TRAILER Lost in the Moment
SOMETIMES THE KAYAKING’S SO GOOD, THE FISHERMAN IN ME GETS WORRIED BY AARON REED
WE HAD BEEN GLIDING through the twisting mangrove-lined channels for perhaps half an hour before I realized we were lost. Not lost like I-don’t-know-where-we-are
lost. Not we’d-better-call-the-Coast Guard lost; but lost in the sense that I had no idea which slough or creek would take us back toward our launch site. I had been paying too much at-
tention. After a flurry of redfish and
trout topwater action shortly af- ter sunrise, my friend Capt. Dean Thomas paddled back to shore to meet his clients. Tamara and I struck out on our own, delighting in the parrying scuttle of blue crabs in the seagrass meadows below us and the stately grace of great blue herons stalking the shallows. All around us the prolific black mangroves were in bloom, and a sweet, subtle scent filled the air. Butterflies and honeybees busied themselves among the blossoms, and red-winged blackbirds sang their sentinel challenges from the highest branches. I had not taken my fishing rod from its holder in hours. An undercurrent of panic bubbled to the surface: What if… What if just being out here—hovering be-
tween sea and sky, at the indistinct boundary of land and water—is enough? What if I don’t need to fish anymore? It had happened before, after all. Just across the bay. If I
could find a piece of dry ground high enough to allow me to see over the mangroves, I could point to the very spot where, over the course of three winters, my wingshooting career went aground. I had been hunting since junior high school; once I got my
driver’s license, I became one of the guide boys at the storied Port Bay Hunting Club, the oldest in Texas. Duck hunting—dogs and decoys, dawn spreading over the horizon, hot coffee and the sharp scent of cordite—was a family tradition. The end came disguised in an uptick of interest; even though
I was busier than ever as fully fledged member of the working world, I suddenly found myself making more time to be on the water. I’d head to a favorite blind or shoreline with or without a companion, with or without a dog. Sometimes I’d even make an extra trip to set out a spread of dekes the night before. I remember distinctly one late winter morning watching flight
after flight of bluebills and redheads alight in my spread, reveling in the jinking whirr of flocks of teal as they buzzed by, watching an osprey plummet to the surface and emerge with a redfish in its talons. I never once picked up my shotgun, the old Winchester Model 25 12-gauge handed down from my grandfather.
50 … KAYAK ANGLER spring 2008
At the end of the morning, as I waded out to re- trieve my decoys, it occurred to me: I don’t even like to eat ducks. I don’t need to shoot ducks to get all the rest of this…. Tamara’s voice intruded on my reverie. “Do you have your GPS?” As the chart resolved on the screen,
I could see we were less than a mile from our launch, and not nearly as far downwind as I had feared. I picked- out a route through the tangle of back lakes and channels, and we began paddling. As I rounded a bend, a school
of finger mullet showered against the spartina- and mangrove-clad shoreline. I paused in mid-stroke, reached behind me for my rod and unlimbered the bone Su- per Spook Junior topwater plug. Suddenly I was, again, very much in the moment. Rod at the ready, I searched
the water for signs of movement: there, a swirl behind nervous water.
I lofted the plug beyond the hidden baitfish and began walking it back toward the boat, my pulse thumping
in my ears. I realized I was holding my breath, and inhaled deeply just as a redfish crashed my lure, sending it tum- bling end-over-end through the air. Adrenaline coursing, I quickly retrieved
and cast again. On the third twitch, a fish again slammed into the plug and I set the hook. As my rod bent and the drag began singing, I felt a sense of relief flood over me: “This is good,” I
thought. “This is very, very good.” Many in the paddlesports industry believe that kayak fishing
is an entrée to “serious paddling,” that it is a gateway through which more and more people are discovering decked boats and spray skirts and Eskimo rolls. And I’ll cop to a growing appreciation for the graceful lines
of a Greenland-style hull, and when I successfully completed my first unassisted roll last summer in a decked boat, I felt a profound sense of accomplishment. But. I’ve been fishing since I could stand. For me, it’s therapy and
exercise and meditation—and sometimes a trip to the grocery store—all rolled into one. And in more than three decades of throwing everything from dough balls to elegant hand-tied de- ceivers at the finny classes, I have not discovered a more effec- tive—or pleasant—way of fishing than from a kayak. And I suspect that I’ll never find another way to fish that allows me to be so much a part of the landscape, lost in the moment.
AARON REED works as a news editor for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and is the author of the forthcoming Falcon Guide to Paddling Texas.
ILLUSTRATION: LORENZO DEL BIANCO
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