June 2004 The past few days have been different. I am tempted, as I suppose anyone would be, to give myself some credit. After all, it could be that I am getting good at this. I’ve spent enough time at it, that’s a fact, so I suppose it’s an option I must consider, you know, [...]
Posts under ‘Old Scratch’
BREAKING EVEN: A Month in Bonefishing (Pt. I)
BREAKING EVEN A Month in Bonefishing June, 2004 In the past few weeks I’ve caught more big bonefish than I have in all my previous fishing combined. Not that I’ve caught many. No one catches many big bones. Of course, even now that I say it I realize the definition of a big bonefish is [...]
Cast a Line
May 5, 2002 Prospect Point, 3:30pm, rising tide. Bones in SE corner. Wind. Surf. Changed flies a half-dozen times; finally got a take on a #6 pink Flee with lead eyes to anchor it down in the wash. Saw other fishermen there, a fly-fisher among them, but they were too far to the NW and [...]
A Word for That
Fall, 2001 I was born shortly after the good old days. We already had light bulbs and paved roads and outboard motors—some of the more noticeable hallmarks of “progress”. Fiercely independent “natives” were already working in hotels and banks, and our little island had begun to take its place in a larger (yet already shrinking) [...]
Just once…
Sunday, December 24, 2000 I scared some fish pretty badly today. None died of heart attacks, so I didn’t catch any. For the first time in days it was a decent weather. Not good, but decent. It wasn’t blowing a full gale and there were the odd moments of sunlight between the driven clouds. I [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 7): Tarpon
It’s hot. There’s the smell of stale sweat mingled with the windborne scent of mangroves as the flats to the northward dry out and a zillion myriad invertebrates bake in the sun, and I bake right along with them. We’re west of Key West and south of most everything dry within sight, though I can [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 6): Tarpon
“Massively miraculous, a very powerful force, extraordinary; so extraordinary as to create immediate unreality in the process upon contact with the fish.” ~ Richard Brautigan, 1973. The Keys Chronicles June, 2009. This season we’re staying at Nate “Dubya’s” Mullet Camp, like always. But this year the flavor is distinctly different, in a bare-bones, fish-camp kind [...]
