GONE FISHIN’

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Henry David Thoreau

I considered Mr. Thoreau’s observation today on the way back to the dock after our first fishing excursion in Florida. Cathy and I arrived here three days ago after a mind numbingly boring drive from Virginia down Route 95 to Marathon in the Florida Keys. Cathy had slipped on the ice two weeks previously and ended up with a very nice plastic boot on her right ankle, an unfortunate turn of events which meant that I got to drive the entire trip while poor Cathy was reduced to the role of terrified passenger. She made good use of her imprisonment however, rattling off e-mails to the senators from the states we were driving through. My particular favorite was her missive to Senator Lindsey Graham, which went something like ” Dear Lindsey”, ( she wanted to start the conversation in a genteel, southern- like manner), “when you can pry your lips off Donald Trump’s ass, perhaps you could ask him to reach into his wherever for some federal money to re-pave South Carolina’s portion of 95, because frankly, Lindsey, anyone bouncing their brains out down this road would have to conclude that he or she is one of those s……hole countries the Trumpster simply cannot abide.” Alas, the Senator’s office replied, regretfully advising her that due to the large volume of mail that the Senator received, he could only respond personally to inquiries from South Carolinians, but she should rest assured that “he looks forward to supporting our troops in the War on Terror, repairing our economy and creating jobs, strengthening social security, lowering the tax burden on American families, and making the federal government more accountable and efficient.” That kept us laughing through Georgia to Jacksonville.

Miami is 336 miles south of Jacksonville, and Marathon is another 120 miles or so after Miami, so you still have hours to go when you hit the Florida line. Hours of billboards advertising various reptile attractions, and personal injury lawyers ( pause, while you all come up with hysterical punch lines). The lawyer billboards all have pictures of smiling folks supposedly saying things like “Gary got me $750,000.00,” or “Tom got me over a million”, followed by the lawyer’s name, and a catchy phone number like 777-7777. Judging by the pictures, I would have thought that the smiling folks should be extolling the miracles of modern medicine, because none of them appeared to have anything wrong with them. For a million bucks they should have been missing at least  an arm or leg, but nobody looked even a little bit injured, not so much as a missing tooth in any of those smiles. Of course, most of the time there was only one smiling person up there on the billboard, so you couldn’t discount the possibility that he or she was the happy surviving spouse of their unfortunate soulmate who got squashed by a tractor trailer hauling oranges northbound, and they got all this cash in the resulting wrongful death action. But it does make you wonder about those reptiles. In any event, by the time we got to West Palm, we were too busy battling the traffic to look anywhere but straight ahead. In any event, we made it, and after a day of rest and recuperation, we set out to catch dinner.

We were off in search of the  mutton snapper. This fish is supposedly plentiful in Keys waters, and allegedly easy to catch. According to the experts, one simply anchors near a patch reef, baits a hook, drops it over the side and waits for the entree to take a big bite. What could be easier? The reality proved to be somewhat more challenging. Our first problem was the wind, or more precisely, the waves that the wind kicks up. It turns out that baby mutton snappers live in shallow water closer to shore, the keepers tend to prefer deeper water. The deeper water is of course more exposed to the wind and waves, and even though our boat is perfectly seaworthy, she will bounce and buck in the waves, just like any other. NOAA predicted 10 knots from the south.  By the time we found our little patch reef and snagged a mooring, a 10 knot wind was a fond memory, and we were rolling around like ten pins on club night at the local bowlarama, which led to problem number two.

The successful mutton snapper angler uses a special rig, which consists of a swivel, then an initial leader to a sinker, then more leader to a hook. The depth of the water dictates the length of leader between the swivel, the sinker and the hook. The deeper the water the more distance. This means that unless you put together all kinds of combinations while tied securely to the dock, you have to wait till you get to the chosen spot, and then put the rigs together in situ, so to speak. Unfortunately, by the time we got settled at our in situ, the boat was rolling and bouncing so much that you didn’t dare let go of a tackle box  for more than a few seconds, otherwise the deck would have been covered with all kinds of hooks, lures, weights, and everything else. You also need two hands to tie the special knots that monofilament line requires, so, the choice was either to dodge the flying tackle boxes, or give up on the knots, which would kind of defeat the whole purpose. Pondering the conundrum brought out the first Heiniken. The solution proved simply a matter of timing; just wait till a wave started to push the bow of the boat up, grab the hook and sinker from the box as it slid back towards the stern, then  catch the sliding box on the downward roll, and repeat. Tying the knots was easier if you hooked an arm through the frame of the cockpit t top, and since I couldn’t keep my glasses on, who really knows what kind of knots we ended up with. But after some fairly fabulous gymnastics, we were rigged up, and ready to go, except for the bait issue.

Our local expert had recommended  fresh mullet for mutton snapper. The problem was that the local purveyor of bait, the rapacious Captain Hook, didn’t have any fresh mullet ( which, it turns out, you pretty much have to catch yourself, using a cast net, which is another story entirely). He did, however, have plastic bags filled with frozen mullet which , I was assured , worked every bit as good as frozen. So, I bought a bag which was “said to contain” three frozen mullet. They were still frozen when we first arrived at our chosen spot, and I pulled one out of the bag, sliced it into chunks, and baited our hooks. We were ready to fish. We each dropped a line over the side, and within a minute, whammo, big strike…of course, I had gone back up to the bow to deal  with airborne tackle boxes when my rod bent double, and by the time I could stagger back to the rod holder, whatever had grabbed the mullet had buried itself in a hole in the bottom and there was no way I was going to pry him out. Cathy meanwhile was struggling to keep from being pitched overboard, and her fish also dove into a hole . The net result was that nothing went into the net, we lost both rigs, and had to go through the whole rigging up process again. Meanwhile, our nicely frozen mullet chunks had been baking in the sun, and were no longer frozen. It turns out that thawed mullet has the same consistency as Lisa Murkowski, and we couldn’t get any of the remaining chunks to stay firmly on hooks. Basically , we provided a free buffet to the entire reef.

We finally gave up after losing 4 rigs, all the bait, and half a sandwich…final score, fish 4, fishermen 0. We limped back to the dock, and consoled ourselves with some fruity rum drinks and a nice cheddar. Clearly, Mr. Thoreau never went fishing for mutton snapper.