Are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the… cause. Getting things in order for FIB Fest at Andros South next week.
Tagged: Andros South, bonefish, Deneki, trips we lucked into, Ximenez
He sure didn’t need hoisting like Big Mama. But he did come from the Chessie, so sort of kind of the same experience. Yes, that’s what it was.
Tosh Brown flew in to Baltimore and I was an hour late picking him up, violating one of my guiding life principles: Never piss off a Texan. But the book project rolls on. We beelined it up to Havre De Grace, where the Susquehanna River empties into the northernmost reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. From there we drove up through Delaware and to the Jersey Shore. I had to bail after the first five days of this leg, but Tosh headed back down to Maryland to catch up with more rocks on the way down to Annapolis. Special thanks go to many people for making this trip possible: Capt. Tom Hughes Capt. Sean Crawford Bob Popovics and his entire crew. (And for that awesome…
Tagged: Chesapeake Bay, Departure Publishing, striped bass, the blitz
The first thing you do is drive west. Past all the planned communities and through the endless horizon of cane fields, some thick with smoke from controlled burn, and make your way to the big lake. Then drive onto and over the levee and the single lane bridge and meet buddy Don at the launch ramp. Don is a tournament bass fisherman. He’s pre-fishing and you’re going along for the ride, skating at 60 on the pad. Don can do some things with a baitcaster in his hand. He’s working the bass in shallow, going off the grid and you’re trying to cast your fly rod in and around the tall grass and strip your so-called weedless through the dense vegetation. The bass key…
It’s been slim, I won’t deny it. But I’m counting the days because in a week’s time I’ll be kicking off a jag taking me far afield in salt and fresh alike and I’m picking out flies for what’s to come and trying to speed up time but then stop it. The anticipation is fun, too.
My new gig takes me on the road with a Pelican case full of gear. Checked bag fees make it hard to swing packing extra and carrying on a rod tube is questionable some days. Still the rule is a rod always goes on the road, even if you don’t know if you can break it out, even when doing so calls for improvisation. That rod is now impervious to destruction.
The Galapagos had a feral goat problem so the powers that be hunted them down and killed them. They used a tactic called the “Judas Goat,” where they captured a goat, fitted it with a radio collar, and released it back into the wild. The Judas Goat would return to the herd and scientists and hunters would track it by helicopter and gun them all down. They were conducting this on the islands of Isabela and Santiago during our trip there to chase striped marlin. We stopped at a spot the goats might be. There was a path marked by a goat skull nailed to a post. The last Judas here must have done his job; live goats were nowhere to be found. The…
Tagged: Galapagos, invasive species, island adventures
Florida is a cruel place to be when there’s fishing to be done and you’re not doing it. But I was down on someone else’s dime and had a job to do that didn’t allow for deviation, even to accept Marshall DeMott’s invitation to chase juvie tarpon. Not that the fishing would have been favorable. The thermometer dipped into the 30s at night–they had snow flurries up north in Tallahassee on Friday–and today the temp seems to be holding at 55 degrees with a fierce north wind blowing everything out of whack. These fish down here, they must be out of their minds, being run through a washing machine jumble of winter weather patterns over an extended period. Had I gone I could imagine a…
Tagged: fishless
Our brother in Esox Simon Graham is hosting the Kvarken International Pike Fly Tournament there this May. Coach is acceptable.
Tagged: big ass flies, Finland, northern pike
Going to high school reunions is a phenomenon we all must endure at some point, and so it was with my 20th down in Florida. I guess we had a hell of a class back in the day, as everyone who came back turned out to be pretty solid. I stayed at my buddy Z’s house out in horse country. When you live in horse country you can have cool wheels like a John Deere Gator that your friends can take to explore the resident fly water. Z also has a center console that he took offshore dolphin fishing on Friday morning. I didn’t get there until Friday evening. I had three phone calls from the boat by the time I landed. Which means…
