York Co. kayakers take to the Catawba to remember fellow fisherman

About an hour after Sunday morning broke, frigid, with temperatures in the upper 30s, a group of kayak fishermen gathered on the Catawba River to pay their respects to a fellow angler who lost his battle with lung cancer last week.

Mike “Catawba” Byrne – who grew up in Ohio, moved to the Carolinas in 1980, and worked for 35 years as a computer data analyst for Continental Tire – died Wednesday. He was 58.

Fishermen began arriving around 8 a.m., and within an hour, some 20 kayakers had put into the Catawba River below the Lake Wylie Dam to pay their respects to their friend and comrade.

Kathy Byrne spoke Sunday of her husband’s love for the river and how he didn’t care if he caught fish or not – being on the Catawba was all that mattered.

His friends described Byrne as an icon on the river and an avid fisherman.

Tim “Stew Rat” Stewart remembered how Byrne insisted on fishing from a canoe in a world of “kayak people.” If you met him once, Stewart said, you would have felt like you had known him for 10 years.

Stewart Venable of Fort Mill, whose friendship with Byrne dates back 12 years, said Byrne was nice to everybody he met – it didn’t matter if you had met him 10 years or 10 minutes ago.

Byrne was “the thread” of the local fishing community, Venable said, specifically those who fished from canoes and kayaks. Byrne was known as the guy always willing to lend a hand, even to people he didn’t know.

He made a point of introducing fishing to people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing, and having them catching fish within a couple of hours.

Byrne was a regular volunteer for the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation. Whenever the group would perform a river sweep cleanup, Stewart said, Byrne would be the first one there and the last one out.

Ronnie “Captain Ron” Watkins described Byrne as the most laid-back guy he had ever met. When some of the kayakers would be nervous approaching river rapids, Byrne would just light up his pipe and say, “Hey, let’s go.”

Watkins called Byrne “a fishing Jerry Garcia,” since nothing got him too excited, even when he caught big fish. He even kind of looked like the late leader of the Grateful Dead.

A morning paddle, fishing as they drifted downstream, with a stop on an island for lunch. A time to reflect on memories of a man with whom they shared a love of the river.

As one fisherman said, “It’s our church, our service.”

This story was originally published February 7, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "York Co. kayakers take to the Catawba to remember fellow fisherman."