The fly lands spot on. Sinking where it needs to sink: three feet in front of a tailing permit. The fish moves on. Maybe I should have cast right on top of it. Maybe farther to the right. Maybe it’ll show up farther down the flat. I should have cast a bit further.

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The next fish eagerly roots around in the coral debris littering the bottom. A cast right to its nose instantly spooks it. I quickly retrieve for another cast, just as the fish wheels around for another look at the rude intruder into it’s space: too late, it sees the crab hauling out of the water and bolt for places far gone.

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The wind dies to nothing, a tail glistens in the sunlight far down the flat. Now we slip over the aquarium this place has become. Every piece of this place seems magnified now in the slick watery lens. We are voyeurs of another world. As we come close, a small school of permit slides onto the flat. Their mere presence, the wakes, the suddenly crowded scape sends every fish bolting in all directions. Fish spook fish as the heat wilts everything that it meets.

 

Now the wind pulls hard, never letting up, tethered to some rope that tugs waves, water and a fish or two onto the flats. Their sides, the black sweep of their tails, their presence is given away in the trough between waves. Now it might be easy, but they move on, never seeing what I offered, or maybe crabs weren’t expected to rain from the heavens just now.

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It’s the first sight, the unmistakable shimmering, sparkling arc of tail into air, into sun, into possibilities. It’s the hope that it all goes right, one chance, maybe two? Be mindful, patient and deliberate. There it is again, easy. The tip, the tail, the wind, the waves, and an enormous slack line that will not come tight before it ends to become yet another replay in a list of how many things are just not quite ….

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Onwards, again…. we persist….

The south end of the caye forms a big crescent. Here the water seems almost stagnant, tea-stained. We might call it frog water anywhere else. Stare long enough into the depths and the bottom appears to move. Move it does, as tight schools of tiny baitfish swim along giving the appearance of a solid bottom. It only then that the full implications of this place come clear: either bait are here to spawn on the big columns of algae that tower upwards along the margins, or they have been herded in here at first light by schools of tarpon. It doesn’t take long before the tarpon come back up to gulp air, before slowly returning down deep. Wounded bait float in the water column. In late afternoon, the tarpon are rolling everywhere; in the middle deeps, along the edges and on the flats that surround the hole. In the morning the bait fish skitter along the surface, sounding like waves of rain. Look under the boat and tarpon might be seen slowly cruising through the masses, scattering them in every direction. Everything seems slow here. Maybe it’s the heat.

Come here at first light and see pelicans and other birds raining out of the sky. Tarpon slash across the flats in a surface frenzy that might last five minutes before things settle into a slow, day-long pace.

Cast to where a pod of 70 pound fish has just surfaced, a slow strip, maybe two… or maybe it happens on the sink. The grab is hard, the first jump chaotic and loud. If the hook holds through the first jump, then there’s a good chance of bringing one boatside. If not, there’s the rush of four to five feet of fish airborne and heading for Cuba before it all goes quiet and slow again.

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“Mon! You’re F-U-C-K-I-N-G falling apart!” yells Julian across the wind whipped flats. “What the fuck is happening to you!?”

Yesterday I was getting high praise for hitting my targets. Many casts were deliciously downwind and spot on to several fish that either wouldn’t eat, spooked or just do what permit do and move on. Now I’m wondering why in the hell I traveled all this way to get yelled at.

The tails glisten briefly in the sunlight before disappearing farther down the flat. We walk swiftly in pursuit. These damned fish just won’t sit tight to give me a chance to get in a favorable position for a more downwind cast. The tide is running out and the sun is setting. The door is closing. My casts continually fold into the stiff northeast breeze, falling well short of a small school of permit. I trudge forth, thigh deep trying to give myself enough time to breathe and set up before the school moves on again, 80-foot casts headfirst into this crazy wind aren’t my thing. Days of sun, wind, and heat have exhausted me both mentally and physically. My own coup de grâce seems at hand. I’m a mess.

In a moment of frustration I hand the rod to Julian, just so he can know how tough it is at this angle. “Here, let’s see you try this.” He fires a razor tight loop into the wind, landing squarely on target. Shit. I’ve lost my rhythm. Five days on the flats has left me empty. It’s late afternoon. My last day out here. I’m tired. My hands are blistered from previous days of casting and saltwater soakings. I’m ready to hang it up, I got what I came for. I can just walk away from all this now and still call it a success.

One last time, a deep breath, and the cast somehow pierces the wind, falling along the edge of the school. A short strip and the line comes taught on a fish. I’m running down the flat now, rod held high, weaving this fish through coral heads along the way. These fish, even these smaller school fish are incredibly hot, going deep into the backing before you can catch up and hope for the best. Finally, after a long mad dash, the fish comes back on to the flats where I can tire it quickly and bring it to hand. Game over.