Flying over the sea from Miami to Cancún, I looked down on blobs and bands of sargassum “seaweed” floating towards the shore.
This massive sargassum outbreak is a new phenomenon, postulated to result from fertilizer run-off in the Amazon areas that have been converted to agriculture.
The resort cities across the Caribbean, including Miami, Cancún, and Tulum have been hit hard by sargassum washing up on the beaches, rotting and stinking. In Mexico, resorts are being protected by floating barriers designed to keep sargassum away. They do their best to intercept it at sea and haul it away before it can wash ashore. In the US sargassum has rights.
I had one night in Cancún before taking a puddle-jumper south to Punta Pajaros in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere. The outfitter that organized the trip, Yellow Dog Fly Fishing, recommended the Marriott Courtyard Hotel as clean, inexpensive, and close to the airport. What the outfitter didn’t mention is that the coconut-ginger ice cream served in the hotel restaurant is over-the-moon good, the garden is full of birds, and a resident coatimundi snuffles around the garden by the pool. It’s a truly dandy place to stay overnight.
From Cancún, we took a chartered single engine plane southward 45 minutes to an airstrip at Punta Pajaros.
From the airstrip, we were ferried across a lagoon in a panga, like an oversized dorry, and rode in the back of a truck 40 minutes down a dirt track to Playa Blanca Lodge. That’s four means of transport to get to the lodge.
The instant we arrived at the lodge, a margarita appeared in my hand.
The lodge recently upgraded to solar+battery power so the mini-split AC units kept humidity low in our cottages around the clock.
More than nice enough for me. Comfortable beds too.
Water from the well is noticeably salty, but we had fresh drinking water available in our rooms, and hot, brackish water for showering.
You put your rods in the rack and they get spirited to the boats before you get there, and washed down with brackish water when you return to the lodge. I removed my reels at night and cleaned the lines and reels with a cup of fresh water.
The normally white sand beach sported a thick band of sargassum, with more rolling in from the surf. The water remained clear along most shorelines, but on the shallower sections, sargassum rotted in the water, consuming dissolved oxygen, and tainting the water with stinky and toxic sulfur dioxide.
Tarpon can breath air and so hunted baitfish disabled by the anoxic water. Frigatebirds did likewise.
Gray Foxes are common on the grounds and surrounding woodland. In addition to the usual foxy fare of lizards, bugs, and baby birds, they munch on the assorted terrestrial crabs that wander the sandy grounds.
Our first night at the lodge, a fox stole one of two flip-flops off a cottage porch. The flip-flops belonged to Nate, a small animal vet from Idaho, who, in addition to flip-flops, had brought along his 20 year old son Calvin.
The next six days, quite a lot of fishing happened, some of which I’ll describe in subsequent posts. But for now, we’ll stick to the Lodge and its surrounds.
This hermit crab is so well armored no fox is going to make a dent, and might get his nose pinched if it tried. The ubiquitous Great-tailed Grackle marches across the upper left corner of the photo.
Ruins of a Mayan temple are a short walk down a mosquitoey trail through the woods.
A fox trotted down the trail ahead of me before darting into the thick woods to check on his collection of kiped footwear. A member of the staff was lucky enough to spot a jaguar on the road one night. Seeing a jaguar would have upstaged catching a Permit.
Our final evening we had a hermit crab race. The guests bet $20 each on which numbered crab of 30 would make it out of the sand ring first. My crab, #20, lost in the first elimination round. The ultimate winnings were contributed to the deserving staff who took such good care of us.
On the morning of 3 October 2025, I spotted a woman alone in the park across the street from our house. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck and she cradled a camera with a long lens. I always say ‘hi’ to birders in the park. Andrea Diamond, bubbling with excitement, told me she’d just spotted a Golden-winged Warbler, the first rare bird she had discovered on her own.
I came to know this elegant songbird during my childhood summers at a wildlife camp in West Virginia, but I had never seen one in Florida. Andrea relocated it quickly and I renewed my acquaintance with an old friend.
Golden-winged Warbler in All American Park, South Miami. Photo by local birder Himanshu Gupta.
For the next three days, South Florida’s birders flocked to the park and I became the Golden-winged Warbler Ambassador. Juan Valdez, one of the many birders who came to look for the warbler, also turned out to know the native plants. I learned that he works as an art museum curator and…wait… he fly fishes Biscayne Bay. Clearly my kind of guy.
Since then I have entertained Juan through The Eye of the Cormorant and he has delighted me with photos and texts when his fly fishing skills produce a particularly splendid result.
Juan with a bonefish caught on fly in Biscayne Bay.
Fast forward to late June of this year. Juan phones me one evening to say that his friend Andy had booked a week at a fancy fly fishing lodge in the Yucatan, but cannot go. Andy offered the trip to Juan, but Juan can’t go either. In the unlikely event that I am free the second week of August the trip is mine.
Playa Blanca Lodge is the sort of place I read about online in the outfitter catalogs. I drool longingly over the descriptions, check the cost, then exhale and close the webpage. With this gifted package I just had to get myself from Miami to Cancún, cover one night in a hotel, and tip the lodge staff and fishing guides.
I am definitely free the second week in August.
Wow.
Thanks Andy! Thanks Juan!
Playa Blanca Lodge is situated in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Preserve on the Atlantic coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, located here on Google Maps.
My family visited Sian Ka’an twelve years ago while on vacation in Tulum. The Biosphere Preserve is a cross between the Everglades and the Lower Florida Keys before people made such a mess of things here in Florida. The Mayans, likewise, tried their best to screw up the hydrology of Sian Ka’an, but equipped only with stone tools and manual labor for chipping canals out of the limestone bedrock, and no artificial fertilizer to aid their agriculture, the harms they wrought were far less extensive than here in Florida.
The lower reaches of Sian Ka’an Biosphere include Espiritu Santo Bay, home to a healthy population of Permit(Trachinotus falcatus), a game fish in the jack family. Permit are wary, strong, and fast. The Permit is infamous among fly fishers for its capricious behavior, often rejecting a perfectly delivered fly and, on rare occasion, grabbing a fly from a botched cast. Permit fight hard, and have a large repertoire of escape tactics: scraping off a fly on a coral, crushing or straightening a fly’s hook, or grinding through the nylon leader on the floor of the bay.
A local attorney friend has been trying to catch a Permit for years with no success.
The most accomplished fisherman in my local fishing club writes: “I have presented over 1000 flies to Permit… caught one (winning a tournament in 1988) and been skunked ever since!!! There is no way I haven’t found to lose a hooked Permit!”
Juan recently caught a nice Permit in Biscayne Bay. He is amazing.
With only four years of fly fishing under my belt, I consider Permit to be out of my league. I’ve seen Permit in Biscayne Bay and the Keys, but I’ve never caught one on fly or even set my mind to trying. Last spring I followed a massive Permit in my kayak for half an hour, but despite my advancing as slowly as possible, the Permit would never let me approach closer than 125 feet.
My benefactor, Andy, who gave me his trip reservation, sent me a brief note:
“Catch a permit for me.”
Uh oh.
I ordered materials to tie Permit flies, producing an assortment of weighted crabby and shrimpy things in proven patterns recommended by the trip outfitter.
My ties of the Raghead Crab fly.
The weighted crab flies that Permit favor are hard to cast, so I would need serious practice.
In the vain hope of not trashing my right hand by excessively casting my fast-action 9wt fly rod, I sought a rod of similar weight but with a softer action. The company I picked had 8/9wt rod blanks available, but none assembled in the size I wanted. I had never built out a rod blank before, but I figured why would Al Gore invent the internet if not for instructing a novice such as myself?
Here’s the newly built rod, getting its epoxy coating on a rotating machine that prevents drips.
I left for the airport a few hours after the epoxy dried.
My kayak fisherman buddy Cesar flipped over in a shallow rill along the edge of Florida Bay. Poor guy had no choice but to thrash around waist deep in shallow water and sticky mud groping for his lost fishing gear. He paddled back to the marina soaked, muddy, and completely humiliated.
It’s genuinely hard to flip a rotomolded fishing kayak in flat water. These craft have high primary stability and stick tight to the water’s surface. Nor is Cesar a beginner so I don’t think the flip was his fault. Two related stories suggest possible explanations.
In September 2015, I took my wife Gray out for a birthday paddle in Biscayne Bay. I was a couple of boat lengths ahead as we passed over a bed of lush turtle grass in two feet of water. Out of nowhere, a wave rose up another two feet above the bay’s glassy surface, racing for the shore-side of my kayak. Some large and unseen creature was coming at me, and fast. For whatever protection it could afford, I lifted my paddle blade and held it firmly between me and whatever was coming at me beneath the wave. The wave jumped out of the bay and exploded over me. In the next instant the kayak and I flew up into the air. As we fell back into the bay, I executed a low-brace to stabilize the kayak. I had reflexively turned my face away from the shower, affording me the view of a bull manatee rocketing out the other side, bound for deeper water. I was completely soaked and gallons of seawater had joined me in the cockpit, but I was upright.
From her ringside seat, Gray enjoyed the whole show.
An unseen bull manatee had been grazing underwater near the mangrove shore and panicked when he saw my kayak cutting off his escape route. The exploding water resulted from the hard tail flip he made to shove his body under my kayak in water the same depth as his rotund body.
Unlike my unfortunate friend, Cesar, I had two advantages that kept me from flipping over. First, I was paddling a touring kayak designed for rough water. Such a kayak has low primary stability and high secondary stability, meaning the hull rocks a bit on flat water but exerts a significant righting force that keeps it upright when tipped between 30 and 60 degrees. Second, I had a well-practiced low brace, the paddle maneuver that prevents a flip by controlling the hull’s rotational angle on the water. The low brace couldn’t prevent a soaking, but did keep me from going over.
Since then I have watched out for the telltale wave of a kayak-panicked bull manatee in shallow water. Several times I have had to back-paddle hard to let a bull manatee barrel through to safety. Cow manatees are more relaxed around passing kayaks. Being smaller, perhaps they don’t feel so vulnerable in the shallows.
But I can think of another manatee-related, possibility for how Cesar flipped in flat water.
In 2022, I purchased a Hobie iTrek 11 for inshore fishing. It’s essentially an inflatable paddleboard with a lawn chair and pedal-operated flippers. An additional inflated tube along each side provides extra primary stability. This thing is not going to flip in anything short of breaking surf. The iTrek is oval in shape and gray underneath, like a manatee.
Manatees love the iTrek. Many times I have had to reel in my fishing line when cow manatees come up to snuggle. A few times the bow of the iTrek has risen mysteriously out of the water, elevated on the nose of an amorous bull. It’s disconcerting for sure, but unlike a kayak, the iTrek stays upright while balanced at one end on a manatee’s nose, with no athletic intervention by the paddler. One morning I gave up trying to fish because a bull manatee followed me everywhere I went, nudging the boat from underneath then backing away with a silly grin.
Hardly the worst reason to miss out on the morning’s fishing, don’t you think? And definitely better than being flipped over like my buddy Cesar.
I previously reported on the Publix supermarket chain’s policy to allow open carry of firearms in their stores.
This week Publix slammed on the brakes and made a hard U-turn. On the sign posting store rules (wear cloths, no skateboards, roast your dog in the car, etc.) is a new one:
“Publix kindly asks that only law enforcement openly carry firearms in our stores.”
Why the change?
My pal Glenn Terry credits the Gainesville Flying Pig Parade:
I like to think he’s right, though the Miami Herald reports an alternative:
“Last week, a person accidentally discharged a weapon at a Miramar Publix, and police said they had to conduct a safety sweep of the store.”
Whatever the reason(s), I’m glad to see their capitulation as a small move back towards civil society.
I still hate Publix for their effective lobbying to block single-use plastics regulation in Florida and their exploitation of farm workers. Until the company supports the environment and worker’s rights, we won’t do our weekly shopping at Publix. But maybe we’ll experience less risk of being shot if we run in to buy the occasional hard-to-find bag of raw peanuts for the backyard Blue Jays.
When I moved to Miami in 1992, I assumed I’d take frequent trips to The Bahamas – they are so close. Thirty-four years later, I finally made my first trip. We spent an enchanted week on Long Island, 335 miles ESE of Miami. “We” includes my wife Gray and our retired zoologist friends Chris and Marcia from the Keys.
* * *
Flights being what they are, we stay over in Nassau before flying to Long Island. We spend the afternoon poking around the downtown, the best part of which is the walk up and down the Queen’s Steps at the end of a former limestone quarry turned tropical garden.
The Queen’s Steps, Nassau
As I sit on a stone wall to take in the view, a black rat (Rattus rattus) pops out from behind a rock, runs across the space in broad daylight, and scrambles onto my left foot. I shake my left foot reflexively and Miss Rat deftly leaps onto my right foot. I snap my right leg straight and propel her back across the narrow quarry, where she scoots back into her hole in the rock face. Rats rule the Queen’s Steps, or fancy they do.
The next day we take a turboprop to Long Island, passing over infinite turquoise flats visible through the scratched window.
As per its name, Long Island is long, about 80 miles end-to-end, and narrow, a mile wide in most places. It’s heavily vegetated in dense hurricane-pruned coastal hammock and scrub.
One road, The Queen’s Highway, runs the length of the island (are you sensing the Bahamian “Queen” theme yet?) Some sections had been paved at one time or another and everybody drives on the left side of the pitted road. We lodge at the north end, in Stella Maris where our digs are a Home Exchange house on a hilltop overlooking the Atlantic.
Chris is a far more experienced fly fisherman than I, and equally enthusiastic. For two months, Chris and I have been planning to fish for bonefish on fly. We even caught them in our dreams.
Slipping into bed on our first evening in Long Island, Gray asks me in a warning tone:
“You’re NOT going to spend the WHOLE time fishing, are you?”
“Oh no”, I reassure her.
Fishermen never lie; it’s hard to see bonefish at night. For her part, Gray spends every possible moment painting lovely watercolors of everything around her. I don’t complain. Why would I? I am delighted by her painting and seeing her enjoy it so.
Having forgotten to pack her tube of turquoise, Gray struggles to capture the exact color of the water.
Marcia borrows my binoculars and watches birds. While tricky to spot in the dense, low thicket that covers the windswept island, you can often hear their songs.
The Bahamas Mockingbird does not imitate other birds, but it sings its own lovely songs with the same enthusiasm.
A Bananaquit and a Bahama Mockingbird take baths in the gutter under the eave. Mangrove Cuckoos growl from the vegetation “kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk…”, but are largely invisible – only Marcia manages to spot one.
I discover thin vines with tiny thorns running along the ground through the scrub. Ouch.
If you venture off the path, nix the sandals – boots advised.
The property manager tells us that the recent hurricane last November took a heavy toll on the birds and butterflies. Hopefully they recover soon.
Food and supplies, such as they are, cost about twice what you’d pay on the mainland. Provisions arrive once a week at the town of Salt Pond, 20 miles south of our place, via the mail boat. The Regatta was held at a different island last week. Sailing being the national sport, lots of locals attend the Regatta, so the mail boat went there instead of Salt Pond. As a result, we find the produce shelves sparser than usual at the local food stores and the ATM empty of cash. The only fish we find for sale are canned tuna, tins of sardines, and frozen salmon. I’ll be darned if I’m going to The Bahamas and eating canned fish or frozen salmon. We innovated with the menu and didn’t starve. I’d brought good coffee and granola from home and a spinning rod that might prove handy for grocery fishing.
The four of us drive an hour south to Dean’s Blue Hole. At 663 feet deep, it’s the second deepest blue hole on the planet.
Dean’s Blue Hole. The white thing in the middle is a platform for divers, secured by four long steel cables.
The hole’s shallow perimeter is lined with live coral, hosting oodles of tropical fish and the odd sea turtle. Gray and I snorkel around the cool water to soak in the splendor.
* * *
FISHING REPORT
Chris and I wade fish on our own for two days, after which we conclude that the author of the do-it-yourself bonefishing book maybe hadn’t actually fished all the places he recommended. A mangrove creek where, he wrote, one could spend a full day fishing for bonefish would have taken us a full day to free ourselves from the deep, sucking mud. It looks promising on Google Earth, right?
The most interesting wade-fishing spot we find is the lagoon by the Columbus Monument / Lucayan Memorial at the north tip of the island. This lagoon is ringed by the prettiest flats I’ve seen anywhere.
Columbus Monument / Lucayan Memorial. Good old Christopher Columbus enslaved the Lucayans but they died. All of them.
Chris wears his new Simms flats boots, cumbersome affairs that do an excellent job traversing the frighteningly sharp eroded limestone that lines the shore. These boots would be good footwear for birding off-trail, as well. I tippy-toe over the crags in my rubber-soled dive booties. They’re better-suited for sand.
One slip here and you’d be raw hamburger.
We see lots of young Green Turtles and Lemon Sharks, a few schools of small mullet, and the odd passing bonefish.
The next morning we walk the edge of Aderley Bay, also pretty, and filled with critters.
These sand-colored portunid crabs are everywhere in the shallows of Aderley Bay.
We catch little snappers and Chris catches a baby Nassau Grouper that grabs his fly before diving into its hiding hole, but we don’t see a bonefish.
Returning to the lagoon at the Monument/Memorial late morning, a 10 pound bonefish swims up to Chris before he has prepared his line for casting. Oops. I see another bonefish approach. It sees me too and veers back into deep water. That’s it for bonefish today. Wading mile after hopeful mile, Chris and I rub our toes raw inside our neoprene wading socks. [Note to self: acquire snug synthetic liner socks].
This week the moon is waxing full, allowing the bonefish to stay up all night feeding on sand worms and other invertebrate party snacks. Having a full tummy come morning presumably lets them hang out in deep water and reduce daytime exposure to aerial Osprey attacks. Tide swings are steeper on the new and full moons which move bonefish faster through their circuit between the mangrove creeks and deep water. These faster movements, in turn, shorten our accessible fishing time on the flats. Neither nocturnal feeding nor fast transit over the flats is ideal for finding hungry bonefish by daylight.
Fortunately, Chris has booked us a day with James “Docky” Smith, owner of Bonafide Bonefishing. The locals tell us that Docky can put us on bonefish under any conditions.
The following morning, as we wait at the marina for Docky to show up, Chris chats with Docky’s brother “Big Dog”, who is fiddling with something on a large fishing boat. I watch a school of baby tarpon evading a hopeful barracuda and scout the water for snappers as a possible future dinner alternative to dining out.
A gazillion Baby tarpon. So cute!
Docky motors up in his flats skiff, a Kevlar Hell’s Bay Professional that poles in 5″ of water.
In 20 minutes we are on a beautiful flat, completely inaccessible to fishers lacking a shallow-draft flats boat. Docky cuts the motor and asks us to make a few practice casts so he can gauge our skill levels. My humble casting skills have room for improvement. Docky says to slow down my rod and speed up my left hand line haul. I try and it makes the casts longer and easier (thanks, Docky!). I can tell Chris is very excited – I’ve seen him make a hundred casts better than these.
Docky selects a fly from my collection, Chicone’s Crusher Legs Gotcha, tied with fur from our friend Laura’s Australian Shepherd. Docky directs me to the bow, and begins poling his skiff slowly across the flat in less than a foot of water.
“They are here, we just have to find them.”
Docky’s scheme is to intercept bonefish as the falling tide pushes them to deeper water. Wind riffles the water, better for fishing but harder for seeing fish. At least that’s the case for me. Docky has 30 years experience spotting these flats ghosts, and like all good flats guides, easily spots fish twice as far away as a normal human can.
Docky: “There … 11 o’clock, 80 feet. See them?” Me: “No.” Docky: “Sixty feet. See them?” Me: “No.” Docky: “Forty feet. See them?” Me: “Yep!” Docky: “Start casting!”
Twenty bonefish are swimming side-by-side straight toward us. I cast where Docky says. The fish don’t like my cast and leave. I need to angle my cast more downward so the fish cannot see the fly line. Try again.
Docky finds more fish and says “Start casting.” I cast and the fish turn away. When Docky says to start casting, he doesn’t mean for me to cast. He wants me to false cast until he likes the angle of my fly line and the distance of my fly, and then only to let it go when he says to. Ohh-kay. Not what I’m used to, but I’ll follow the master today.
The next school holds 25 bonefish, including a few large ones. Docky tells me to cast right in front of the middle of the school… wait, now! With a clearer understanding of his directions, I make a satisfactory cast, wait for the fish to get close enough to see the fly, then start the long, slow strips that mimic the behavior of a small shrimp fleeing encroaching bonefish. A dozen fish advance curiously to check out the escaping fly. Each bonefish, in turn, takes a quick look and swims away. Then the biggest one, a nine pounder, breaks out of the school and swims up to the fly. This big bonefish keeps following, following, following, then nope! It turns away too. They all think something is wrong with the fly. I suspect the fur is too long and offer to trim it shorter, but Docky says to pick a different fly entirely. I ask which one? “Doesn’t matter, choose one.”
I let Chris have the bow and go back into my fly box for something different. I pick the #6 Bone Appétit, with a shorter “wing” of tan rabbit fur. It’s a Crazy Charlie variant that Drew Chicone designed for the white sands of Andros Island. The sand here is white as well. I also switch from my 8 weight setup to my 9 weight, which will handle the wind a little better.
My tie of the Bone Appétit, a bonefish pattern by Drew Chicone.
Chris explores the numerous ways to scare bonefish. He shifts his body weight during the cast, rocking the boat maybe an inch, just enough to push out a subtle wave that makes the bonefish anxious. He repositions his sock-clad foot after the cast; somehow the bonefish sense it and depart. He casts his fly to land upwind of a bonefish school but the wind curves the belly of the fly line in front of the fish, scaring them away. Having corrected all his errors, Chris finally hooks up with a nice-sized bonefish that gives him several good runs before randomly tossing the fly. Hard-mouthed fish are good at that. Here’s a photo of the bonefish before it got away.
It’s not you; this hooked bonefish is invisible to normal humans. Even if you zoom in, all you can see is the nylon leader and disturbed water. Bonefish match and reflect the background color, but they are opaque, so one can track them by their moving shadows if clouds don’t block the sun.
At the next spot, Docky directs us to hop out and wade. As I walk beside him, Docky instructs me in bonefish behavior. I had a career studying animal behavior, but have only fly fished saltwater gamefish for four years. This lesson alone would be worth the price of the guide day, but it gets better. Docky spots a school of several dozen bonefish. As we get closer we can see them moving slowly away from us, transparent dorsal fins and tails glinting in the sunlight. I am beside myself. Wade fishing is my favorite pursuit. We follow the fish quietly, out of disturbance range. In time, they pause, turn, and come back towards us. I drop the new fly in their path, wait for the fish to get close, and begin the fleeing shrimp retrieve. A four pound bonefish pounces on the fly. I set the hook, and the bonefish takes off, zipping line off the reel.
I have caught many bonefish on spinning gear, but had just two “eats” on fly, neither of which I landed. This one is my first bonefish on fly brought to hand. I lift it briefly from the water for a quick pic and it’s off to rejoin its friends.
Close inspection of the photo shows recent injuries from Osprey attacks. No way an Osprey can lift a fish this big from the water, but it tried. Ospreys are the reason bonefish are so skittish, fleeing when anything disturbs the water or casts a shadow.
This bonefish has multiple injuries from Osprey attacks, a big V-shaped gash on its back and a nick on its tail. Adding insult to injury, it had the bad luck to eat my fly and get dragged in. This fish lives a rough life but thus far has always gotten away.
Chris hooks up again, more good runs, and the fish breaks off.
I catch a second bonefish, a little smaller than the first, about 3 pounds. I’d keep this fish in the water to unhook and release it, but oblige Docky who wants a quick photo.
I’m not happy, or anything, am I? Now quick, back in the water. Bye fish, and thank you.
Chris gets a third eat and manages to land this one.
You’d think this was Chris’ first bonefish. It’s not. They’re that cool to catch.
On the way back to the marina, Docky stops to have us compare the feel of different fly rods as he gives us some final coaching in flats casting. Chris asks what rod is HIS favorite and Docky pulls out a titanium-wrapped ADG fly rod, cautioning “be careful with my girl.” It casts like a dream, farther and with less effort than Chris’ Orvis Recon or my Sage X.
Despite the worst possible moon and tides, Docky has put us in front of nine bonefish schools today, ranging from 20 to 200 fish each. I’ve seen more bonefish today than altogether over the past five years in South Florida and I’ve learned as much again about bonefish behavior. We’ve hooked up five times and brought three bonefish to hand. I’ve had a such a fine day that when I back out of the lot at Docky’s fly shop and knock over his shop sign, the humiliation cannot put a dent in my elation. I happily pay a neighborhood carpenter to remount the sign – gotta support the local tradesmen.
After five days on Long Island we still have not seen fresh fish for sale. With a notion to catch something fresh for dinner, I drive back to a spot where I saw some respectable Mangrove Snappers. I cast some shrimp flies and get no reaction. Nuts to that. I pull out my cheap Okuma travel spinning rod and tie on the irresistible snapper lure, a sparkly 2.5” rubber shrimp made by MonsterUSA. I rigged it with a fly hook, lightly weighted. Tossed where the flies were ignored, a bunch of snappers zoom over to check it out. Some of them are big enough for dinner but none will eat this proven lure. Throwing caution to the wind, I cut off the protective barracuda-proof wire bite tippet and re-tie the shrimp lure directly to the 20 pound monofilament leader. I try again in a slightly different spot but get the same refusals as before. Snappers are notoriously leader shy, so I add to the leader two feet of Rio high strength 1X fluorocarbon tippet. This precious stuff is just one quarter of a millimeter in diameter and tests close to 15 pounds. I move a bit further and try a third time. I see a quick flash of silver and wham! My rod bends double and the drag screams as line peels off the reel. The barely-seen fish, whatever it is, has dashed back through the dock pilings whence it came.
I assume it’s a big barracuda, but the thin tippet holds. Definitely not a barracuda. Maybe a grouper(?). The 15 pound braided line is stretched taught against the pilings, humming audibly, yet amazingly, does not fray and break. We go back and forth, each of us gaining and losing line until the balance tips in my favor and the fish comes into view. I spy the characteristic black spot and red tail of a Mutton Snapper. With no one to help me land the fish, I grasp the leader in my right hand, lie on my stomach, and nab the fish with my left hand. Sometimes it’s good to be built like a gibbon.
Mutton Snapper by Gray Read, 8″x12″. If you want this painting, make her an offer.
The snapper measures 22″. I’d cook it whole, but it won’t fit on the grill. Filleted, it makes a fine dinner for the four of us with two pieces saved out for the property manager and his wife.
* * *
Long Island has been a lovely place to visit for a week, enjoyed in the best of company. We’ll happily go back.
* * *
Postscript: the bonefish mug
Four years ago, retired Miami attorney and fly fisherman Joel Rosenthal spotted me returning to the Black Point marina in my kayak. Joel recognized me as the former mayor of South Miami and asked “How did you do today?” Two bonefish and an overslot snook. “Fly or spin?” Spin.
Joel asked if I’d like to learn how to fly cast and I jumped at the offer. Since I was 12 years old, I have imagined I would learn fly fishing as a retirement project. With just two years to go before retiring, why not get a head start? Naive question. Like watercolor painting, fly-fishing requires true obsession to develop competence, except the gear costs much, much more. If you are cash-strapped, take up watercolors instead.
When I could throw a fly line 70 feet, Joel gave me a mug adorned with a drawing of a bonefish, but with the proviso that I could not use the mug until I’d caught a bonefish on fly. Oh, and the bonefish had to be brought to hand – “no photo and it didn’t happen.” I found a big gulf between casting a fly line on the grass and (1) convincing a moving, skittish, and largely invisible bonefish on the flats to eat a fly, (2) seeing it eat so I can quickly set the hook before the fish crushes the fly and spits it out, and (3) getting the hooked bonefish to hand without losing it. This morning the mug finally joins me for breakfast.
It’s the spring of 1995 and I’m onboard the R/V Bellows, anchored off the Dry Tortugas. Beside me is my host and senior colleague, Professor L. Scott Quackenbush. Quack is an expert on the endocrinology of marine invertebrates as well as a crack aquaculturist.
Dr. L. Scott Quackenbush
Our elbows propped on the rail, as we admire the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. Quack is downwind of me enjoying a smoke, a vice that will take him out three years from now.
“Did I ever tell you about the time we tried shrimp-farming at Turkey Point?”
I am all ears. Turkey Point is the site of two nuclear power generators on the shore of Biscayne Bay operated by Florida Power and Light (FPL). When first opened in the early 1970s, the reactors dumped thermally hot water into the bay, scalding everything and causing a massive sea grass kill.
Look ma, no cooling towers!
Instead of building cooling towers like those handling hot water in every other nuclear power plant on Planet Earth, FPL cheaped-out and constructed an expansive trapezoidal array of leaky cooling canals. The cooling canals cover 10 square miles of the Southeast Coastal Everglades.
The canals released giant plumes of hyper-saline water into the porous limestone rock beneath them, which expanded outward underground in all directions, including towards the well field that supplies fresh water to the Florida Keys. Most of the local biologists who are not on FPL’s payroll consider these canals an environmental disaster, which I’ll explain more about some other time. This story is about shrimp.
FPL contracted Dr. Quackenbush to determine if they could raise shrimp in the warm water of Turkey Point’s cooling canals.
Quack told me that they blocked off the ends of a couple of canal branches and he stocked them with shrimp.
The shrimp grew and thrived. But, when he harvested the shrimp, they were radioactive.
Nuclear reactors produce radioiodines, though these radioisotopes are supposed to be contained in the reactor vessels. Shrimp concentrate iodine.
“We filled in those canals and buried the whole project, and if you ever repeat this story to anyone, I will deny it.”
(FPL contracts are famous for their airtight non-disclosure agreements.)
* * *
Quack passed in 2008, so I figure it’s OK to retell his story today. Make of it what you will – I do have another witness to the telling.
A trip by paddle craft to the coastal marshes and flats can be a breeze or a slog depending on wind and tides. It took me one arduous kayak trip to Rabbit Key and another escaping the Snake Bight flat to become a tide chart addict.
The wind. Paddling home against a stiff headwind is somewhere between exhausting and impossible. Returning from Sandfly Pass in the Ten Thousand Islands I was stopped in my tracks by a squall that forced me to get out of the boat in the rocky shallows and wade back to the launch, pulling the kayak behind me. My favorite hat blew off and disappeared in the distance.
Tides are the same, but more predictable. Get the tides right and you get a free ride. Get them wrong, and you fight a river, ferry-crossing back and forth to seek eddies and weaker currents.
My purchase of a motorized skiff made it possible to move against the elements, to cover long distances, and sometimes to dodge a localized thunderstorm. Very efficient, but I missed the quiet and stealth of the pedal kayak. And the exercise. It’s the difference between a car and a bike: the motor craft is useful, the pedal craft enjoyable.
When I itch to be on the water, I open the marine weather forecast and the tide chart phone apps, looking for happy windows of winds and tides. Living on a peninsula provides choices. My choice of location and craft is based on the forecasts. If conditions are unfavorable on the east coast, nearby Biscayne Bay or the Keys, how about Flamingo on the southern tip of the peninsula? No? Then check the west coast out of Chokoloskee / Everglades City. If all three look threatening, I may opt for the interior mangrove creeks or central Everglades marshes. If it looks horrible everywhere, I stay home and tie flies while imagining the next outing.
A TAXI TIDE
I normally I take the skiff into Snake Bight in Everglades National Park to escape against the incoming tide, but the tide chart for Tuesday showed the rare, magical tide cycle that’s perfect for kayak exploration. One can ride the incoming tide into Snake Bight before sunrise, fish and bird well into the morning, then ride the outgoing tide back out again.
Snake Bight’s tides are one hour delayed from the Flamingo tide chart shown here.
I wake at 3:30 am and check the weather report. The wind looks to remain low through the morning. Rain looks iffy – it’s supposed to rain solid until 6 am, then let up until afternoon. Hopefully the algorithm running on the National Weather Service computer gets it right today.
Scary-hard rain pounds my drive south to the bottom of the peninsula, then stops to let me set up and launch the kayak in the dark. I can see the odd lightning flash to the south. Gradually the clouds break up and I have a lovely morning waiting for me on the water with 50 minutes to sunrise.
The half moon is still blocked by clouds and it is DARK. I turn on the pole-mounted kayak light. Its #1 job is to keep me from being run over by powered craft, but as a bonus, it casts a bit of soft light in all directions. Sitting above and behind me, the light doesn’t shine in my eyes. It does, however, shine in the eyes of the crocodiles.
American Crocodile perched on the marina wall. Amazing what the iPhone’s camera can do with the faintest of light sources.Here’s the same croc in motion.
Several more crocs take umbrage at my passage and splash off in a huff.
In time, the clouds melt away, allowing the half moon to illuminate the mangrove shoreline.
A Spotted Sandpiper perches on a fallen log, bobbing up and down. The end of the log has eyes and large teeth. Eek!
The sun glows as I round the corner into the Snake Bight flat. The north edge of the flat has a thin line of shocking pink. Though I’m looking for fish, Roseate Spoonbills always steal the show.
Some spoonbills fly over my kayak enroute to their favorite roost of snags by a mangrove creek.
I spot another kayaker approaching the cove where the spoonbills are roosting. He pulls out a camera with a giant lens, then paddles in too close, spooking some of the spoonbills. If that’s not bad enough, he starts paddling in even closer – too much.
If I can use an iPhone to get this photo without spooking the spoonbills, a kayaker with a giant lens doesn’t need to crawl down their throats.
First rule of not spooking birds is to act like you are interested in something else. Definitely do not aim your kayak directly at them. I call out: “That’s close enough!” He stops, turns around, and leaves. Good thing too. In half an hour, a carefully guided kayak tour comes by specifically to see the spoonbills.
* * *
FISHING REPORT (stop here if fishing bores you)
Last weekend I tied a mangrove crab fly using whatever I had lying around, with a notion to try for redfish feeding in the mangrove roots along the edge of Snake Bight. It came out pretty well.
Never mind the fish – I think it’s adorable.
I try it out. Crabby casts fine and stays upright while it sinks, but the legs entangle too much sea grass detritus. I’ll try it again in the Ten Thousand Islands where there’s less sea grass.
Instead, the winning fly today is my weedless tie of the classic chartreuse-over-white Clouser Deep Minnow.
It catches seven snook 18-22”.
20″ male snook with Clouser fly.
Snook in this size range are all males, turning into females when they get bigger, around 26-28”. I wonder if our Florida State legislators know that many of our prize game fish are transexual, “protandrous”, to be exact.
Somewhere else out there lurk the female snook. Research by FIU professor Jenn Rehage indicates that most of the females are still up-river, fattening up on sunfish and cichlids for the breeding season. This rainy spell should get them moving downriver again.
I have caught countless redfish on spinning gear but exactly zero on fly. I tied this sparkly fly in the hopes of temping a bite. Don Quixote jousts at yet another windmill.
Snook are great but I am still hoping to catch at least one redfish today. I swap out the Clouser for a sparkly redfish attractor pattern. Instead of a redfish, it catches my biggest snook of the morning (23″) plus a pretty little sea trout.
Lunch is leftover tamales from Moreno’s Tortilla Shop, re-heated in the sun. Gentle rain resumes on the drive home, kindly washing the saltwater drips from kayak and car. Fine morning all around.
In a motel breakfast room in Jacksonville last week, a woman learned I was from Miami and told me: “I don’t like Miami. I visited once and it didn’t seem like a nice place.”
So right she is.
In Miami…
…the Sun gets in your eyes.
* * *
You might encounter a stranger wandering in your yard,
while wild reptiles invade your home,
and grotesquely large bugs walk on you.
* * *
The water is too warm for trout fishing…
… but the sideshow can be too distracting to fish at all.
* * *
It rains on the weekend,
yet you can’t grow a decent apple.
* * *
Flocks of noisy birds disturb the peace,
it’s not safe to drink the water,
and you have to watch your step.
* * *
The Guardian 11-July-2014 / Talking Points Memo 12-July-2024
People in Miami can be so rude.
* * *
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tario.
Convicted felons wander the streets, disguised as clowns.
In 1993, Associate Professor Suzanne Koptur wanted to have coffee when she visited her new tea-drinking FIU colleague, so she mail-ordered me a 2-cup Gavalia coffee maker.
Everything about the coffee maker was adorable and it even came with a couple of ground Gavalia coffees. Drawn to cute gadgets as I am, did not wait for Suzanne’s next visit to try it out. Mixed with half & half and a bit of sugar, the coffee was pretty good, even for a tea-drinker. Before long, I’d nixed the sugar, but a small cup of coffee remained a nice daily complement to my breakfast of toasted English muffin and fruit.
Thus, in my late 30s, began my one-cup-of-coffee ritual. A second cup in the morning tended to wire me (risk of being obnoxious) and a cup in the afternoon messed with my sleep.
In my mid 50’s I read about pesticides in tea. Why would anyone knowingly do a hot water pesticide extraction then drink the contaminated hot water? I switched exclusively to organically grown teas. Then it occurred to me (duh) that many growers in poorly-regulated tropical countries apply massive amounts of EPA-banned pesticides to everything they grow, including coffee. Forget Gavalia: not organic, not happening. Whole Foods had a very good organic coffee in their 365 product line, then discontinued it. Sprouts Market has no connection to Jeff Besos, prohibits open carry in their stores, and sells 24 different organic bean varieties. My favorite is their organic fair trade Sumatran dark roast.
I didn’t adopt another habit as compulsive as my breakfast cup of coffee until my mid 60s when I rekindled my middle school era passion for fishing.
Sunday morning before sunrise, I’d grab a rod and head over for a quick fishing walk along the north bank of Snapper Creek on the southern edge of South Miami.
There I’d catch an occasional snook or peacock bass, but I’d also see the morning canal birds: Limpkins hunting apple snails, flocks of Chimney Swifts skimming the water for emergent aquatic insects, the occasional Peregrine Falcon or Short-tailed Hawk.
That’s when I discovered the “coffee-before-coffee” paradox.
People’s kitchens and back yards face the canal banks, coffee is diuretic, and there’s no place to pee discretely. I figured, incorrectly, that I could simply postpone my one cup of coffee by an hour and have it with breakfast when I returned. Not so simple. To attain sufficient aim and focus for skip-casting lures under low-hanging tree branches where the snook hang out, I needed a cup of coffee before my cup of coffee.
Roll forward to the present, my late 60s.
Professor Emerita Suzanne Koptur remains a good friend but the sweet two-cup Gavalia drip machine she gave me is long dead. Plastic lives forever, so for the past 20 years, its detachable plastic cone has sufficed for single-cup pour-over production.
As for me, the coffee-before-coffee problem has gotten so much worse. How many times have I caught myself spooning fresh grounds into my coffee cup or stopped myself from pouring half & half into the filter cone? I don’t even try to fish before my one cup.
It took a week, but the Arctic blast freezing tootsies across the US finally made its way to Miami on Saturday night, dropping to 34°F by dawn Sunday.
Most cold fronts stall before reaching South Florida, so our exotic people and critters are not adapted to temperatures below 50°F.
A chill like this brings Painted Buntings into our bird feeders and moves the manatees out of Biscayne Bay and into the urban canals.
Displaced northerners walk around shouting “Yes! Yes!” Teenage girls across Miami break out the boots with the fur. I unearth the LL Bean flannel-lined jeans and my 40 year old fleece jacket, recently refurbished by Patagonia at no charge. Everybody else wearing a too-thin jacket mutters profanity beneath their frosty breath.
LL Bean flannel-lined jeans. Love ’em!
The long, hard freeze of 2010 clobbered our native bonefish, snook, tarpon, and shark populations. A hard cold snap also kills-off many invasive exotic tropical fish and reptiles, but never gets them all.
When the temperature drops below 40°F, local news organizations issue Falling Iguana Alerts. The Falling Iguana Alert is kind of a joke down here, except it’s a real thing. All over our neighborhood, fallen iguanas littered the ground.
This Iguana fell onto the windshield of a neighbor’s car.This one made it all the way to the ground.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall – neither iguana in the photos survived. Had either of these bad boys landed on someone walking their dog, it could have done some damage.
Don’t be fooled, this frigid Cuban Knight Anole is not dead.
A Cuban Knight Anole fell onto the patio near our backyard pond. Good-intentioned folks who don’t know better sometimes bring a cold-stunned Knight Anole indoors to warm it up. Remember the velociraptors that chased people around the lab in Jurassic Park?
I moved Señor Knight Anole to a sunny spot by the front patio and he took care of the rest on his own.This little iguana only partially lost its footing and was found hanging upside down in a bush outside our front door.Cute little guy, huh?
In the afternoon, Gray and I bundled up and biked over to check on the manatees at a nearby marina on US 1.
I counted 31 altogether. One big male kept rolling onto his back and waving his flippers in the air.
Several bulls were quite frisky.
It’s dropping into the 30s again tonight, perfect weather for snuggling around an outdoor fire.
Vetoed. Both Gray and our neighbors agree that it’s too cold tonight for an outdoor anything. Sheesh. Somebody I know will be getting flannel-lined jeans for Christmas.
Eye of the Cormorant 