Team Everglades won today

Here is the summary in equation form:

[moon + Monday + alligators + mosquitoes + heat + humidity] > Phil

I had a day open to fish before we leave town for a vacation in the Wisconsin Driftless area.

Moon is approaching full, allowing the fish to stay up all night feeding, which often makes for a poor morning fishing the flats. But the winds promised to be lowish which means I could go anywhere.

So many possibilities. How to decide?

One more wrinkle. I find Mondays are the worst day of the week for fishing in South Florida. I do have the water to myself, but the majority of my fellow fishers, who are not yet retired, have worked-over most of the good areas on the weekend. The worried fish often spend Mondays hiding under the bed.

I figured it would be best to fish a spot off the beaten trail. How about off the Tamiami Trail?

I headed out to fly fish for tarpon and snook in a favorite lake in the western Everglades / Big Cypress / Fakahatchee Strand ecosystem, arriving well before sunrise.  Perfect. I rigged my Spey rod with a good tarpon fly for this lake.

I had dressed for effective mosquito protection: head net, two shirts, neoprene dive booties to protect my feet and ankles, gloves, and picaridin spray around the seams. Good thing too – the black salt marsh moskeeters (BSMMs) were thick. 

Otherwise, it’s a nice lake. It has only two alligators: the South gator is afraid of humans and the North gator is easily avoided. If he shows, I just move down the lake to another opening in the mangroves. The lake holds lots of juvenile tarpon and some big snook and bass.

This morning I saw an expanse of glassy water, with the occasional tip of a tarpon tail breaking the surface. Not many fish, not very active, and not too promising.

Soon the sweat rolling down my forehead inside my head net began to condense on my glasses and I couldn’t make out as much detail, but I had the general picture: the tarpon did not appear to be feeding actively, which makes sense given they’d had 10 hours of moonlight in which to feed. I walked the perimeter, casting through openings in the mangroves in front of the odd disappearing tail. No takers. I startled the North gator and so moved on down the lake shore to avoid him.

Just after I took this photo, something broke the surface, likely a snook or bass from the way it splashed. Though the Spey rod casts a long distance, I found that it needs a slightly wider opening in the trees than does a single-handed fly rod. I had to disentangle the fly line from the foliage of a Poisonwood tree. Mental note to self: wash fly line in soapy water when I get home.

I left and drove to another good spot. The Mosquito Host Committee took a vote and decided to come along for the ride.

By the next spot, the sun was high and the mosquitoes had begun retreating to the shade. I removed the stifling head net and extra shirt and downed a Yeti bottle of Liquid IV to replace what I’d lost. Whew! In the summer it’s warm and humid around the mangrove lakes, but you knew that.

I could hear a school of snook feeding noisily under a bridge, loud smacks punctuating the silence. Anxious-looking Sail-finned Mollies shoaled tightly nearby. I could drift a mollie-sized baitfish fly under the bridge, but first, best take a quick scan for gators. Oops.

Not far off a cheerful alligator waited, ready and hopeful. Might some thoughtful human catch a snook that would make a nice breakfast for some deserving alligator? It happens, you know.

I don’t fish near a gator like that. Too easy to lose a snook and/or break a fly rod. Pass.

At another lake I found a large school of feeding tarpon. I walked the edge, watching them roll. Periodically a feeding tarpon would crash the surface in an explosion of spray. So cool. The Spey rod could reach them easily. Full stop. I had previously lost an encounter with the 9-foot owner of that lake, breaking off a nice tarpon as the big gator moved in. Pass again.

At the next spot feeding rings indicated tarpon, but another hopeful gator swam out and looked up at me. “Catch me a fish?” Pass.

Final spot, two big gators sitting side-by-side and facing opposite directions. Nothing will get past that pair. But around the corner there were no gators (that I could see) and I could see the ripples left by a big fish that had broken the surface. I traipsed over towards the shore and was enveloped by a WALL of black salt marsh mosquitoes lying in wait under the shade of a Wild Tamarind tree. Holy shit!

I ran for the car but couldn’t shake them.

I ran away from the car and circled around a cluster of Cabbage Palms, but the hoard stayed with me.

I ran past the car, dropping off my stuff so I could run faster, and did another lap around the neighborhood.  No use.

I tossed my stuff in the car, hopped in, opened the windows, and drove for home, swatting mosquitoes the whole way.

Florida’s new gulag at Mile 48 had fancy new signs reading: “Alligator Alcatraz”. No protest scheduled today, but two women were outside, holding their signs. I gave them a hearty thumbs up and they smiled and waived back.

Some of the BSMMs that hitch-hiked home left the car as I unpacked and were waiting for me on the front porch where Gray had prepared us a lunch.  Swat swat swat. A few of those slipped in the front door and into the house. Swat swat.

On the bright side, no sharks.