Getting the Hang of Things
Over the next couple of days, the four of us continued to fish, sometimes solo, sometimes in pairs and sometimes all together, spread out across gigantic white-sand flats. In the same way that proficient fly-anglers don't have to think about casting mechanics, the more we fished from paddle boards, the more involuntary the operations became. We were all getting sharp. At the end of the second day, Madden said it best: "I can't even count how many fish Mark and I landed today — simply unbelievable." I don't have any problem stating that Madden, Hatter and Jayne are excellent fly-anglers. However, I honestly have to give some credit to the method in which we fished. First, the boards allowed us to be extremely stealthy. Second, they made it possible for us to get into areas that have never been fished before. Third, and maybe even more importantly, they gave us the ability to fish in spots that were unwadable due to mud bottoms. And fourth, the biggest advantage — they offered incredible coverage. Until recently, Beyond the Blue was a wading operation. I spent three days on a paddle board and compared the amount of water we covered to how much we would have if we'd been wading — to say the difference was night and day would be an understatement. For example, one afternoon I tagged along with Jayne and fished an entire loop of flats and creeks and caught fish the entire time. Google Earth showed that we fished about five linear miles in about a half-day. You can't wade this loop due to the mud bottom, but even if you could, you'd be lucky to cover that amount of water on foot in a full day.