F
Field Ethos
Guest
By Vincent Bini
If you’re going to fish shallow water—and I mean really shallow, the kind where the bottom comes up to meet you whether you invited it or not—there are a few things worth knowing before you go.
Draft matters. Bottom content matters. And tides? Tides matter most of all, because they’re the one variable that looks predictable right up until it isn’t.
In most places, a tide chart is a reliable enough guide. In the Everglades, it’s more of a suggestion. Wind rewrites the whole script down there. A strong west wind pushes water in from the Gulf, raising everything—which sounds like a gift until you realize you’re now running over oyster bars that are usually visible at high tide, barely submerged and waiting to chew up your lower unit. Flip it around and a hard northeast wind for a day or two pushes water out into the Gulf. Stack that on a negative tide and you’re not fishing—you’re standing in the mud wondering where the water went.
I’ve seen Chokoloskee Bay damn near dry. It’s a humbling thing to witness.
The lesson, if there is one, is this: keep an eye on the water while you’re fishing. Some spots are only accessible on a high tide, and the window closes faster than you think. I know this. I’ve known it for years. Knowing it has never once stopped me from pushing my luck when the bite is on.
Which is exactly how three of us ended up stranded in a dried-up creek in the Lake Ingraham, surrounded by mud flats and crocodiles, a long way from anywhere.
We’d picked a creek that connected a smaller bay to the main channel on high tide. On low tide it connected nothing to nothing. By the time we figured that out, the water was already gone. Waiting six hours for the tide to return wasn’t appealing. Calling for a tow wasn’t really an option either—pretty sure Sea Tow doesn’t keep an airboat on standby.
We were stuck. The creek bottom looked like a slippery lunar surface.
One of my buddies jumped off the boat first. “Let’s push,” he said—and sank immediately to his knees. I had zero desire to get into that mud, but even less desire to sit there all day. So, I hopped in, our other friend followed, and we started pushing. The mud was slick enough that the skiff actually moved, which was more than I expected.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t been so far from deeper water. I felt like a crocodile sliding down a riverbank. In reality we were probably what the actual crocodiles were watching from the mangrove edge. We saw plenty that day. I think they spared us out of pity—or they were laughing too hard to bother.
Then my buddy—let’s say he carried a little extra insulation—slipped and went face-first into the mud. Head to toe. I braced for a meltdown.
Instead, he got up, looked at himself, chuckled, walked to a patch of mud that was still wet but firm, and without a word took a running start and dove face-first like a gigantic penguin launching into the sea.
I was crying. Our other friend thought it looked fun and joined in. Those two knuckleheads kept it up for nearly 15 minutes—full penguin dives, covered in Everglades mud, laughing like idiots—until I reminded them, we were still stuck in a dried-up creek surrounded by crocodiles.
We eventually pushed through to deeper water. They rinsed off, climbed back aboard, and we finished the day catching giant snook. A perfect ending to a day that had no business being perfect.
That friend—the mud diver—is no longer with us.
I think about that day more than he probably knew I would. The way he didn’t hesitate, didn’t complain, just got up and turned a miserable situation into something ridiculous and wonderful. That was him. That was exactly him.
The Everglades has a way of pulling things out of people—stripping away whatever they perform on land and showing you who they actually are. That day it showed me something about my friend I already knew but needed to see again.
I’m glad I was paying attention.
The post Aground in the ‘Glades appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
If you’re going to fish shallow water—and I mean really shallow, the kind where the bottom comes up to meet you whether you invited it or not—there are a few things worth knowing before you go.
Draft matters. Bottom content matters. And tides? Tides matter most of all, because they’re the one variable that looks predictable right up until it isn’t.
In most places, a tide chart is a reliable enough guide. In the Everglades, it’s more of a suggestion. Wind rewrites the whole script down there. A strong west wind pushes water in from the Gulf, raising everything—which sounds like a gift until you realize you’re now running over oyster bars that are usually visible at high tide, barely submerged and waiting to chew up your lower unit. Flip it around and a hard northeast wind for a day or two pushes water out into the Gulf. Stack that on a negative tide and you’re not fishing—you’re standing in the mud wondering where the water went.
I’ve seen Chokoloskee Bay damn near dry. It’s a humbling thing to witness.
The lesson, if there is one, is this: keep an eye on the water while you’re fishing. Some spots are only accessible on a high tide, and the window closes faster than you think. I know this. I’ve known it for years. Knowing it has never once stopped me from pushing my luck when the bite is on.
Backcountry Blunder
Which is exactly how three of us ended up stranded in a dried-up creek in the Lake Ingraham, surrounded by mud flats and crocodiles, a long way from anywhere.
We’d picked a creek that connected a smaller bay to the main channel on high tide. On low tide it connected nothing to nothing. By the time we figured that out, the water was already gone. Waiting six hours for the tide to return wasn’t appealing. Calling for a tow wasn’t really an option either—pretty sure Sea Tow doesn’t keep an airboat on standby.
We were stuck. The creek bottom looked like a slippery lunar surface.
One of my buddies jumped off the boat first. “Let’s push,” he said—and sank immediately to his knees. I had zero desire to get into that mud, but even less desire to sit there all day. So, I hopped in, our other friend followed, and we started pushing. The mud was slick enough that the skiff actually moved, which was more than I expected.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t been so far from deeper water. I felt like a crocodile sliding down a riverbank. In reality we were probably what the actual crocodiles were watching from the mangrove edge. We saw plenty that day. I think they spared us out of pity—or they were laughing too hard to bother.
Then my buddy—let’s say he carried a little extra insulation—slipped and went face-first into the mud. Head to toe. I braced for a meltdown.
The ‘Glades Penguin
Instead, he got up, looked at himself, chuckled, walked to a patch of mud that was still wet but firm, and without a word took a running start and dove face-first like a gigantic penguin launching into the sea.
I was crying. Our other friend thought it looked fun and joined in. Those two knuckleheads kept it up for nearly 15 minutes—full penguin dives, covered in Everglades mud, laughing like idiots—until I reminded them, we were still stuck in a dried-up creek surrounded by crocodiles.
We eventually pushed through to deeper water. They rinsed off, climbed back aboard, and we finished the day catching giant snook. A perfect ending to a day that had no business being perfect.
That friend—the mud diver—is no longer with us.
I think about that day more than he probably knew I would. The way he didn’t hesitate, didn’t complain, just got up and turned a miserable situation into something ridiculous and wonderful. That was him. That was exactly him.
The Everglades has a way of pulling things out of people—stripping away whatever they perform on land and showing you who they actually are. That day it showed me something about my friend I already knew but needed to see again.
I’m glad I was paying attention.
The post Aground in the ‘Glades appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...