Yes, it turns out there are a lot of fish in the sea. Snook, especially.
And beyond snook—at least in Florida—I can attest that there are also schools of massive jack crevalles, tarpon rolling across the water’s top (they’re a fish that BREATHES AIR), seemingly endless mullet, barracuda, tripletails, sheepshead, ladyfish, houndfish, redfish, dolphinfish (you can put basically anything in front of the word “fish” and count on it being a real fish), rays, sharks… it’s a long list.
I came across every one of these fish down in Stuart Florida this week where I spent three days fishing with the outstanding guide and advocate Cody Rubner.
I met Cody in Maine this past fall at Oxbow’s All Species fishing tournament (which I wrote about here.) At the afterparty, Cody was repping the American Saltwater Guides Association and I was at the next table over selling my prints. We got to chatting about fishing (shocker!) and when I decided I wanted to do a some saltwater fishing somewhere warm this endless winter, I knew who I needed to ask.
Cody and I got to cover a lot of water over three days. I fished directly off my 6 AM flight from Albany. I fished through hellish north winds. I fished by the kind of sunrises I’m frankly a bit self-conscious painting because they feel like bad Florida tourist art, but I paint them anyways.
Stunning beauty aside, it’s a gigantic mess of an environment down there, and I was lucky to have Cody walk me through it. There’s an immediate problem that’s been going on for the past few weeks: normal flows of saltwater are being replaced by a giant freshwater and farming waste runoff from Lake Okeechobee. And then there are all sorts of long term problems: decades of things like this have killed off acres of seagrass degrading habitats for all kinds of species, rampant development of the coast, our current climate crisis and well… it makes you appreciate the sunrises.
Still, nature is resilient. I found it fascinating how we interested the most fish right by human incursions to the environment: tarpon in dredged out lagoons, tripletail behind crab pots, and snook by dock lights. (Really colorful docklights I might add.)
It all left me with a bit of hope, environmentally speaking. We’re messing this planet up, but we have the know-how to restore habitats too. (Though maybe we could let those habitats be a bit more wild instead of covered in green LED light strips?)
It also reinforced maybe the thing I love most about fly fishing: it makes an environmentalist out of everyone. Because how can you spend time on the water and not immediately get how this is all connected? AND NEEDS FIXING, TOO!
All this to say, Cody and Florida, thanks for the fish! I’m looking forward to the next trip already.
-Steven
PS - A book rec via guide Cody. He likes to give out a copy of Amy Green’s Moving Water: The Everglades and Big Sugar to his clients, which I love just in principle. I’m also flying through the book and highly recommend it!