Small planes flew low over the parking lot at first light and woke us up. It was a late-March cool morning in northeast Florida. Jay Johnson had generously given me the bed in his camper bus and strung a hammock for himself between a magnolia tree and the poling platform on the panga behind the bus. Every time he shifted his weight the trailer creaked and made the whole rig wobble. “This hammock has saved my ass about a thousand times,” he said, digging out some paper money from the little pocket inside the hammock—five Kina bills from Papua New Guinea. He cleared his throat. “Well, shit.” 

We were supposed to be sleeping inside the offices of Bajío Sunglasses in New Smyrna Beach, but Jay couldn’t find the key when we returned from Merk’s Bar at 2 a.m. after fishing dock lights past the south causeway. Earlier, he’d picked me up at the airport after pulling his boat from Texas on the heels of two weeks fishing redfish. There aren’t many gaps in Jay’s stream of constant activity. He’s optimized to run this way. The next day I mentioned that I’d like to change clothes before going out for dinner and he said, “I don’t wear fishing clothes that I wouldn’t wear to dinner.”…

Buy issue

Subscribe to start your collection of The Flyfish Journal.