I'm sharing the water with a lot of other fishers today. From where I stand, half concealed behind a mangrove bush, there has to be at least ten others in sight. Fortunately I'm the only human fisher. A pair of cormorants are alternately diving and fishing a stretch of water a couple of hundred feet away. Near them, perched upon an upright pole on the boat-dock, ten feet above the water, is a pelican. He looks like he's asleep. So does the black four foot alligator concealed on the sand bank opposite me under the mangroves but he's not.
An anhinger lands on a mangrove branch opposite me, his weight bowing the branch down to hit the water, spreading ripples across the surface. A mullet flips out of the water. It skips, again. Again. Again. Four more times it leaps clear of the water. Why do they do that? A movement; out the corner of my eye I spot a blue crane not eight feet away from me. He stands four foot tall and has been stalking down the boat dock unaware that he shares it with me. A tug on my rod tip diverts my attention; something has found my bait. My strike connects with nothing but the movement alerts the crane. He stops dead, his fierce eye evaluating the threat. As I make more movement, turning the reel handle, he protests with a loud squawk and ungainly flaps into the air, the flapping of his wings fanning the still morning air into a short gentle breeze that raises the hairs on my cheek. I recast to the hot-spot, the area where the fresh water creek empties into the canal, two foot of shallow fresh water meeting the seven foot depths of salty brackish waters from the swamps and the ocean, a strange magnet for the fish in this region.
The ten foot wide mangrove shaded creek widens into the immaculately tended canal outside our residential condo block, flows past it and, just over there, empties into the two-mile wide river. This is part of the Inter-coastal waterway; a navigation channel running the entire length of the east coast of Florida, separating the mainland swamps from these barrier-island beach resorts. The canal is manicured on my side with a boardwalk and boat slips all along it's 400 yard length. Opposite, the wild mangroves overhang the first hundred yards at the creek end before the inevitable strides of progress cause it to run into newly built properties backing onto the water.
Each morning I start fishing just before dawn. Tee shirt, jeans, my feet encased in sandals with very unfashionable long socks to avoid the no-see-ums; it's what the locals call the sandflys. Tackle is just a bum-bags for bits of end tackle and a couple of light rods – and a camera stuffed in one pocket. I like to start fishing at the creek end, then I move up the canal to fish a swim at the river end. I don't really want to move but the manatees force the issue. Each morning, an hour or so after first light, these huge mammals swim into the canal from the river and head straight for where I'm fishing. They love the clean fresh water even more than the fish do, so my time fishing this swim will be limited. Later, when I've finished fishing, I'll be back here, washing my rods down with the freshwater tap on the dock. I will then be surrounded by eager manatee faces, all pushing each other over in the attempt to get as close to the freshwater source as possible. They love it.
I switch to the fly-rod. It's a four-piece seven-weight Stavitte travel rod with a floating line. A ten foot length of 12lb line ends in a crazy-charlie pattern tied by Glenn Smith back in Luton. He doesn't yet realise quite how good he is at tying these, so for the moment I'm still getting them for free; that can't last... YES ! My attention is whipped back to the present as the rod is almost snatched from my hand. Pulling deep and hard; in the UK this would have to be a 2lb rainbow trout, here it is almost certainly going to be a pinfish or a sheepshead. Or perhaps a small... No, it's a bigger than average pinfish of about a pound. What a fighter. These fish don't grow very big so the locals tend to ignore them but on fly tackle they are worth it. I unhook it and drop it into the water at my feet as my latest 'best friend' arrives. The pelican settles on the boat dock just three foot to my left and gives me that 'can I have the next one if you don't want it' look. Funny looking things...
Back to the fishing. I can't bring myself to use really light fly tackle. I tried that once. On a 6lb tippet I once hooked a tarpon of about 20lb and watched it vanish into the mangrove roots with no hope of stopping it. Though it would probably make no difference, I now stick at 12lb straight through, just in case...
Here they come. This morning there are just a dozen or so of them. A breeding group comprising of one 800lb huge female manatee and a gaggle of smaller 500lb males, all competing or taking turns at her. Another, much larger, female of 1,000lbs or perhaps even larger has a grey-skinned cub suckling at her nipple, it's cute baby face attempting to hide beneath her flipper. The clear water turns to mushroom soup as the whole group start to get amorous, cavorting and thrashing the water to foam. Well, that's that swim stuffed. Time to move swims.
I walk carefully down the boardwalk admiring the craft moored there. Ugly but practical pontoon boats, small sailing boats and elegant flats boats with poling platforms and gleaming outboards... I'm day dreaming - one day I'll get one of those – whilst studying the water ahead through polaroids under a baseball hat, peak set to shade against the rising sun. An osprey watches me from the top of a sail-boat's mast and to my right another pelican crash-dives into the canal in search of a mullet. Tread softly enough down this dock and you'll often spot a big snook drifting in and out the shadows beneath your feet. Hooking one is hard. Landing one, much harder. Once hooked they dive straight into the pilings supporting the dock. I've yet to land one here bigger than about 4lb but they go to ten times that weight.
At the mouth of the canal the mullet are going mad. To the left, on the shallow flats, they are leaping and finning all over the place. To the right, in the deeper navigable water, an anhinger lands and immediately starts to sink. This weird bird seems totally out of place for a water-fowl. It is unable to float or swim far on the surface and sinks as if waterlogged, slowly but surely, extending it's neck higher and higher until only the head and neck are visible. The first time I saw one I was sure it was a snake swimming through the water, until I was told otherwise.
I switched to the little lure rod, flipping a two inch floating plug out onto the flats, then twitching it very, very slowly back over the lip into the deeper water. The first casts are unproductive but then I find the fish, as expected, right on the edge of the drop-off. The takes are explosive and positive. I hit three takes, two of the fish shaking free of the lure within seconds but a third unable to escape. Magic. It's a speckled trout, no relation to our northern salmonids but scaleless and spotty all the same. A bit bigger and I'd consider it for dinner. I bend down to return it and my heart is given a shock-test. A great crash of water showers me with spray. Just ten foot away a dolphin surfaces, raises it's body two-thirds clear of the water and... throws a mullet out into the canal. A second dolphin bursts free of the water, catches the mullet and throws it back, all wet beaky smiles and mischievousness. My heart is still pounding powerfully as I try to catch my breath. The dolphin then end the show and calmly swim side by side, porpoising their way slowly out into the deep water - whilst I curse at the time-delay inefficiency of my digital camera, taking shot after shot of disturbed water with hardly a dolphin in the frame. The dolphin have killed off all chances of a fish at this end of the canal and the manatees have done the same at the other end. Small green lizards and grey squirrels scatter as I walk back down the boat dock to the condo, entering by the patio door.
My wife calls to me from the bedroom. “Oh, you're back early. Did you catch anything?” “Just a little pinfish and a small trout” “Oh well. Pretty rubbish fishing then”. I smiled. “Yes. Pretty rubbish”.
Geoff Maynard
This end is the creek end, down there is the main river
Another fisher
The mighty pinfish (makes a great snook bait too!)
