May 25, 2000 My car has ceased to operate. Or more precisely, the steering has. I am now reduced to biking everywhere, which is ridiculous since it’s already in the mid-eighty’s out there. I hate to begin a day at work by soaking myself in sweat and sending my pulse to levels that, honestly, just [...]
Posts Tagged ‘old journal’
On the First Day
April 5, 2000 My quest to fish [1] in solitude ends down a long potholed road. I’m standing on the northeastern-most tip of the peninsula where I grew up and as I look out over the flats I’m facing north toward Cuba and Key West beyond. To my right the beach gradually arcs around to the southeast. [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 5)
June 13, 2008 Of course, the first time you’re out there you have no trouble believing. Watching that first string of fish headed your way, their dark shapes seeming to progress like stop-motion animation down the flat, you think, one of these has got to eat, right? Even if it’s a small bunch, say a dozen [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 4)
June 13, 2008 This is a lesson I learned well on that first real tarpon trip: make the first shot count. I’d say that ninety percent of the time the first shot was the only real shot. And that’s where most of the bites came. You can definitely pick up and recast, but it’s not [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 3)
June 13, 2008 You know what tarpon fishing really is? It’s a sliding scale of victories beginning with getting the fish to see your fly in the first place [5]. This begins with the guy on the pole, and poling most tarpon flats is no easy task. The water is often deep, the fish are [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 2)
June 13, 2008 My buddy, Nate W. who now resides on Tavernier Key, was the first to introduce me to the Keys and it was I who in turn introduced him to BarJack (that’s Mister BarJack to you). Since then they’ve been as thick as thieves and fish together whenever BJ can talk Nate W. [...]
The Keys Chronicles (Pt. 1)
Preamble In honor of the fast waning tarpon season I have chosen to post a few scribbles about my indoctrination into this dangerously addictive sport. Fittingly, this took place in the quintessential tarpon fishery: the Florida Keys. To be sure, I’d caught tarpon before elsewhere, but it is the fish hooked on those fabled flats [...]
