Scotty Jackson grew up fishing the Chesapeake Bay. He lived in Florida now, and despite being a good light tackle fisherman, he’d become enamored with stories and pictures of Florida’s beautiful bonefish and tarpon and had recently gone “all in” on a bid to learn the poetic art of salt-water fly fishing. His father Dan, an extremely accomplished fisherman, was more than skeptical. A little wind, a loose knot, a markedly reduced range – in Dan’s view, fly-fishing was a far less effective method which made harder, that which was already hard enough. Having not yet caught his first fish on fly in Florida, he packed his new gear and flew home to more familiar environs; his family’s fishing cabin on the Chesapeake. Scotty had a whole lot to prove to himself. In short, he needed this.
On the first day in Maryland, they found birds on a huge school of breaking fish and Dan, throwing a shiny metal spoon, hooked up on his first cast, then twice more on the next two. But Scotty struggled with the stiff breeze, clumsily stretching but failing to reach the school. Use the double-haul; keep casting; stiff back-cast; stay calm, push your loop into the wind; concentrate on your strip and be ready to set; don’t give up, he counseled himself.
“Fish on!” Scotty howled as his fly rod finally doubled over, the drag singing for the first time. But just as suddenly, the rod snapped back with a hollow rattle, the leader cut by the sharp teeth of his would-be first fish on fly. Frustrated, he slammed his fly rig into the rod holder and grabbed a bait-caster. Dan smiled but said nothing as they motored from school to breaking school, boating blues and stripers all afternoon long.
The next three days were different versions of the same, until an engine failure sidelined the boat and ensured Scotty’s first fish on fly would elude him, even here. His best friend “Hoppy” joined him for his last two days, but without a boat, they were limited to fishing from the pier. As always, they drank beers and told stories and laughed late into the night but tonight, the smell and the slippery feel of the squid made Scotty sick; it reminded him of his clean, shiny fly rig, of missed opportunities and of failure. He so desperately needed to find his confidence and bring it back to Florida.
Sunday morning, mere hours before his flight, Scotty stared somberly out the window at the lazy gulls perched on the empty boat lift. Then he saw them. The birds saw them too, dropped from the pilings and rushed noisily to the east.
“Come on Hop!” he shouted as he burst out the back door toward the garage. Over his shoulder he called to Dan, “Dad, grab my rod and meet us on the beach!”
Scotty and Hoppy snatched up the dusty old canoe and scurried across the grass to the sand. Dan handed off the fly rod as they passed, two new anchovy flies buried neatly into the cork rod-butt. No one spoke. Within seconds they were paddling swiftly toward the boiling school of fish. Scotty shot Hoppy a thankful smile and saw his father watching through the telescope, surely thinking it impossible to do from a leaky old canoe, what he couldn’t in four days on the boat.
But this was about much more than catching a fish. It represented hope and strength and self-confidence and Scotty truly believed he could do it. He had to. Within minutes they were on them, in the middle of swarming mass of diving gulls and crashing blues and stripers, Scotty’s hands shook as he stripped line for his first false cast. His practice paid off. Even seated in the back of an unstable canoe, he rolled out a fifty-foot cast, right on the mark.
The water instantly exploded, and his rod doubled over. The bright yellow fly line whipped through the guides and the drag screamed as the deeply bowed rod pulsed up and down, its tip nearly touching the water. Gulls shrieked overhead and splashed all around them as a thousand frenzied bluefish tore into the school of bay anchovies, except one.
The fish that felt the sting of Scotty’s hook raced north. Almost into the white backing, he applied pressure and Hoppy swung the canoe around in pursuit. After a fifteen-minute fight that was sweeter than any he’d known, the fish wallowed next to the canoe, spitting mouthfuls of baitfish. Scotty lifted it aboard and with sweat dripping in his eyes, he proudly turned toward shore and held his catch high, hoping it filled the whole telescope.
Dan smiled as he slowly pulled away from the eyepiece. Scotty smiled too, imagining his father’s surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned. He did it.”
“Now I can go home, to Florida,” Scotty comfortably assured himself.
~ Michael Walrath