I’ve got one more loose end to tie up before I head into the marsh. There’s something heartbreaking I’ve been dealing with for a while, and that’s putting it mildly. I use a minuscule propane burner and titanium gasket to boil water for the French press. It steeps a few minutes and I look out over the marsh from the seat of the truck. The winds are shit, blowing upward of 20-25 knots. Things are not looking good. Once the coffee is steaming in the thermos, I fill a ceramic cup that has a cutthroat trout painted on it and add some almond milk from the cooler. I know there’ll be no cell reception for a few days, so I need to make this call. There’s a bed some thousands of miles away. There’s mom holding tight to life. My mother was wild, in every sense of the word. She could give a damn about the road ahead, just knew she was going to get where she wanted to go. For an Irish-Cherokee girl from Oklahoma, she did all right. She went to the University of Texas and worked at bars while raising me on a steady diet of food-stamp humble pie, government cheese and hand-me-downs. It was a win-win existence, for the backyard was Lake Austin, with bass, perch and gar galore waiting for me, day in and day out. And sometimes we more than got by, like the night mom won 50 bucks by grabbing it off the back of a greased pig in a strange citified rodeo contest. We had barbecue—finally—for days. She ended up back in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, the last stop on the Trail of Tears. Although for a long while I was living on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, chasing waves and playing in a rowdy band, I’d often make my way over to see her small cabin and take walks in the woods of Sparrow Hawk. We’d share warm meals and catch up. On one of those trips, we drove to Arkansas so she could dig for crystals she’d heard talk of. She found them. One of them was as big as a summertime bluegill. She gave it to me, said it was lucky. The big-ass crystal fit perfectly into the cup holder inside the truck. And here it has ridden for years, from Baja to Oregon to North Carolina to Texas and then some. Good days and bad, some harrowing and some beautiful, it has seen them all. What is it about our talismans in life? Is it any different from gambling, to believe that something is special? Maybe. But you have to gamble every day you wake up, on many things, RIGHT Small redfish, huge bummer. Not everybody thinks fishing is a good time. This Laguna Madre red’s party ended on the business end of a simple white Clouser in just a couple feet of water Photo: Nick Kelley some far more consequential than others. I hold it in my hand as I talk to her and the sun strikes it. With age and life, some souls unravel, some bloom and some do both. Hers sure did. Now here’s this crys-tal, still enjoying the sweet mess with me. It somehow holds the memories of her riding high in the saddle—of her traffic-stopping beauty, shimmered out in reflec-tive sparks as the Louisiana sunlight shines through the windshield. I wrap the crystal in a weathered blue bandana and place it the front of the canoe. You ride with me, mom. I drive the toe of a wading boot into the mud of the bank and kick the canoe off. It’s so damn good to be adrift, no matter the gale of a tailwind hammering the aft gunnels. The caffeine is strong, I can feel it making its way through my ribs. We are hauling ass full steam ahead. There are only a few hours until dark and there’s hardly any water clarity. Shit. Let’s optimistically call it a two on a scale of 10, or a bust if you want to just lay the cards on the table. Reds won’t tail tonight unless the winds have blown them airborne. I could care less. It’s time to fish. I get down to it and paddle hard a couple of hours into the outer edges of the marsh and finally make my way into a lee-side cove surrounded by spartina grasses. The rest of the country is starting to dig out from their first snowstorms and I’ve got my sleeves rolled up, for it is 77 degrees here. The terminator crab has always been my go-to pattern in the salt. They are a serious fly, re-splendent in profile, rude and not for the faint of heart. I consider them ruthless and effective. The guy who invented them is from Louisiana, but thanks to all of this water and few highways, he still lives hours away. The winds are handing my ass to me and today is just not happening. Eventually, I’m able to blind cast a couple speckled sea trout out of the cuts and guts with tides channeling through them. From what I have read, what they call specks here are really from the croaker family, but what isn’t mislabeled in life? This may be fishing, but it just ain’t fishing. As the gloaming kicks in and the darkness of night comes on, I see what must be the biggest redfish in the history of the world. Tailing. Sweet Jesus! A hundred pounder? Is it five feet long? I peel out the entire f ly line and get ready to take my shot but then see it’s a lone coastal dolphin chasing mullet. 076 LOUISIANA
The Flyfish Journal Volume Eight, Issue Two: Page 76
