Words & Photos : Dylan Schmitz
Down in the Gulf, there’s a shift you feel more than you see. The mornings are cold but a warm humid breeze picks up just enough to remind you what summer feels like. Water temps climb. Your casting hand starts twitching. It’s time to start using that PTO.
For us, the start of the season isn’t marked by any date on the calendar. It’s the ritual. The sorting through fly boxes packed last fall, checking old logs, scanning tide tables and forecasts. Keeping an eye out between fronts.
You throw on a new patterns you tied over winter only to go back to the rusty ones from last season because the new ones don’t swim right, still needs tweaking. The cast needs work. It always does. You shake out the rust and try to remember how that double haul used to feel when it was automatic. The wind finds every bad habit you picked up in the offseason, but it also reminds you why you love this. It’s not supposed to be easy.
We launched early from a tucked-away ramp just north of Boca, coffee still too hot, skiff’s too clean. There’s something about this stretch of water—the history soaks through everything. This is where the old timers made names and broke rods, and where you come to lose yourself in something bigger.
The sun takes its time but finally it lights up the flat like a spotlight. And we fished until the light went out, because we of course got stuck on a sandbar that must’ve moved. We putted out and ran back in the dark.
Back at the dock, sunburned and soggy we ordered pizza and took notes on what we forgot to pack on the first day back out. The cycle starts again.
Guides: Capt. Jarrett Bottjer & Capt. Mel Gannon
Anglers: Jake Dion & Elyse Olney