Author T. Edward Nickens shared the following remarks in a special tribute to the late Flip Pallot during BTT's 14th Annual NYC Dinner & Awards Ceremony on October 6, 2025. Republished here from the Spring 2026 Bonefish & Tarpon Journal.
Flip Pallot passed away on August 26 in Thomasville, Georgia, from complications during surgery. Much of what he loved was close at hand—his wife, Diane; fog on early autumn mornings; new ideas for rods and boats. He texted me the night before he left for Georgia that he was ready to get the procedure behind him and get to the deer woods. One thing never changed about Flip: He was ready for the next thing.
What a way to go, and I don't mean that lightly. But to slip the reins of life in your ninth decade, with a full calendar and deals cooking and enough health that you could still climb a tree and pull a longbow up behind you, and go home to a home where the woman of your dreams was waiting and had been right there waiting for nearly 50 years? I'd say Flip won this round.
Flip had a special place in his heart for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. And BTT had a special relationship with Flip from its inception. Flip was an Honorary Trustee. He wrote for the BTT Journal from time to time. He narrated videos for BTT, and his voice, like molasses in a Mason jar of gravel, was the soundtrack for saltwater flyfishing for a generation. During the COVID pandemic, when the New York City event was virtual, his narration brought to life a special moment in BTT's life, when we honored Tom Brokaw, Michael Keaton, Huey Lewis, Tom McGuane, and Bill Klyn. More recently, Flip shot video for BTT's Win Back Our Water campaign, which is probably our most-viewed advocacy spot ever. Flip spoke in Islamorada at Stu Apte's induction into the BTT Circle of Honor, which was the first. Then he was inducted in 2023, winning the Curt Gowdy Memorial Media Award. Not quite three years ago.
Hugging Flip Pallot was like hugging the Charter Oak. Diane once told me that when Flip was guiding full-time, he would roll out of bed at 5 a.m., straight to the floor, and do 500 sit-ups. She would lie in their bed with him huffing—uh, uh, uh—and wonder if she'd married a madman.
He was corded with muscle. Hard. But then his whiskers would scrape your cheek and almost tickle you, and he'd loosen the embrace, and hold you at arm's length and look at you, and you would look back, and it would be like looking into deep time. And you felt the wisdom in there, and you somehow knew he wanted you to share in it. And many of you know what he would say, and would say it so softly. Bye for now.
Sometimes, I swear, I think I would call Flip for no other reason than to hear him say that to me. It was a validation that he cared for you. It was a promise that your paths would cross again, and that he would welcome that day.
I want you to know that Flip Pallot did not fear death. We spoke of this often. He did not fear death. He feared not living. He feared not being vital. He feared not having new stories to tell. He feared not mattering. These fears, of course, were unfounded.
Flip changed the lives of so many people. People in this room. People we will never meet. He spawned generations of guides. Generations of conservationists. Generations of people who changed careers, changed avocations, changed the way they cast a fly rod, changed the way they looked at the world, changed everything. There is great irony in this because change was a force that caused Flip some of his greatest pain. The changes to the Everglades, the Keys, and to Florida Bay were almost crippling to his psyche. And those changes that caused him great pain are the same changes that threaten what we love, and the places we love, and the experiences we love today. The changes that brought Flip such pain are the changes that we are in this room to affect.
It's typical at times like this to have a moment of silence. I'm pretty sure I know what Flip would say about that. He would say: "What the fargin' hell is that all about?" He hated artifice. Wherever he is, he is not so far away that he couldn't come back and kick my ass for doing something trite in his name.
For a moment of silence lasts but a moment. And if Flip taught us anything, it was that life is too short to waste on nonsense.
Instead of a moment of silence, then, in memory of Flip Pallot, my friend, I want to bring to you a charge. A challenge. It's one that Flip lived out himself. I ask you to bring whatever you have—fame, influence, treasure, time, passion, a scientific mind, a network of contacts—and bring it to the one thing that Flip Pallot knew was the only thing that could save South Florida.
Bring it to the fight.