White Oak Mtn Ranger
Active member
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2007
- Messages
- 28
TIME IS A THIEF
As soon as the boss cleared the cube I slipped into the search engine and commenced a remote viewing of Crystal River Florida. Manatees and some vague notion of the west coast of Florida constituted the extent of my prior knowledge of Crystal River until I hit Homosassa.
Grievously assigned two full days of flying to achieve a single day’s boondoggle at a remote Florida nuclear plant and my one lucid thought was a monster tarpon on a fly rod somewhere in striking distance of the Homosassa.
Homosassa Springs and fly fishing for giant, catapulting silversides is solid, untapped holy ground in my fantasy world. A virtual boat load of sun splashed visions in the minds eye were more than partially attributable to Winslow Homer’s renderings of soft, drifting images created in the winter of 1904.
After a long ride through the west Florida bush country from Tampa International, I found myself standing under big moss draped oaks, inhaling the wind’s rustle of subtle Gulf laden tunes played in the towering arms of a giant mother tree. It didn’t take all that much of a fantasy life to imagine old Homer getting off of the smoke belching locomotive from Ocala, his painting gear under arm and an artist’s soul marveling at the gray moss sailing softly in the westerly breeze.
Homosassa reminds me of the Keys in the early 70’s. Two story fish camps are the tallest buildings, no high rise monstrosities; the Walgreens at Crystal River was the newest business in town. No fast food dispensaries of saturated arterial clogging pollution. Devoid is this part of the state of glaring neon evidence of gin clear springs full of semi-nude mermaids sucking air from a tube and the state’s seemingly endless necessity of assorted tourist traps.
Charlie’s Fish House and Jones’s remain stalwart, homegrown and proud of good service, a couple simple icons of culinary mainstay on the Crystal River. Homosassa is a slow slide back in time compared to the incessant consumerism of Florida’s east coast and its overwhelming, destructive ecological mindlessness.
The business of nuclear power is not really fish friendly. At dark I found myself sitting in a sleepy Crystal River bar eyeballing the near flat rear end of the young lady dispensing the last legal drug and thinking of a Jack Nicholson movie line.
With spirit number two, I enquired what she did for excitement in a town devoted to wintering Yankees, tarpon and manatees. Waiting for her sly reply, I remembered asking the same question in 1971 in a Key Largo bar. In those days I was not aware of any Jack Nicholson lines.
She said that she too had lived in the Key’s, Islamorada to be exact, and there was work at Bud and Mary’s marina while her fishing guide ex-husband drove her nuts. Life in Crystal River was boring and this was her Friday. I saw her lazily tailing up the some nearby sandy flat, idly searching for fiddler crabs, blinded by drifting sand in the incoming tide.
In the 70’s I would have taken ‘this was her Friday’ as a fairly decent false cast. A little too short for a decent hook set but well worthy of a serious follow. I slowly adjusted on the bar stool like a school of finger mullet had excited my lateral lines.
I asked what she was going to do with her day off not really expecting an honest answer, and anticipating a subtle stutter step to the leeward. The breeze was lifting the shallow waters on the flat as she made a long, looping false cast off of an impressive double haul. She said she’d probably drive into Tampa and shop and then more than likely she would just drink too much after that.
That cast landed on the nose. Thirty five years ago that little piece of lure presentation would have been a hook up. Get the gaff; I’m all about flopping in the bottom of the boat.
She pirouetted to assist a red faced old guy at the end of the bar with his fondness for rum. He had steered his walker to the bar early in the first drink. The noise from the wheels and half covered tennis balls were a good deal louder than the sand paper rustle of his sand covered sandals. A dry rotted bicycle horn was duct tapped on the worn, rubber covered handle bars.
I watched the bar keep’s going away move with the eye of a redneck Tennessee walking horse trainer studying a prospect mare at the Shelbyville Celebration.
The weather beaten old Yankee had failed to make the return Easter migration with the Whooping Cranes. To compensate for his lack of flight he had devised a steady rum driven approach to boredom, humidity and his aluminum walker. Like some scarred Manatee, he appeared content lounging in the liquid of the tropics. The aluminum stability device, shod with a couple of filthy tennis balls, now stood at parade rest. The sugar sand was quickly eating away at his wheel bearings. I guessed he didn’t go in for preventative maintenance at this point in his migration.
I judged the bar maid to be twenty years younger and slowly concluded she would be pretty rough in the dismount. I left a day off tip for shopping, or drinking and drifted into the softness of a June night thinking about the gaff and flopping about in the bottom of some flat bottomed boat. A side slipping subtle thought of common sense evolved as I wondered about being eaten alive by massive clouds of barely visible salt marsh mosquitoes.
Ending the nuclear business early the next day I watched towering storm clouds build from the west. If I hustled I could find a guide, possibly dodge the lightening and maybe actually see a tarpon worthy of my fantasy.
Hustled is a pretty bad misnomer. Agonized is probably a better description. $200.00 an hour guides, endorsed by some glossy pretend outdoorsman’s sales catalog under the pretext of providing expert fishing services and luxury spa accommodations dredges up an involuntary gag reflex. A fantasy fishing trip should be free even on the Homosassa. Titty bars still impress me as the last great affordable fantasy and alas, Crystal River has yet to invest in such inexpensive debauchery.
With a familiar amount of old trepidation dredged up from somewhere that I didn’t fully want to comprehend, I made the call. Captain $200.00 an hour what’s-his-name told me he was up to his eyes in gel coat and transom repair.
He said come back in November explaining that no one believed him but there will still big fish in the fall on this part of the coast. A deep sense of relief crept over me realizing that my disposable income and the old enduring fantasy was safe once again. I kept his card; after all, this was the holy land.
Like a six foot tarpon that had just followed the fly to the boat, I turned and slipped back down the toll road to Tampa and braced against the new Florida.
Maybe by fall the river will be still be the fantasy land and the Homosassa’s big fish will spend another winter shoulder to shoulder with the manatees, untarnished as the days when old Homer painted.
As soon as the boss cleared the cube I slipped into the search engine and commenced a remote viewing of Crystal River Florida. Manatees and some vague notion of the west coast of Florida constituted the extent of my prior knowledge of Crystal River until I hit Homosassa.
Grievously assigned two full days of flying to achieve a single day’s boondoggle at a remote Florida nuclear plant and my one lucid thought was a monster tarpon on a fly rod somewhere in striking distance of the Homosassa.
Homosassa Springs and fly fishing for giant, catapulting silversides is solid, untapped holy ground in my fantasy world. A virtual boat load of sun splashed visions in the minds eye were more than partially attributable to Winslow Homer’s renderings of soft, drifting images created in the winter of 1904.
After a long ride through the west Florida bush country from Tampa International, I found myself standing under big moss draped oaks, inhaling the wind’s rustle of subtle Gulf laden tunes played in the towering arms of a giant mother tree. It didn’t take all that much of a fantasy life to imagine old Homer getting off of the smoke belching locomotive from Ocala, his painting gear under arm and an artist’s soul marveling at the gray moss sailing softly in the westerly breeze.
Homosassa reminds me of the Keys in the early 70’s. Two story fish camps are the tallest buildings, no high rise monstrosities; the Walgreens at Crystal River was the newest business in town. No fast food dispensaries of saturated arterial clogging pollution. Devoid is this part of the state of glaring neon evidence of gin clear springs full of semi-nude mermaids sucking air from a tube and the state’s seemingly endless necessity of assorted tourist traps.
Charlie’s Fish House and Jones’s remain stalwart, homegrown and proud of good service, a couple simple icons of culinary mainstay on the Crystal River. Homosassa is a slow slide back in time compared to the incessant consumerism of Florida’s east coast and its overwhelming, destructive ecological mindlessness.
The business of nuclear power is not really fish friendly. At dark I found myself sitting in a sleepy Crystal River bar eyeballing the near flat rear end of the young lady dispensing the last legal drug and thinking of a Jack Nicholson movie line.
With spirit number two, I enquired what she did for excitement in a town devoted to wintering Yankees, tarpon and manatees. Waiting for her sly reply, I remembered asking the same question in 1971 in a Key Largo bar. In those days I was not aware of any Jack Nicholson lines.
She said that she too had lived in the Key’s, Islamorada to be exact, and there was work at Bud and Mary’s marina while her fishing guide ex-husband drove her nuts. Life in Crystal River was boring and this was her Friday. I saw her lazily tailing up the some nearby sandy flat, idly searching for fiddler crabs, blinded by drifting sand in the incoming tide.
In the 70’s I would have taken ‘this was her Friday’ as a fairly decent false cast. A little too short for a decent hook set but well worthy of a serious follow. I slowly adjusted on the bar stool like a school of finger mullet had excited my lateral lines.
I asked what she was going to do with her day off not really expecting an honest answer, and anticipating a subtle stutter step to the leeward. The breeze was lifting the shallow waters on the flat as she made a long, looping false cast off of an impressive double haul. She said she’d probably drive into Tampa and shop and then more than likely she would just drink too much after that.
That cast landed on the nose. Thirty five years ago that little piece of lure presentation would have been a hook up. Get the gaff; I’m all about flopping in the bottom of the boat.
She pirouetted to assist a red faced old guy at the end of the bar with his fondness for rum. He had steered his walker to the bar early in the first drink. The noise from the wheels and half covered tennis balls were a good deal louder than the sand paper rustle of his sand covered sandals. A dry rotted bicycle horn was duct tapped on the worn, rubber covered handle bars.
I watched the bar keep’s going away move with the eye of a redneck Tennessee walking horse trainer studying a prospect mare at the Shelbyville Celebration.
The weather beaten old Yankee had failed to make the return Easter migration with the Whooping Cranes. To compensate for his lack of flight he had devised a steady rum driven approach to boredom, humidity and his aluminum walker. Like some scarred Manatee, he appeared content lounging in the liquid of the tropics. The aluminum stability device, shod with a couple of filthy tennis balls, now stood at parade rest. The sugar sand was quickly eating away at his wheel bearings. I guessed he didn’t go in for preventative maintenance at this point in his migration.
I judged the bar maid to be twenty years younger and slowly concluded she would be pretty rough in the dismount. I left a day off tip for shopping, or drinking and drifted into the softness of a June night thinking about the gaff and flopping about in the bottom of some flat bottomed boat. A side slipping subtle thought of common sense evolved as I wondered about being eaten alive by massive clouds of barely visible salt marsh mosquitoes.
Ending the nuclear business early the next day I watched towering storm clouds build from the west. If I hustled I could find a guide, possibly dodge the lightening and maybe actually see a tarpon worthy of my fantasy.
Hustled is a pretty bad misnomer. Agonized is probably a better description. $200.00 an hour guides, endorsed by some glossy pretend outdoorsman’s sales catalog under the pretext of providing expert fishing services and luxury spa accommodations dredges up an involuntary gag reflex. A fantasy fishing trip should be free even on the Homosassa. Titty bars still impress me as the last great affordable fantasy and alas, Crystal River has yet to invest in such inexpensive debauchery.
With a familiar amount of old trepidation dredged up from somewhere that I didn’t fully want to comprehend, I made the call. Captain $200.00 an hour what’s-his-name told me he was up to his eyes in gel coat and transom repair.
He said come back in November explaining that no one believed him but there will still big fish in the fall on this part of the coast. A deep sense of relief crept over me realizing that my disposable income and the old enduring fantasy was safe once again. I kept his card; after all, this was the holy land.
Like a six foot tarpon that had just followed the fly to the boat, I turned and slipped back down the toll road to Tampa and braced against the new Florida.
Maybe by fall the river will be still be the fantasy land and the Homosassa’s big fish will spend another winter shoulder to shoulder with the manatees, untarnished as the days when old Homer painted.
