The trunk of the old ‘49 Dodge was packed with fishing gear. It included the old six horse Mercury that really didn’t run very well. Rods protruded from the rear driver’s side window, each having been pre-rigged the night before. I was sent to bed early, but my Dad and uncle sat up late making wire leaders for bottom rigs. Braided green line was on each of the four old Penn 65 reels and boat rods, tied with a 6-ounce egg sinker to the wire leaders. This was the standard fishing rig in my memory for a number of years.
It’s three in the morning, and I am half asleep and half excited as we stop at the icehouse on the way. The only place to find block ice in those days was the Royal Palm icehouse. The tackle shops had not yet taken on ice sales. On the loading dock, I watched as the night attendant hauled a seventy-five pound block of ice across the wooden floor with his tongs. My Dad held open the green canvas bag as the ice slid into the opening.
It was a four foot tall, round bag, two feet in diameter, with a round, flat metal bottom. Drawstrings at the top helped keep the ice from melting. My father mumbled something about high prices under his breath as he paid the $.75 for the ice – a penny a pound was outrageous for frozen water!
The bag went into the trunk with the other fishing tackle. One more stop for ten pounds of fresh mullet to be cut up for bait, and we made the two-hour drive into the Florida Keys. A one-lane road with very little traffic, US 1 ran all the way to Key West. Our destination was Bahia Honda, a little over half way down the Keys. I can’t remember whether Monroe County ran the little rental concern at the boat basin or whether it was a private operation, but it was there that we rented a sixteen-foot wooden skiff all day for $5.00.
With everything in the boat we headed out into the Gulf side of the Keys, No Name Key on our left and Horseshoe Key dead ahead. We had to stop about every ten minutes to let the air cooled engine cool off. It would run until it got hot, and then shut down. For the longest time I thought that was how outboards were designed!
A very unscientific process of triangulation and arguing over which mangrove tree and which structure on the shore were the right ones to use as targets was followed by an anchoring exercise. The boat had an old grappling anchor made from lead pipe and rebar, and it took a little practice to get it to hang.
Once we anchored, we pretty much stayed right there for the entire day. That “day” was from sunup until sundown, and we seldom, if ever moved. Heck, we didn’t have to move! The gag, red, and Nassau grouper were thick on the bottom. It probably mattered little if we were off the chosen spot by half a mile or so, the fish were everywhere!
And so, the ice bag came to be filled with fish. Seventy-five pounds of melting ice, which surprisingly lasted all day, enough fish to fill the bag, and all of our bottled cokes, were mingled together in the dark, slimy interior of the ice bag. I can see my father as clearly as if it were yesterday taking one of those slimy cokes out of the bag, opening it with the bottle opener, wiping the slime with one hand, and downing the entire drink in two huge gulps, fish slime dripping from his chin.
The trip home was one of peaceful sleep for me. I to this day do not know how they drove for three hours after being up since three in the morning and fishing until six at night. But the ice bag was in the trunk with all the fish and what was left of the ice block. Believe it or not, there was always a chunk of ice left when we got home.
Three hours of cleaning fish put bedtime at around midnight for my father. Completely brown and sometimes burned from the sun – we never used sunscreen – he arose at six the next morning to head in for work. How, oh how did he do it? I suspect he could not wait to brag about his catch!
I sometimes wish we still had to fish that same way. It just seemed to be a more special time, a time that required a lot of stamina and patience. And somehow the rewards just seemed to be greater for all that effort.
