked charter fishing trips out of Oregon Inlet.< The Tilletts sold Sam and Omie's five years later. ``Took away too much time from our fishing,'' Omie Tillett says. But the restaurant - which sports the same name today - still serves three meals a day on bare wooden tables.

In 1959, Tillett began working for Wanchese boat builder Warren O'Neal. He spent the next 20 years building boats. His four vessels that still fish out of Oregon Inlet are considered among the best crafted and most beautiful in the fleet.

``When it comes to boats, he can do it all, from electronics to a 1,000-horsepower diesel,'' says Omie Tillet's brother, Tony, who runs a charter boat from two berths away. ``And when he was building boats, they were as pretty as you ever saw.''

Omie opened his own shop in 1973, building a boat each winter when the weather was too rough to run charter trips.

``I'd much rather work on the water,'' says Tillett, who shut down his shop in the early '80s to extend his fall fishing season and get away from the glue fumes. ``I got a much better job than the president.''

The ruddy-faced captain with close-cropped white hair also enjoys pulling practical jokes. One winter he was building a boat with skipper Lee Perry. Crawling on his knees, Perry was nailing planks to the underside of a hull.

Tillett tossed a handful of 20-penny nails in the path of Perry's knees. Each time Perry came down on a nail, he jumped up and banged his head on the hull. Four nails and four noggin knocks later, Perry saw how his boss had tricked him.

Sunny Briggs, a boat builder who worked as a mate aboard the Sportsman 30 years ago, says it's almost impossible to pull a prank on Tillett.

``A lot of people have tried,'' Briggs says. ``But Omie's too smart. Most of the time he turned the trick right around on the would-be trickster.''

Omie has been married to his wife, Patsy, for 48 years and has two grown daughters and five grandchildren. He eats Sunday supper with his family each week. He spent several years drinking on the docks each evening until dark with his buddies. Then a friend asked him to come to church.

At 40, Tillett began fishing for Jesus.

``Watermen say they can't get rigged up. Boat's always broke down. Needs work,'' says the captain, his indigo eyes earnest beneath a blue baseball cap. ``The spirit told me, Omie, you are rigged up - you got me.''

Although he's preached to his floating flock for 28 years, other anglers say Tillett never tries to convert them - or condemn them.

``He's a godly man. He'll share his love of that with you. But he doesn't try to push you that way at all,'' mate Keith Briggs says of Tillett, his boss for seven years. ``Even people who drink and swear a lot on his boat, he thinks they're good people. I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone.''

A trim man with scarred hands who wears deck shoes, khakis and button-up shirts on board, Tillett speaks softly and has a sincere smile. He's a gentle man who is excited with life. When he greets strangers, he clasps their hand in both of his.

``I feel like I've known him for 30 years,'' says Tommy Thompson, a Richmond pharmacist who climbed aboard Tillett's boat for the first time last week. ``He just turns the bait bucket upside down beside you and puts his arm around you. He's a warm, down-to-earth guy.''

Unlike younger captains who blare music from their consoles or chatter on the marine radio all day, Omie keeps things quiet. He listens to the waves slapping his stern instead of the airwaves. And he makes a quick kissing smack to attract his assistant's attention instead of yelling orders at the mate.

``That gets him to look up - but doesn't let the fishermen know I'm calling him,'' Tillett says of his secret signal. ``I try not to offer advice too often. You gotta help people along without telling them what to do.''

Tillett's talent for fishing, however, often is sought out. Charter parties wait four months or more to book a trip aboard the captain's white boat. Some people have fished with Omie each summer for more than 40 years. Other captains call him on the radio asking how to tackle an array of problems. Anglers say he's caught more fish than anyone else at Oregon Inlet.

``He helps everyone - even those who don't ask,'' Briggs says. ``He'll hear someone is in trouble and he'll get out of bed at 1 a.m. to fix their engine. He's got a big, big heart.

``And he knows everything there is to know about fishing and boats.''

Tillett's daughter Dolly Cheramie says her dad won't be able to stop fishing after he retires. He's devoted his life to family, God and fishing, she says. He won't be content off the water.

``I think he'll end up taking people out rockfishing in the sound or on in-shore trips in smaller boats,'' she says. ``I don't think he'll be happy just staying at home. He loves people too much.''

Tillett also adores the fish.

``I enjoy catching fish. It makes people happy,'' he says. ``That's what's kept me coming out for 50 years.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Drew Wilson/The Virginian-Pilot

Omie Tillet starts fishing trips by leading anglers in prayer.

Photo

DREW WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Waterman Omie Tillett was named Captain of the Year by Oregon Inlet

fishing mates this week. KEYWORDS: PROFILE

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