Once a week, and sometimes twice, I was on the water out of Flamingo. I was either with my father or I was trailering the boat down the seventy-mile trip with one or more of my high school fishing buddies. I never realized until many years later what a privilege it was to be trusted alone on a fishing trip like that at such an early age.
I had several fishing partners at the time, all of which have scattered across the country to lives of their own. I tried to keep in touch with them, and with some small exceptions, have not been able to hook up with any of them on any long term basis. My cousin, Alan, is one with whom I have been able to stay in touch.
Alan was literally begging me to take him to Flamingo, something that I actually didn’t want to do at the time. Who needs a ten year old hanging on you all day? But the chance to fish outweighed any burden I had to bear, and one morning we left with my Dad’s boat in tow.
The rules for me were simple for me. Call collect to my Dad from a pay phone at the bait shop, then from the boat ramp at Flamingo. A third call was required when we got the boat back on the trailer and headed back home across the Everglades. Pop always looked out for us.
The rules for Alan were just as simple – do what I say when I say it!
We fished Lake Ingraham, a saltwater lake within the curve of Cape Sable on Florida’s southwest coast. An entrance canal had been dug from the Gulf of Mexico on each end of the lake in an effort to “drain the swamp” during the old Florida land boom of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Tidal flows keep both of these canals open and deep, but the lake itself, actually now an inland bay, is relatively shallow.
A locally marked channel runs long ways up and down the lake, carved by the prop wash of many outboards making the trip. On a low tide, staying up on plane and running wide open will get you across. If you ever settle in the channel, it becomes a long, mud churning idle.
The lake is about four miles long with an island about three quarters of the way up toward the northwest. South of this island and south of the channel is where the deepest water is on a high tide, and it was in this area that we had been catching good numbers of redfish in the eight to fifteen pound range.
The grassy bottom provided cover for the baitfish, and these big reds prowled the entire area feeding on pinfish and other bait.
The method we used was to idle upwind and quietly drift back across the grass with a free-line, cut bait. We fished into the wind, which allowed our bait to drift away from the boat. Slowly lifting, and sometimes jigging our baits, we would drift across the entire area. Then I would crank up and idle back upwind to do it again.
I had already caught two nice reds, and was trying to help Alan, hoping he could get hooked up to a nice one. I watched as he cast his bait to the back side of the boat. Naturally, the boat drifted back over his bait, and he had little control over his line. More often than not, the bait ended up hung in a wad of thick bottom grass, now moving under the boat. Frustration was setting in as I cautioned him and tried to get him to fish on the right (that is – correct) side of the boat.
But Alan was stubborn and determined to prove me wrong, so I simply allowed him to continue. I thought that maybe learning through a bad experience would be the best option in this situation.
As we continued to drift, me fishing on the correct side, and Alan fishing on the wrong side, I heard some grunting. I turned to see Alan hooked up to and fighting a rather large red!
Alan fought the fish to the boat and I netted it, much to his glee. The look on Alan’s face was worth the whole trip! And, come to think of it, the feeling I had of being successful at putting him on a good fish was just about as good!
The next hour or so was replete with Alan’s commentary on which side of the boat was the better side. All of the talking I had done and any I planned to do was wasted effort. Alan had proved me wrong!
Alan still fishes from time to time. He recently sent me the picture you see of a redfish he and his family caught off Cedar Key on Florida’s west coast. Every time we are together we talk about the good old days of fishing with fathers, uncles, cousins and friends. And to put it like someone else always puts it: that’s a good thing!
