Urban Anglers:Per Chance, to Fish!

Malls are mauled by millions, urged on by minions of mercantile minds with manufactured mirth that drugs out leveraged pocketbooks owned by minds that really believe that family closeness only congeals with bought expressions called gifts. The police were actually called out into the street to direct the vehicular chaos swarming around and into the mall of North Dade County, all of them- the "shoppers"- obviously oblivious to the loss of "one-stop" shopping time savings grotesquely offset by the hours of searching, then fighting for a place to park, and the swarms around the goods and cash registers. The last time the Men in Blue were on the roads was for Wilma. They were there to maintain order-is this a holiday? Remember the word root- holy day.

With all this swirl about, pensive anglers search out solitude and avoid marinas glutted by first-time boaters that jack-knife their trailers into other rigs with unpracticed launches. A cold front eases into South Florida through foggy skies on a southwest wind. Early mornings and sunset beckon when the crowds thin and the fish take a peek and peck a minnow meal in backbay canals. This is the time to take a breath, be alone, center yourself, and pare down your tackle in the cooled- down, boat-beaten waters of Urbania. Slower retrieves, lighter longer leaders, smaller lure and flies more match the mood of our fish. The mainland inshore Florida angler has this task at hand, one that is spared the offshore sporties now harvesting sailfish driven nuts by baitfish buffets amidst bright blue front-tossed waves.

So, that's it here in "dynamic" South Florida, but there's also dreams of distant shores where a "car" is a rarity, there are no malls, where you know your neighbor, you understand each other, where the repugnant backwindow gangsta decals don't exist nor do their foul boom-boxing lowriders-places where there's maybe just one road that leads through trees after trees after trees until it ends on a quiet beachfront where it's you, and you alone..maybe an occasional figure smiling a year-round smile undisfigured by pressured life eases by, picking up a shell here and there. A hookup now is less the goal, when your efforts reassert and capture moments of purity and pensiveness that reveal something true anglers already know... that fishing has nothing whatsoever to do with fish.

Jan