Three Casts

By Steve Hoovler

At 5:00am the alarm clock went off. We could barely hear the electronic ringing over the sounds of the ocean, and a ceiling fan spinning so fast that it was about to tear off the roof. A spirited gecko hung from the far wall. His morning mosquito buffet was interrupted by my alarm, and he answered the ringing with dissident chirps. I crawled out of bed surprised at the comfortably cool breeze blowing from the sea through the open windows of our cabin. Shuffling towards the bathroom, I yelled to Sara to wake up. We were on a tight schedule. Our guide, Kurt, wanted to shove off at 5:30 in order to catch the tides right, and have the best shot at feeding (tailing) Permit. After a quick shower, and a rare glimpse of Sara doing the cockroach dance subsequent to finding La Cooca Roacha hiding under her flats boot, we grabbed some warm sapopillas to eat on the ride, and headed down to the beach.

Kurt was waiting when we got to the boat. Perched atop his Yamaha outboard with his bare feet hanging over the edge of the panga, he was puffing on a Camel and drinking a cup of coffee as the sun slowly began to light up the eastern sky behind him. Kurt and his brother Earl Godfrey have been guiding these waters for more than twenty years. They were among the very first Belizean guides to cater specifically to fly fishermen, and played a critical role in convincing the government to require that fishing guides obtain a guide license, and obey the conservation oriented fisheries regulations. Like most Belizean fishing guides, Kurt is reserved. He does not say much at first, but once he opens up, he is anxious to share his views on everything from fly patterns and Honduran gill netters to Britney Spears and President Bush. Caribbean culture is alive in Belize , and Kurt, as evidence by his Rastafarian afro, is no exception. We met up with the Godfrey brothers several nights ago at a small thatched roof bar, where Sara and I argued whether Kurt would be able to put a hat on over the afro, or if he would head out onto the flats without one. As it turned out, I guessed right, and Kurt showed up the first morning with his afro stuffed into an oversized ball cap with the King Ropes logo from Sheridan, Wyoming on the crown.

The sun had just started to climb over the reef when we motored up to the first flat. Kurt killed the four-stroke engine and we drifted from the deep blue towards a mass of coral and turtle grass covered by a mere two and a half feet of water. As we glided onto the edge of the flat, Kurt retrieved his push pole from the bottom of the boat, and slid it forward into the hard crust of the dead coral. The boat came to a slow stop. With the sun at our back, we proceeded deliberately along the edge of the flat as the intense morning sun illuminated the ocean floor. We scanned the flat and noticed a diversity of life, everything from boxfish to nurse sharks and eagle rays. However, there was no sign of what we were truly looking for-what we were hunting for.

Forty-five minutes elapsed, and we had covered only half of the eastern edge of this township sized piece of coral. After an hour, your mind begins playing tricks on you, and every leaf of turtle grass waving above the water is a tail. Just as you start getting good at talking yourself out of these false fish, there they are. Four tails standing like skyscrapers above the water, shining in the sun at fifty yards and closing.

The fish stopped at about one hundred feet and began rooting through the turtle grass like pigs, looking for crabs and shrimp. Kurt eased the boat into casting range, and said “OK Mon, give them a shot”. I had been standing in the “ready” position for so long that I almost forgot what to do. As I made a false cast, I tried to regain my composure, and guess based on the angle of the tails, which way the fish were facing. The small crab fly dropped softly down into the water right next to the last tail. I tightened up the slack in my line, and allowed the fly to slowly sink through the grass. I thought it would only be a matter of seconds before the fly was sucked up by one of those gluttonous fish. Surely it was drifting haplessly down past one of their mouths. Then, from the back of the boat, Kurt yells “You’re behind them, mon”. The fish were slowly moving away from my fly, and towards the boat. I quickly stripped in some line and laid out another cast. This time landing the fly right in the middle of the bunch. I tightened up again, but the fish kept on moving. By this point they were within thirty feet, and Kurt was now crouched down in the back of the boat whispering “Cast! Cast! Cast!. I picked up the fly again and put it down hastily right between us and the fish. The splash of the fly landing instantly spooked the Permit and they screamed by us in a flash of iridescence towards the opposite side of the flat. Kurt turned the boat, and began to methodically give chase. As Sara got to the bow for her turn, I slumped into my seat grinning ear to ear, worn out by what were absolutely the three most exciting casts of my life.