Guides

Friday, February 18, 2005

Cary and I sneak quietly out of the beach house in Captiva at 5:30 am to reach the dock and meet our guide south of Naples, near the Ten Thousand Islands area of the Everglades, by 7:00. Waking a 16-year old at 5:00 am is nearly impossible on a school day, but to do it on a vacation day seems cruel. Still, he staggers to the car, half asleep but enthusiastic on some near-conscious level. I think the most remarkable achievement of my life has been to raise teenagers who actually want to be with me. I am truly blessed.

We have to leave this early to catch the tides just right and spend several hours fly fishing for snook, redfish and maybe even a tarpon. A snook is a tropical saltwater version of a largemouth bass, though typically a good deal larger, with a distinctive thin, black lateral line down each side from head to tail fin. I'm told that they are delicious, but so are redfish and we will keep neither. We're pretty strict catch-and-release guys, as many fly fishermen seem to be.

I drive the two hours down I-75, just the trucks and me, in darkness and silence as Cary sleeps in the backseat. We meet Captain Al at the dock at Goodland, a town in only the most generous sense, a few miles southwest of Naples at a small marina beneath a huge, arching bridge, quickly load a little gear and my favorite 8-weight fly rod onto his 19-foot flats boat and fly off into the still-dark morning.

And I do mean fly. The small white boat, even with three of us aboard, is overpowered and spends a lot of its time slightly airborne. This "flats boat" is a mobile casting platform and only the raised poling station at the rear rises more than a foot or so above the waterline at rest. It is designed to float in a foot of water-- most of our fishing will be in waters only knee-deep-- and to skim the waves like a frisbee at full speed. Cary and I share a bench seat just in front of the boat's center console, with Al right behind us. We hold onto our caps with one hand and put the other in a jacket pocket to keep it warm as the cool morning air hits us at high speed, bringing tears to our eyes and making us shiver as the first rays of light and the promise of warmth creep over the horizon into a sky now the color of polished steel. We are dressed for the 80-degree day ahead of us, not for a wind chill of 37 degrees. The clumps of black shadow we see ahead slowly materialize into mangrove islands and, though Al knows the area like the back of his hand, Cary and I are quickly lost as he threads through them at breakneck speed.

The little boat drifts into the high speed curves, skidding sideways like a skier leaning into his inside edges. Time after time we speed headlong into coves with a mangrove island looming just ahead and no apparent way out, but Al banks the boat hard to the right or left and darts through a gap in the islands that we don't see until the last second. The thrill of the ride to our first fishing site alone is worth the price of admission.

Al cuts back on the throttle and the deafening roar of the outboard is suddenly replaced by a ringing in our ears that will be replaced in turn by near silence. It is eerily quiet. We are far from any populated areas, well into the Everglades, and the only sound we hear is the wake from our boat gently lapping against the mangrove roots. Ospreys nest nearby, alligators doze with one eye open and waterbirds fill the sky, all without making a sound.

Our guide grabs a long pole from the side of the boat and climbs up onto the poling platform where the better viewing angle eliminates surface glare and lets him scan ahead for fish laid up in the mangrove roots as he slowly poles us forward. The sky is brightening, sharp tropical blue now mixing with the early dawn, and we see a small sliver of red first sun on the horizon. The chill of the boatride is replaced by a soul-soothing, late March tropical warmth. We have travelled a thousand miles by plane, sixty more by car and the last five by boat for this moment. It's time to fish.

I move to the front of the boat, stand on the casting deck and begin to make blind casts to the edge of the mangrove roots with a weedless dry fly. It's a technique that is rarely productive, but it fills the time until Al can spot a laid-up fish to which we can sight cast. I cast to the edge of the mangrove roots, strip eight inches of line at a time to make the fly dart a few feet across the water, then backcast and repeat as Al slowly and silently poles us along the mangroves.

Cary fly fishes, but these are long, difficult casts and a bit out of his range. Al notices him sitting quietly watching his dad and suggests that Cary pick up a spinning rod and fish off the other side of the boat. He happily takes a rod, casts a jig opposite my fly casts and quickly begins to hook a strange assortment of fish: a long, skinny ladyfish and a sail catfish come first. The catfish looks just like a river catfish, barbels included, except that it has a tall, surreal sail sprouting four inches from the middle of its back. He's having a ball because our guide was as focused on his customers both enjoying themselves as much as he was focused on finding fish.

We've had less enjoyable experiences. We once hired a guide closer to Captiva to fish Pine Island Sound and avoid the long drive to the Everglades. I should have listened when the guys in the local fly shop told me that Ray "is the best guide around, but he isn't patient or forgiving of inexperienced fly fishermen".

I spoke to Ray on the phone and he suggested that we "fish the lights" for snook. He'd had great luck with them that week. The only downside was that Cary and I would have to meet him at 3:00 am. I had no idea what "fishing the lights" meant, but it turns out that people who own homes on the canals install a light bulb a few feet above the water near their docks. The light attracts baitfish and the snook hold up a few feet away waiting for a meal. If you cast a fly into the lighted area, you might just catch a snook.

Reaching these lights meant quietly cruising with the trolling motor-- it was 3:00 am, after all--past the many close-set homes of millionaires, each with an expensive power boat hanging from a boat lift and many with a small "snook light" at the edge of their dock. The canals were laid out like streets in a suburb. Ray would stop the boat and I would try to cast a fly into the small circle of light.

I had never tried to cast in pitch darkness. Not being able to see your flyline and blinded by staring into a light bulb from nearby darkness is a fly casting challenge to say the least. Ray was visibly disappointed by my ineptitude and seemingly unimpressed by the fact that I was paying him several hundred dollars to help me enjoy my vacation. After about twenty minutes, I got the hang of it, but Cary struggled mightily. The guide mumbled profanities and paced around the boat.

"Urban snook trapping" at 3:00 am was not what I had in mind when I hired a guide. I found it slightly more entertaining than just buying the fish in the seafood department, but then I am rarely criticized for how I push my grocery cart. Ray is a good fly fisherman and he knows where to find fish, but for the life of me, I don't understand how he has enough repeat business to make a living as a guide.

Al, on the other hand, is a pleasure to spend time with even when the fish aren't biting. He understands that his customers want to catch fish, but that they want to enjoy themselves while they're doing it. This year, we decided Al was worth the drive.

Now, the red sun yellows and rises into a brilliant azure sky with just a few wisps of pure white clouds to set off the blue. The gray of the early morning quickly subsides with the risen sun and our world is as bright as a flashbulb. Our jackets are a distant memory. Al spots a snook cruising toward us and off to port.

"See him, Dirk? About twenty feet out at 10:00?"

I pick up the fish quickly, make a quick backcast and then, to my horror, make the worst cast I've made in years. The fly lies motionless 20 feet from the boat and the fly line meanders to it in loose coils on top of the water like a string attached to a burst balloon. Trying hard not to panic, I hold my rod tip near the water and start stripping line rapidly as the snook approaches my fly. The fly sits motionless on the water for what seems like forever as I strip in the loose line, but eventually the fly at its end moves and begins to dart toward me in 8-inch jerks right toward the nose of the snook. At the last instant, the snook notices the fly and makes a hard cut to its right to attack it. I raise my rod tip and set the hook, then break into a smile.

Al breaks into a smile, too.

"Snook fever", he chuckles, referring to my panicked cast upon sighting the fish. Still smiling, he steps down from the platform to help me land the fish, then takes a picture of me holding my first snook. "Nice recovery, though!"

The excitement of the catch soon subsides as I make many more unproductive, blind casts and Al continues scanning the water. I cast ahead of the boat and my fly lands less than a foot from mangrove roots. I am startled as the water explodes around my fly with a sound like a shotgun firing and my flyline pulls taut, but a few seconds later there is silent stillness. I look up at Al on the poling platform with an expression that apparently says, "What the heck just happened?"

Al laughs loudly. "Well, you wanted to hook a tarpon!"

Actually, I wanted to catch a tarpon.

It is now high tide and Al realizes that conditions are no longer ideal for fly rods. "Why don't we put away the long rods, catch some live bait and try the spinning rods?", he asks rhetorically.

We stow the rods and sit down for another mad dash through the mangroves to a place where Al knows he can easily net the minnows he calls "snook candy". He pulls out a net, tosses it over the side, and pulls in enough minnows in a single toss to fill his live well, then we're flying again through the mangrove islands in search of more snook.

Eventually, Al looks at his watch and wrinkles his brow, but not because he is in a hurry to end his workday. He has just realized that Cary has yet to catch a snook. I hook a smallish snook while chatting with our guide, swing the rod back firmly to set the hook and start reeling him in.

"Cary, your Dad caught your snook!", our guide teases.

I appreciate that Al is so intent on Cary catching a snook and he suggests one more place where we might find one before we need to head back to the dock. Another five minutes of sweeping through the 'glades at full throttle and Al once again cuts the outboard, silencing the roar and coasting near a mangrove island. After a few casts, my son hooks a fish. We're all grins as he lands his first snook. I grab the camera and get a shot of Cary holding the fish and standing just in front of Al, who is still on the poling platform. We're actually a little past our allotted time and our guide fires up his outboard one more time for the run back to the dock.

When we reach the car and stow our gear, Cary climbs into the front seat. We are at the same time tired and exhilarated from rising at the crack of dawn to fish all day. I point the rental car back toward Captiva and we head up the interstate, listening to the radio, resting and saying little. He is soon asleep. You're at peace with the world when you're exhausted.

Down the road, something awakens Cary for just a minute. He rolls his head toward me, too tired to lift it from the headrest, as we cruise up the four-lane highway, his eyelids drooping and a slight smile on that wonderful, teenaged face.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"I think that's the best fishing trip we ever took."

Now, that's a guide.