If I lived there still I might get tired of it. Maybe. (If I lived there I’d do everything possible to be in the express lane passing through Whitewater Bay.) But if I’m down there and I have a free moment in the right place, it’s a safe bet to figure what’s lighting up my train of thought.
Tishan played free shows at the park across from Burger King and when you can’t drive yet you go where you can get to. The crowd always strange–kids, the elderly, homeless, surfers with bloodshot eyes. The music is not really for you but it gets into you and it’s a short leap beyond Legend to King Yellowman and the yearly Sunsplash at the Sportatorium and for a while when you’re young music is as much a part of you as breathing.
Tagged: Brutal Out Deh
In the back corner I sat and ate two cheeseburgers at the saddest fast food joint in the universe. It occupies the ground floor of a building off Lincoln Road, through the gauntlet of shops and street performers and open air restaurants filled with people drawn in from every habited continent. A current of energy flows by, funneling from Collins and Washington and A1A, but it doesn’t swirl into the windowless interior where the broken silver haired man sits staring at an empty cup of coffee. The Venetian is the back way off the island, safeguarded by a series of toll booths and draw bridges that bring transit to a halt. At the foot of one bridge women on skateboards wait for the gates…
Tagged: Biscayne Bay, South beach, tarpon
When there is no time afforded you have to steal some. Five casts. Fifty casts. Five hundred. Whatever it takes to make something out of another thing that you don’t rightfully have. One jump should suffice to bend it back in your favor.
Tagged: largemouth bass, stealing
Marquesa is a book penned well before the existence of blogs, but it is the type of published work every fly fishing blogger wishes he’d written. Author Jeffrey Cardena’s account of his solitary venture by houseboat in the Marquesas Keys, an atoll sitting 30 miles west of Key West, is as compelling a first person fishing narrative as you’ll read. Cardenas was, and still is, a well-regarded Keys fishing guide, but his words are not confined to that world. He writes without pretense, in a natural voice that perfectly reflects his sheer joy and wonderment from being immersed in this wilderness with tarpon, permit, sharks and even cassiopea. He limits his descriptions of the actual fly fishing–a very good thing–and when he does talk about it…
Tagged: book review, Departure Publishing, Jeffrey Cadenas, Key West, Marquesa, permit, tarpon
As it swims closer along the bank it becomes apparent we are dealing with something of more substantial immensity than the chunky black bass standing sentinel over the drain pipe. It makes the heart skip a beat and the eyes move toward the bass bug tied to your tippet and the assorted others in your wallet, and you realize there’s a problem. It swims lazily by and pokes at things and it could be 20 pounds. The ficus aren’t blooming and the man told you to tie up a green san juan worm because if someone’s trimming grass nearby it becomes a chum situation. Or match the hatch, if you choose to look at it that way. But you didn’t. Then it swims away…
The whole thing started with the least of expectations. I had a rod and some time to kill due to a delayed appointment. I made some casts. I caught nothing. I drove to the appointment. Delayed again, for another hour. I google mapped. I found nearby water. I tried a new fly. On my first cast I caught a mayan cichlid. Sweet. Then I saw a dark swirling shape hanging out near a submerged drain pipe. I made a cast. A largemouth bass with a middling amount of heft liked my offering. OK, cool. I released the bass. Then I saw two bulbous fish cruising the shoreline at a fast clip. I made a lead cast. One charged like a mofo. It took off…
Makes sense about that pre-wiring for ambush.
Tagged: adventures in ditch fishing, peacock bass
I would never argue they’re the most challenging fish or that casting from a mowed patch of St. Augustine equates with an emerald bonefish flat, but it’s something I like to do. And on the technicolor scale they take a back seat to nothing.
Tagged: adventures in ditch fishing, peacock bass
On a back road between New Smyrna and Sanford I pulled off to the side in front of a goat farm. A pond sat in the front pasture between the house and the roadside fence. I’d always heard of people asking farmers for permission and it looked fishy and I wanted to try it. The crushed rock and sand driveway under my feet made loud sounds as I walked to the house, causing the nanny goats and kids to look up from their grazing and I could feel them staring at me behind my back. No one answered when I knocked on the door–I couldn’t find a doorbell button–and I quickened my step going back to the car. I closed the driver-side door against…
Tagged: CDB, largemouth bass
