It ain't no use if it ain't chaaarrrtroooose
Can there be anything much better than standing up to your balls in warm salty water, surrounded by pelicans, strafed by frigate birds, an Osprey stood behind you on the hot sand eating a mullet, while you cast a fly for unfamiliar and exotic fish…………?
The mooring post is about 20 yards from the end of the breakwater. The rip forces a hump of green brine immediately uptide of the post, a burbling foamy furrow downtide.
A good focal point. Cast, uptide mend, swing.
Overshoot the post and correct instantly, or lose the Clouser for sure. Or cast short and catch less.
Just past the post and a couple of sharp jerks precede the rod slamming over. A smallish tin lid flashes silver. No more than 1½ lbs. A Skimmer Bream on steroids and speed? Actually a Jack Crevalle, initially immovable in this current with a #7 weight fly rod. As it comes to hand, bruiser’s forehead, prominent black spot on yellow stained silver, the pterodactyl Pelicans shuffle or drift closer. The Rusty Egret sharing your ledge leans forward intently. Bugger off!, go catch your own!
Another swing. Solid. The line thrums, the current forcing the barbless point deeper into the soft wood. “No matter how much you wiggle and dance”……..that fly’s a goner.
Another swing. Round to a dangle. Strip, strip, strip, BANG! Another Jack Crevalle. Probably about 3lb. If you’d just arrived, didn’t know, fighting like that, you’d expect double figures…………
Like on that very first day in Florida , wading that shallow slough, shorts n’ Pacific Fly shirt, Snook Cap n’ shades. Bikini clad posing daughter at your side. Swallow Tailed Frigates cruising overhead, Skimmers dividing the surface. You were trailed by opportunistic Egrets, and the ever hopeful Pelicans. Royal Terns were standing around on the sand bar, looking impossibly big, (for terns). As you passed amongst them they grudgingly moved aside.
Second ever cast into the Gulf of Mexico and the Olive, Chartreuse and White Polar Bear Deceiver, was slammed by a small Jack. Which cartwheeled across the wavelets with a full flyline almost languidly snaking after it. Daughter lost her cool composure long enough to shout, “Wow! Dad! It’s just like Rex Hunt!”………..(then a quick, raised shades, embarrassed, glance around, checking the reaction of the beautiful people to her uncontrolled outburst). The fish, much smaller than the fight suggested, was still your heaviest fish of 2003 at the time.
Back to the mooring post. Hump and furrow are subsiding now, soon they’ll switch places. A sharp exhale of pressurised breath behind. Turning, looking, recognition followed by a few ungracious seconds of “well that’s fooked the fishing!” Dolphins. Showing how easy it really is, one surfacing on the other side of the post with the length of a good Snook hanging from its jaws. A stampede of Hawaiian clad sun worshippers rush waist deep into the warm green, casting entreaties and inflatable toys upon the waters. The Dolphins, cooler even than teen daughters, studiously ignore the hordes, blank them, unreachable even only 5 yards away, talking only to each other, eyes only for the fish. Like anglers?
The fishing isn’t fecked. But you have to swing the other way now. Tap, tap, tap, tap, BANG!, nothing………
Swing again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, BANG!, nothing………
Swing again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, BANG!, nothing………
Swing again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, BANG!, nothing………
Check the fly you idiot. Point snapped off at the bend. Getting tired, back cast dropping, clipping the rocks behind. Last Clouser Minnow as well. OK, pack up early; you could use the brownie points anyway.
Stopping off at the Marco Island Marina on the way back, “another half dozen Clousers please”…….”Sorry? Oh, right. No thanks, no other colours, just the Chartreuse & White, that’s the only colour that seems to work…………………”