Lower Matecumbe, Florida Keys

Friday, June 29, 2007, Lower Matecumbe Flats, Florida Keys

If you’re fishing in greater Miami and go 25 miles south to Homestead, you naturally have to drive the additional 25 miles to the Keys. And you have to visit the Worldwide Sportsman store in Islamorada and ask if there’s a place where you can pull your car over to the side of the road and wade out on some flats and possibly find a bonefish. The answer is yes and it’s just a handful of miles down the road on the east side of Lower Matecumbe.

I don’t know how to catch bonefish other than with live shrimp and I don’t have any live shrimp, just a vestful of mostly bass lures along with a few lures that the salesman at Worldwide Sportsman says will work.

But I do know how to wade these flats – from a brief visit when I was a child and from three brief outings as an adult down here on business over the past few years – but none with a guide.

First the weather: perfect. It’s 80s, mostly sunny, and breezy. The breeze gives the flats a surface chop which is not ideal for sighting fish but good for making the fish less spooky. I of course wear polarized lenses. If you’re an angler you’re nuts not to always have a pair.

When you’re in the Keys you notice the colors of the water – the shades of green and blue that vary with the depth, the clarity, and the bottom. I’ve never visited the Arctic Circle, but whatever indigenous peoples were first here in the Keys had to have had as many words to describe the hues of this water as the indigenous peoples up north have for snow. This place is a watercolorist’s delight.

My wade on these flats lasts three hours and I don’t catch a bonefish. I do see one – a large one, maybe 8 or 9 pounds, during my first 15 minutes – but he sees me simultaneously and darts away. Bonefish don’t stick around when they see a human or a fishing rod. You have to be stealthy. So I never get to cast a lure to a feeding bonefish.

But I do get to cast to other fish including perhaps 25 barracuda. Barracuda are similar to largemouth bass in that they’re both curious and wary. When they know you’re around, they’ll come over to take a look, but when you throw your lure to them they back off. You have to tease and tease and tease until you goad them into striking. I eventually crack the code with a finesse worm that I’ve bitten to three inches – speed it across the surface as fast as I can reel and then stop it dead. Then twitch and twitch and twitch. I hook a dozen or so barracuda, mostly less than 14 inches, but one measures at least 3 feet. I’m using only 8-pound line and most of the barracuda bite it off. I know I can put on a wire leader and eliminate the bite-offs, but that would also eliminate any interest from a bonefish if I happen to see another. It’s fun to fool the barracuda even if it means losing a lure.

At one point I reel in an empty barracuda-bitten line and stop to tie on another hook and as I’m looking down at the hook I see a big shadow approaching me on the water – a shadow from a storm cloud moving in. I look up to see the cloud and there’s no cloud. So I look into the knee-deep water and there’s a giant closing in only five feet away. I gasp (only in saltwater can the swimming giants make you actually gasp) and step sideways and then the giant notices my presence and veers off. It’s a lone manatee. A year ago I had seen my first manatees, but in a deep lagoon and in pairs. I had no idea that they ever swim the shallow flats. This one comes within a foot of my legs as it glides by.

There are not a lot of fish on this flat – at least I don’t see a lot – but I do see enough to keep me very interested. There are needle fish on the surface, schools of pale green finger-size minnows, occasional blowfish hugging the bottom, and one shark. The shark is 3 feet long and brown – not gray – and has a wide head and a slender tail. I toss a Zoom fluke to him and dart it along and he inhales it. I’ll never land this fish – his teeth will sever the line or his strength will strip all of it from the reel – so I give him slack rather than setting the hook. And within 10 seconds he spits out the fluke. I wind it in undamaged and watch him swim off.

This stretch of flats spans a mile or so alongside the road and at least 100 yards wide – more in some places. There are a few areas as big as a half football field that have bottoms of white sand, but mostly these flats are covered with various short grasses and smaller strips and patches of white sand. It’s against the white sand bottom that you spot fish.

In one direction is the Atlantic Ocean and in the other is the slender Lower Matecumbe Key with expensive homes hugging the water. It’s not tourist season, but still there’s a sprinkling of boats: a half dozen or so small outboards in the distance, and two family-size jet skis in close. Still there’s plenty of room for everyone.

A pair of four-foot-long fish swims slowly by, weaving their way among the grasses, obviously hunting food. They’re thick and black and I wonder what they are. Cobia? (I’ve caught cobia off the Alabama coast, but in deeper water.) These are 40-pounders. I cast a little bonefish jig to them and they veer off. The Senko! I fumble through my vest, heart beating, and find and tie on the Senko, one eye staying on the big fish and continually following them with my wading feet. The Senko on, I heave it a long way and it lands perfectly in the path of the fish. They swim by it without any interest. Twice more I repeat and twice more there is no interest. I wonder what these fish are. They’re gone now. Will I see them again?

Five minutes later they come back and before I can cast to them they swim within a few feet of me and I see them from the side: tarpon! I’ve seen tarpon in other environments, but never on skinny flats and I had no idea they look like this: stark black from above with strong, thick bodies, and silver-dollar silver from the sides and with clear delineation of that distinctive jaw. I cast again in front of them, but no interest. My admiration for folks who have caught these fish on flats immediately skyrockets. My fish are mere 40-pounders; anglers have caught tarpon 3 and 4 times that size on flats.

I depart the flats with 3-hour-tired legs from continuous water-walking, and with a thirsty throat. As I drive off the clouds move in and drop a massive load – massive enough to later make the evening news.