Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

Chuck Kenney

Wayne got me a quota permit for the Big Cypress so that I could wander about in the prairies hunting snipe and pissing off the deer hunters. There were no snipe for the first two days but I just got a report from one of my pals that a big flight came in today. I’ll be out there in the morning, hopefully, it bein’ a weekday, there won’t be too many armed riflemen in the trees to agitate.

Yesterday as I left Turner River, there was a road block on highway forty one, there was a bad accident at forty mile bend and they were steering everyone away from the straightaway. Who knew it was the last Nascar race of the season at Homestead and everyone from Everglades was tearing across South Florida for the Races? There was a bad wreck at 29 and 41 the night before, the one at forty mile bend and then another when Luke and his entourage were returning from the race and plowed into a herd of hogs at,  guess where,  …forty mile bend. The hogs are all messed up and so is the van but everyone riding home from the races is alright.

Things have settled down a little tonight, just a few of us stragglers shootin’ pool at the Rock Bottom and that one guy that couldn’t aim his shot because he only had one eye. It was OK though because he had the missing eye replaced with a yellow glass orb with a Harley Davidson logo on it.

When tarpon fishing by sight, especially with a fly rod for sleepers, everything counts.

First, we just want to see if we can see one, if we see her first, before she sees us, it counts.

Next, if we’re lucky, we might get a chance to throw.  A “Chance to Throw,” counts.

If you chance a throw and don’t spook it, ‘You’ve Made the Cast! …Making the cast counts.

If you’ve made the cast, you’ve entered the realm of presentation.  Every presentation counts.

Jerk, twitch and bump. Slide. Switch to a Dying Racoon Fly.

If the tarpon deigns to swim over and take a look, we got a ‘follow,’ and every follow counts too.

Then, if it bites, we’ve stuck one, and every strike counts.

This brings us to the “HooWah,” stage, the chance to stick ‘em good, re-strike, to jump ‘em, the hook can still pop out but you have stung one good, got her into the air at least once, or halfway anyway, this is also known as ‘Look at the Freakin’ Mud!’ not to mention the whitewater foam and silver scales and the rattling gills. The broken leader.

The next step is to hang the hook, get it buried, hook the fish and get her through the first set of lungeing, running jumps without breaking the leader. When that happens all hell breaks loose. Mud blooms across the cove and, if she is big enough, there will be mud and whitewater everywhere, there will be a silver meteor from heaven, seven feet long and careening across the bay, tail walking and furious. She will be airborne in a Giant Panic, in all likelyhood there will be a few mangrove branches scattered in her wake and two men trying to tie her down with a slender thread from a small boat. The chromium shine of her scales in the air will equal the brilliance of mercury and somehow, in all that chaos, you will remember seeing her eye at the same eye level as your own standing upright, her body upside down in the sky with her tail pointing at the remnants of the moon and the sound, like barrels of rattlesnakes colliding in anger, gills rattling.

At that point you will have jumped one, and jumping one counts. Big Time.

Went scouting a couple of days ago. Here’s Bill with the snook of the day.