A fisherman, frozen in bronze, is pulling in a net full of mullet. He wears a straw hat and a determined look. The statue, recently installed on the waterfront of this century-old fishing village in Manatee County, was dedicated Saturday.

There were celebratory words and a fish fry. But many of those who have made their living bringing mullet to these gritty docks have bittersweet feelings about what a bronze statue says about their village.

"It's nice that they pay homage to our history," said Mark Taylor, 50, a former fisherman who now works in the Manatee County parks department. "I'm just sad that it's in the past tense."

The commercial net ban of 1995 largely eliminated not only an industry, but a culture. In Cortez, fishermen either have fled the business or have scraped by on crabbing and far less lucrative kinds of fishing. It's a crossroads that has been traversed by several commercial fishing communities around the state with varying degrees of success.

Cedar Key has been transformed into a clam farming powerhouse, and Steinhatchee has seen a boom in businesses that support sport fishing -- to the chagrin of those who believe leisure anglers had a big part in passing the net ban.

And Cortez? It is idling at the intersection, as residents try to figure out how to keep the smell of fish in the air and tourists on the main road.

"I'm not sure where they're going," said Michael Jepson, a University of Florida associate professor who lived in the village for 18 months as he researched Florida fishing families. "I don't think they know either."

The end of a tradition

While other people in fishing communities in the state share some of those sentiments, some have found the mounting economic pressures too great

Janalea Smyrnios, 21, works for her parents in the family-owned fish house in Steinhatchee. The town used to have four working fish houses -- the waterfront warehouses where fish are bought and sold -- but only two are left.

The Smyrnios family is considering turning its property into a marina, she said, which is tantamount to serving the opposition. A coalition of environmental and sport fishing groups is credited with the petition drive to put the net ban on the ballot in 1994. The constitutional amendment, which took effect the following year, outlawed large commercial nets in state waters.

"I hate it that I'm fixing to have to switch and cater to my enemy -- the people who shut me down," Smyrnios said.

Steinhatchee, she said, has changed dramatically since the ban. Motel and restaurant owners began courting the tourist crowd during summer scallop season. Smyrnios said tourists have the annoying habit of parking wherever they please and leaving trash behind. But they tend to pay their bills.

"You've got to survive," Smyrnios said.

That's pretty much how fishermen in Cedar Key felt about clam farming at first, said Leslie Sturmer, a shellfish aquaculture extension agent for the University of Florida. No one was exactly thrilled by it, but that attitude began to change as success took hold.

A combination of very good water quality, currents that frequently flush the growing beds and a training program for clam farming contributed to an exponential rise in production and sales.

"We call it "Clamalot,' " Sturmer said.

But it's not nirvana. Although it's better than being a plumber, Sturmer said, clam farmers still talk wistfully about net fishing, about the thrill of the catch.

"It's in their blood," she said. "It's part of their being. It's their tradition and heritage."

That is the crux of the problem for Cortezians, as they call themselves. They desperately don't want to give that up despite the fact that there are few ways to make a living from the business.

The annual tally of fish landed in Cortez tells the story of economic decline: The catch went from nearly 7.6-million pounds in 1994, the last full year before the net ban, to almost 3.8-million pounds in 1999, the latest year for which state data are available.

Mark Taylor remembers the better times. To say he grew up in the village, the son of a fisherman, only scratches the surface of how special a life it was. It was a bit of old Florida perched on Sarasota Bay, just a mile or so from Manatee County's popular beaches.

Here is a detail, one that makes Taylor both laugh and hurt at the memory: As a child, he rarely wore shoes, even to school in the village.

"It's not that I didn't have shoes," he said. "My mama got me shoes. But I'd take 'em off and put them in the bushes, and then put them back on when I came home."

Following his father and grandfather, Taylor made his living fishing. Declining fisheries and increasing regulations made it difficult even before the net ban. But once the ban took effect, his equipment and his life became obsolete. He tried a couple of other jobs, including long-distance truck driving.

Two years ago, he got a job operating heavy equipment for the county. The pay is regular. The hours allow him to see his wife more. But it doesn't fill up his soul the way fishing did. Not even close. The village hasn't fared well either, he said.

"It's a sad thing to see the waterfront deteriorating and falling down and not as many boats going out," Taylor said. "But there's still a sense of pride among the people down there. . . . My hat's off to them."

Continuing struggle

Residents have talked about limits on house sizes because an influx of large houses would price them out of their waterfront neighborhood, said Hoffman, the waterfronts manager

And although a few people want to boost tourism in the village, most would like to keep a working commercial waterfront, said Karen Bell, who runs Bell Fish Co., one of the remaining fish houses in the village.

"What I would like to see is the commercial industry get stronger if possible," said Bell. "It's really important to me, and I don't know if the fishermen even realize it when they complain about prices, but it costs a lot to keep this building operating."

The few fishermen who still are trying to make a go of it are going out whenever they can, weather and regulations permitting. These days, it's stone crab season, and so far the catch is good.

Mark Ibasfalean, 38, is one of those hustling to make a living from the gulf. He keeps an eye on the time, to make sure he's working only during state-specified hours. And he's always ready to be boarded by the Florida Marine Patrol, which he says constantly monitors fishermen.

In the course of a year, he goes from pulling stone crab traps to catching bait fish to using hand-thrown nets to harvest mullet. His wife, Capt. Kim, runs a sightseeing boat for hire. All told, he said, they're working a lot harder for less.

"You've got to be able to jump from one thing to another," he said. "We've survived it. But it's not what it used to be."

The commercial net ban of 1995 endangers the culture of a village many fishermen have called home.

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