A Kind of Ghastly Helplessness...

Today's another strange day. I'm so struck by the astonishing contrast of the Gold Coast calm right "across the street" from Ike, now a giant whirling bomb so vast it's kind of become a tornado/slow tsunami combo that hijacks your neighborhood for a whole day..and slowly

destroys it.

There's a natural urge to protect my neighbors and "duke it out", but with this vastness? Is this what Tolkien meant by Mordor?... Murder?

I started my angling day in the predawn hours. Urged on by a fishlust that ignored the probable exaggerations of some friends that the mullet were "in", I prowled the Biscayne Bay bridges, only to find no such bait and a lone tarpon chasing shrimp on the downtide side of a bridge.

I switched locations to a spot where the northeast wind and incoming tide lined up and pushed a fine current alongside a wingwall and piling junction- all of this under a bright bridge light. A sweet combo of factors? You bet! My first cast with a red/white YoZuri crystal minnow was blasted by a snook around 8 pounds. Since I was using 12-pound spin, the battle was barely 30 seconds. I unhooked the fish and quickly released it.

Buoyed by this triumph, I began a day of first, errands and then starting a piece on the inshore fishing of the South Carolina marshlands. But the gloomy shadow of Ike's umbrella still hangs over me and I find myself battling a slight block on my writing. I try to lubricate that knot with the idea that life in this world often occurs with joy and suffering only a hair's breath away from each other.

Jan Maizler

http://www.flatsfishingonline.com/

http://www.fishingfloridasflats.com/

http://flatsfishingonline.blogspot.com/

http://www.janmaizler-psychotherapist.blogspot.com/