Fly Rod & Reel

For the third day in a row I had set my alarm for 5 a.m, and after a quick cup of café con leche I drove across the then-small city of Miami (this was in the early ’60s), over three bridges and onto Key Biscayne. Then, after a left turn onto a narrow, partially hidden, sandy road, I parked under a large seagrape tree, a tree I had parked under many times before. From there, just a quarter-mile walk along the beach brought me to the northeast shore of the key, where I looked out on a large, open flat facing the ocean.

I prefer to use stripped-and-dyed rooster-neck hackle quills for all my mayfly imitations. Since the advent of Asian bird flu, however, strung Chinese rooster-neck hackle has not been easy to find. And our own domestic quill-body capes, although very good, are not always…

I WAS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE beauty of the low Mexican morning sunlight to shoot photos of my friend Dave casting toward the white-sand shoreline…when Dave paused his cast. Our guide quietly, very serious now, said “Si.” About 50 yards down the beach appeared a dark shape hovering over the sand—a piece of driftwood? No, it was a snook. A huge snook. Dave, a lefty, was having a hard time loading the rod with the cross-wind. As the guide poled our skiff closer to the dark form, Dave told me to step up on the casting deck. I put down my…

The Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award is once again open for entries. Send your work of fiction or non-fiction by the May 16, 2011, deadline to: Traver Fly Fishing Writing Award, Fly Rod & Reel Magazine, P.O. Box 370, Camden, ME 04856. We're looking for: “A distinguished original essay or work of short fiction that embodies an implicit love of fly-fishing, respect for the sport and the natural world in which it takes place, and high literary values.” Send in a typed, double-space manuscript of no more than 3,500 words, along with an electronic copy on a disc. E-mail submissions won’t be accepted. Go to flyrodreel.com “News” section for complete contest details.