Friday, June 06, 2008

On Angling Sucess,Exposure and New Waters...

Saturation is a term that certainly would explain my relationship to certain inshore game fish, particularly when they occur in my home waters of Miami that I've been beating to a meringue thickness since 1962. I don't think I'll ever tire of catching bonefish all day whether they're tailing, cruising, or mudding and I always feel my mojo for tarpon. But for whatever reason, I've been feeling slightly different about snook and permit.

Sometimes the same species- say, snook- regain a novelty when caught in new habitats and using new methods. Yet, ever since I hit my all-time record of 72 snook on artificial lures in 2 days at Key Island Estate (south of Naples) 4 years ago, I feel pretty satiated after I catch about a half-dozen of the linesiders. I think those kind of experiences have a way of doing that.

I know an editor and fly fisherman who scratches his head at the magnitude of that snook record, but if he stayed awake fishing almost that entire time and used appropriate tackle ( short plug rods on dock lights and ultralight spin for beach cruisers), he might come close to matching that number. Since he seems fixated on fly tackle where the necessity to false-cast and have more than the one back-cast used with spin or plug, his snook numbers will be low and his fishing will be limited to open spaces and angles where he does not "line" his fish. In contrast, I am lying on my stomach when I flick a cast to a beach snook that are often cruising with their backs out of the surf waters sometimes only 10 inches deep- try that with the long wand!

I do not make a habit of pursuing redfish these days, since I devoted a good deal of the early 1970's racking up loads of ultralight redfish catches off Flamingo with Captain Joe Stephens. Last fall, I fished for reds off North Myrtle Beach with Captain Patrick Kelly and had a blast catching reds (locally called spot-tails) from run-off canals at the edge of marsh grass jungles. I have plans to go to the Indian River this year to try for a red over 30 pounds, but just for 1 trip.

Lately I've been probing new waters when high winds and/or unresponsive rolling tarpon make those explorations sensible. My most recent peek put me on a wad of 5 to 10-pound barracuda that behaved like snook, which is to say the ambush points they were holding on were at first blush, in brackish waters...until I remembered that the lack of rainfall and saltwater incursion gave these salinity-loving fish a chance to set up home and hearth.

The discovery and pleasure of those recent moments created a newness that made me recollect the pride, awe and triumph of catching a platter-sized pompano in Miami Beach's surf during a time when my age was a two-digit design beginning with the number, "1."

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