AS SEEN IN THE JULY / AUGUST 2007 ISSUE

It all started longer ago than most folks my age care to remember. We were a dating couple on our first long weekend away together, and it was Mary’s plan to take her 20 foot inboard boat after the “big ones” some 30 miles offshore in The Keys.

Heading out to “The Hump” from Islamorada, we pulled a spread of four lines included lures and ballyhoo, two of which Mary had tied to our bimini top with bungee cords as makeshift outriggers. Mary stood at the back of the boat holding a fifth rod while I steered the small craft over a light chop.

Having grown up in the Midwest, I had done little offshore fishing at that point. As I guided the little boat along a weed line, my male libido had other pursuits in mind, and my concentration was mostly on Mary’s fine form. Her concentration was only on one thing, fishing. Little did I know the sheer panic that was about to fill my soul as an experience I’d never known suddenly erupted all around us. Without warning, we were right in the middle of a true dolphin feeding frenzy.

All at once three of the rods bowed violently, drags screaming for attention as line ripped from the reels. Mary reared back on the rod in her hands as a huge bull leapt free of the water, violently shaking his whole body before splashing down and zooming away. Another dolphin took off with the last bait we had out and I spent the next half hour frantically trying to keep up with the frenzied school of dolphin attacking our rods, pulling them in as fast as I could while Mary continued her struggle with the big fish.

Finally able to work the bull within reach of our stern, Mary yelled, “Get the gaff. Quick! Get him now.” I wedged the last rod with a fish still on between the front seat and a bimini support, grabbed the gaff and hopped over the stern to the diving platform. No largemouth bass I ever knew needed to be gaffed and in my own panicked frenzy I began slapping at the fish with the side of the gaff, unable to get the point directed squarely at his furiously flopping flesh. So, fearing I would lose Mary’s big fish, I grabbed for the leader as the bull tried lunging away for another run.

“Don’t!” Mary warned too late. The leader sliced to the bone of my finger and blood began pouring from my wound. “Get up here and take the rod,” she cried. Embarrassed and in pain, I climbed aboard, took the rod and sat down on the engine cover. Mary grabbed a towel and wrapped it quickly around my bleeding hand as I held onto the rod. She quickly put on a glove, took the gaff in her right hand, hopped out onto the dive platform and impaled the fish with one swing. Reaching the leader with her gloved hand, she heaved the big green and yellow monster over the stern and into the boat. I later found out the fish weighed more than 40 pounds.

I knew right then, I was in love. Within a year, we were married.

In the years since then, I’ve learned a lot about fishing, and a lot about my wife. Though she comes from a family of professional fishermen, she has her own way of doing things that don’t usually fall in line with accepted angling methods. Still, somehow she almost always manages to catch more and bigger fish than I do, even when I use just the right gear, all the right knots, and the best bait for our targeted fish. While I’m up working my line just so, Mary sits in a deck chair on the back of our boat, an umbrella to shield her from the sun in one hand, a cold beer in the other and her rod in a holder nearby. I catch a catfish. Mary catches a 20 pound cobia.

It’s always been that way and I just can’t figure it out.

A year ago, we went out to one of the deeper holes in Charlotte Harbor to try our luck with tarpon. I had a good stout rod in my hand loaded with 30 lb. mono with a 60 lb. fluorocarbon leader on a good sized reel. Pinned on my 5/0 circle hook was a lively crab no self-respecting tarpon could refuse. I had stood, loaded for bear, intently watching my line for 30 minutes before Mary finally took her usual seat. Chatting casually about what a beautiful day it was, she worked a shrimp onto a little J-hook at the end of a 15 lb. Test mono leader attached by a barrel-swivel to 10 lb. braid. She lifted her light-weight rod, flipped the shrimp into the water, stuck the rod in a holder, opened the bail of her little reel and began to feed out line.

By the time 75 feet of her line was fed to the current, it took off. As she pulled her rod from the holder, nearly 100 pounds of silver tarpon made its first glorious leap skyward. I rushed to reel my line in and out of the way as the shimmering giant again took to the air. The tarpon did win its freedom on its third jump, but while Mary also hooked two more that never made it to the boat that day, I got nary a nibble.

This past March, a friend and I took off for the backcountry flats at 5:00 in the morning. In seven hours we caught and released three juvenile linesiders. About 12:30 that same afternoon, Mary took five visiting family members out to fish the canals a few blocks from our house. By 3:00 she was pulling up to our dock with a pair of fat 32 inch snook.

Like I said, it just doesn’t make sense, but given what I now know about fishing and what I now know about Mary, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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