Maybe next time…

My wife Charity and I broke through the scraggly, hurricane-stunted live oaks and onto the narrow beach of the Naval Live Oaks Reservation on the Gulf Islands National Seashore. Mirror-like water of Santa Rosa Sound spread before us, as the early morning sun cast a glare across the flat, masking the submerged grass beds. We hiked along the sand until we found an area that was free of the flotsam that washes across the sound from the tourist traps and beach bars of Pensacola Beach.

While Charity arranged her towels and book under our discount beach umbrella, I rigged my fly rod and tied on a promising baitfish imitation. Looking to the southwest, I could tell the weather was already starting to gather. A thunderstorm was building to the anvil shape that is known and respected by watermen and pilots alike. I had a couple of hours before the intense Florida sun would bake the puffy cumulonimbus clouds, and if I was lucky, the storm would gradually drift to the west. However, one thing that is never on my side is ‘luck.’

I will be the first to admit that I am not a very good fly-fisherman. In the past, I’ve hired a guide to help teach me. Books and videos on angling fill shelves in my home, and I even broke down at the local sporting goods store and bought a fishing shirt, wondering if maybe the fish were offended by my lack of fashion sense. None of it seemed to help me much, as it was the end of a long, hot summer and I hadn’t had a whole lot of angling success to cheer about.

After Charity and I set up our base, I waded onto the flat and began my search. With the sun still low on the horizon, I blind-casted my popper across the glare. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a rookie at fly-fishing, and I achieve a certain amount of joy when I make a tight loop while casting. As I worked my way deeper onto the flat, I could tell that there were fish all around me. They appeared to be sea trout, but they were always beyond my disappointing casting range.

I have a friend who says that fly-fishing is the perfect sport for sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder. What’s wrong with my backcast? Am I using the wrong fly? Why am I not catching any fish?

As the sun climbed higher into the blue sky, the glare gradually disappeared. With my friend’s theory in mind, I reeled in my line and proceeded to switch flies. I was beginning to make out the bare-spots in the turtle grass and selected a crab pattern I thought would be irresistible.

I tried dancing the crab across the sand, hoping to coax a leery speck out of the grass. Biologists say that fish don’t laugh, but as a rookie fly-fisherman, I know better. As the summer specks hovered in the grass and watched me flail around, I’m sure they shared a chuckle or two.

While I was trying my best Elmer Fudd impersonation, something caught my attention. It was the “nervous water” I’ve heard so many fishermen talk about. There they were, a pair of tails extending out of the shallows. It was the holy grail of Panhandle flats fishing, a pair of tailing red drum. I finished my retrieve and carefully lifted the line from the water. It took five false casts just to get the line heading in the right direction, all while my head was spinning with casting information and advice from misspent evenings with suspect magazines.

As I completed the forward stroke of my cast, the fish were still foraging in the shallow grass. The line shot-out, zipping up from the water around my knees and through the guides. I heard the thwak of the line reaching the end of what I had pulled off the large arbor reel. It took all the discipline I had to let the imitation sink into the grass. Then I striped twice, moving the crab in front of the fish. On the third strip, the tail of one of the reds slipped below the surface. On the fourth, I felt it, the strike....I had him!

Then I didn’t. The fish reconsidered his breakfast and spit out the funny-fuzz that poorly impersonated a crustacean. Taking a breath for the first time since I saw the fish, I continued to strip, naively hoping the other fish might take an interest. Re-casting ahead of their track I tried again, but they wouldn’t be fooled twice. As the water continued to warm, the pair of reds slipped away toward the deeper, cooler portions of the sound.

While I waded across the flat towards my wife, I hung my head and let my eyes fall to the water. I had been skunked yet again. Halfway to shore a pair of blue crabs stopped tangling with one another to face me. They skittered left and right, claws up like a pair of prizefighters. A small ray slid across the bottom in the other direction. I continued to gaze into the water as I walked toward shore. Fifteen-feet from the water’s edge I spooked a southern puffer. He inflated like a swimming softball and wobbled away from me.

I dropped onto the beach next to my wife with a soggy plop. Taking off my hat I looked up at the day that was unfolding around me, thunderstorms and beams of sunlight, wind and lapping waves. My eyes were drawn across the water toward the condos that seem to grow on Florida’s beaches like an invasive species. I realized that, despite what the glossy magazines and travel ads tell us, I was the lucky one, not them. They were locked up behind giant plate glass in their air-conditioned paradise, with their yachts that never leave the marina.

I may have been skunked, but I came to realize that catching fish isn’t always the point. As New York Times editor and fly-fishing aficionado Howell Raines once wrote, “To achieve mastery is to rise above the need to catch fish.”

I spent a beautiful morning on the water and got to experience the outdoors myself, rather than watching it on a screen or through a window. Then again, there’s always the flip side of being skunked – hope. This is when I spoke the magic words that I find myself repeating on too many occasions…maybe next time.