{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Trip report: Florida -- "This is fishing"

Sometimes when no customers are in the Orvis shop, we turn up the sound on the videos that are constantly playing. One of the videos is about a guy named Itu, who is learning to be a bonefish guide, and at one point after a frustrating day of no fish, the instructor says Itu needs to learn that 'this is fishing'.

So on Monday when I was knee deep in the surf at Canaveral National Seashore, punching a 7 wt. 11' switch rod into 15 kt. onshore winds, I kept saying to myself, 'this is fishing', even though it was really kind of miserable and pointless. Not a single bite.

I spent four days in Florida, ostensibly visiting family, and managed to fish three of those days. On Tuesday, day 2, I took my dad to the Saint Sebastian River and had him paddle me around in his canoe while I pounded the mangroves with a Helios 909. I got three snook -- my first snook ever -- one catfish, and struck but did not hook what I guess was a 20 lb. tarpon at least (could have been 50, 100, 500 -- who can really say?). The picture is of one of my smaller snook -- the largest was 15-18 inches.

We paddled downriver against a headwind, and told ourselves it would be a tailwind on the way back, but instead the wind shifted 180 degrees and we had a headwind coming back, too. We got back to the launch about thirty minutes before a heavy thunderstorm rolled through. I was expecting more of an epic day, but told myself 'this is fishing'.

On day three, I went to visit cousins on the west coast of Florida. We went to Honeymoon Island for a few hours and fished into the surf. Once again, a headwind -- this time only 8 kts or so, and the switch rod was doing reasonably well. I caught a ladyfish on my third cast -- my first fish on the switch rod and my first fly-caught fish in the surf. Then some yokel swam out to right where I was casting, and I had to wander looking for a yokel-less place to catch.

Around 5pm, I started noticing a lot of bird activity in the place where I had started fishing (before the yokel), so I walked back down and waded out. I was standing in a field of limestone rubble, about knee to thigh deep, and all around my legs a school of glass minnows was stacked up in the rocks. I could see ladyfish streaking in from deeper water to eat the minnows, so I tied on a smallish bait pattern and cast directly out. Every cast from that spot got a strike, and in the next thirty minutes or so I landed three ladyfish and jumped about a half dozen more, plus caught a large pinfish. It was, for a change, just about epic fishing.

And then my nonfishing companion decided it was time to go. I begged for time to catch one more fish, which ended up being on the small side, plus it was foul hooked, but it counted so we had to leave. Oh well -- that was fishing. The photograph is of that last fish.

Miles

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