It took several minutes to help him out of the mire. When he did free himself, he entered the boat, covered with really smelly mud and, to both our surprises, only one shoe. I hesitated to complain about all the mud all over the boat. Neither of us mentioned the missing shoe, which was obviously under three feet of mud.
We idled back out of the creek to a hard bar where John got back in the water to clean up. John had still not spoken a word.
We finally made it back to that flat we were pursuing, and to our glee, it was swarming with tailing redfish – not your average garden variety, but some big boys in the 20 pound range. Both of us took our light spinning outfits and eased into the water. We waded over toward a school of reds that had probably 50 fish in it. They were rooting around, tail six inches in the air, in two feet of water, looking for crabs. We were casting half-ounce jig heads with chartreuse swim tail grubs.
My first cast spooked a big red. John’s first cast hooked up with a screamer! His eight pound test line ran off the reel like sewing thread. Fifteen minutes and several runs later he released a 25-inch red.My next cast hooked up, and I spent 15 minutes playing mine. This went on for an hour or so, until the reds started to move off the flat.
I eased over toward the little cut they were using to get into the creek. As I stood and cast to the oncoming reds, I realized that I was sinking into the mud. Oh, well, with fish coming, who cares? I continued to fish, and my legs continued to sink into the mud.
By the time I realized I was in trouble, John had made his way back to the boat. The water had all but run off the flat, and I was up to my waist in nasty mud. John just sat in the boat saying nothing. It was impossible for him to get to me, and impossible for me to walk to the boat. So I pitched my rod as far as I could toward the boat. It landed reel down and plunged a good foot into the mud. John cracked a small smile.
I did what I had to do, and that was to lay over and begin belly crawling across the mud. Both shoes came off in the original hole, and I looked like a mud puppy squirming across the mud flat. I had to move fast for fear of sinking again. John just sat and watched.
I reached the boat, tried to clean myself off a little bit, and swung over the side into the floor of the boat. Exhausted and smelly, I was a real mess.
John started the engine, pulled the anchor, and began idling out of the creek. He had not said a single word since I rolled him across the floor of the boat earlier that morning. As he picked up speed, and I lay there like a floundering whale, I looked up at him. He glanced one more time at me and then broke out in the biggest smile I ever saw. In another minute we both began laughing, and in a few minutes we had to stop the boat we were both laughing so hard!
Few people have fishing friends like John and I do. Few people can stand to be with each other through days like this and still remain friends. But there we were, muddy, barefoot, except for John’s one shoe, and happy because we got to fish together one more time!
