Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992 TAG: 9201130246
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN N. COLE N.Y. Times News Service
DATELINE: KEY WEST, FLA. LENGTH: Long
BARRACUDA FISHING
As what passes for winter here in the southernmost city in the Continental United States, average temperatures into the 70s, a wonderful change occurs in the shoal waters that surround this small island.Like squadrons of geese flying south, flotillas of large barracuda leave the offshore depths where they spend much of their predatory lives and migrate to the shallow flats that cup the Florida Keys in the palm of a pale and giant hand.
Like so much of south Florida's two-legged population, these senior barracuda search for the sun. For as the sea cools, these remarkable fish travel to thin water where they can bask in solar warmth.
Lying still as cordwood logs, their three-to-four-foot silver shapes casting velvet shadows on a white, marl bottom, barracuda doze like old men in deck chairs, motionless as stone, at rest in as little as eight inches of tepid brine.
Indeed, these wolves of the reef have so mastered the art of steady-state suspension that they are often undetected by boaters who visit the flats in shallow-draft skiffs.
Quite at home amid an assembly of coral heads, sponges and patches of turtle grass, barracuda comprehend the benefits of their fine silence. Movement is their tactic of last resort. Which is one of several good reasons why I have come to love barracuda.
Mine is an affair that began in Manhattan some 60 years ago. City-born, I was also the beneficiary of its resources, including the Metropolitan Museum, one of the many cultural treasure houses toured in our mother's wake by each of her offspring who would have to wait many years before any of us recognized the wisdom of her determination to educate. I'm certain she never knew which of those thousands of framed images have stayed with me forever.
It was the Caribbean art of Winslow Homer: those watercolors that catch the Gulf sky's turbulent drama, the sea's emerald dazzle, the countless natural wonders of this part of the world where we inhabit dry and tiny islands surrounded by the vast, undulating, fluid mystery that is the tropic sea.
I would, I promised myself as I stood for the 15th time before Homer's splendid creations, put myself in his paintings. No life, I was convinced, could be as desirable as one spent under that azure sky, afloat on that emerald sea, angling for the great fish I knew were there.
It took me more than 60 years, but I made it.
And the dream realized is no disappointment. It has, however, presented me with some problems, and it is these the barracuda have so helped to solve. There, perhaps, is the primary source of my affection for this much maligned and misunderstood predator of the sea.
I have spent much of my six years in Key West exploring and fishing the waters around it. I almost always fish the flats, casting flies at tarpon, bonefish and permit - the mercurial, challenging and elusive gamefish that certify these waters as some of the finest angling territory on the globe.
Among the several hard lessons I have learned is that these fish have a right to their reputations. Nothing about them is easy. They are hard to find, especially if the angler is alone, older (as opposed to old) and a flycaster whose expertise is, even after all this time, still limited.
Thanks to the skilled assistance of several of this region's finest professional flats guides, I have made contact with tarpon, bonefish and permit. But each of those meetings was something of a miracle; none was an episode I'm likely to repeat without significant help.
But given the oceanic barracuda's wintertime propensity for lounging motionless on the flats that are within a few minutes' boat-ride of here, I can find solo angling adventures so charged with excitement and drama that they threaten my emotional stability.
If I correctly decipher the wind and tide, I can stand on the casting platform in the bow of my modest skiff and toss flies at those silver shapes with velvet shadows as the boat drifts like a leaf on the sea.
Long and green (or red and yellow), the flies of braided "fishair" - the synthetic fiber's tradename - are easily tied to resemble a six-inch needlefish, one of the barracuda's favorite snacks. Usually rigged with two hooks - a long-shanked 1/0 up front and a No.1 in the rear - the fly is fast to a short, plastic-covered braided-wire leader that resists a 'cuda's razor teeth.
Most trout anglers would consider the mechanism outrageous, a fly-tying travesty. But at the end of a tapered leader knotted to a floating fly line cast from a nine-weight rod, preferably with a bit of help from a fair wind, the needlefish fly will land beyond a somnolent barracuda. Then, with a hand-over-hand retrieve that makes the fly dart as fast as possible, it can be yanked past the barracuda's long nose.
When the fish sees the fly, it will: (a) stay as still as it is; (b) slide away to begin a search for a quieter spot; or (c) turn and begin following the lure. It's when (c) occurs that the angler's adrenaline takes over. As the fly is hauled faster and faster toward the boat, the barracuda accelerates. And then, just a few feet from the bow, if the angler has the presence to sweep the fly in a final flurry, the great 'cuda will strike.
When 25 or 30 pounds of pugnacious fish realizes it has been tricked, its reaction is spectacular. There are long, incredibly fast runs, arching leaps, turns and dashes.
Most often, the fish shakes the hook. If not, and I bring it to boat, I give it slack, and my barbless hook drops away. When that fails, I cut the leader and wish the barracuda well. For I am full of gratitude that we can have these encounters, each of us, older and alone.
\ AUTHOR John N. Cole is the author of two popular books, "Striper: A Story of Fish and Man" and "Tarpon Quest"