The Left Mark: There Was No Joy In Mudville

Somewhere women laugh, and somewhere children shout, but there was no joy in Key West... our heros struck out. Well, perhaps that's a bit of a stretch, but the fact is that Team Two Als came up short. That said, the performance was not altogether disappointing. In fact, by the standards of previous years, we actually did pretty damn well. At the end of it all, our scoresheet looked as follows:

One 53" tarpon on a fly....... 500 points.
One 20 lb permit on a spinner....100 points.
One nearly landed 48+" tarpon....0 points.
One jumped and lost baby tarpon....0 points.

As always, Capt. Greg McKee did a great job of putting us in front of fish. With the weather almost perfect and a full moon worm hatch, there were plenty of fish (tarpon and permit) to be seen and they seemed hungrier than in years past. After a few hours, given the conditions, we were thinking about our chances of being the first boat in tournament history to come back to the dock with a grand slam. But it wasn't to be.

I started us off in a big way, hooking and landing a 53" tarpon on a fly. At 1:20pm, with 500 points and plenty of sunlight left, we were thinking that we had a good chance at bringing the trophy back up north. It was a great fish, with about a 40 minute fight and 4-5 jumps. Check out this picture, where you can actually see me and my shirt in his eyes!

However, after that catch, things slowed down and we came back to the dock with just the 500 points and the feeling that we could have done a lot better. There weren't a ton of mistakes, and most flies were cast where they should have been. However, I did rip the fly out of the mouth of at least one tarpon by raising the rod tip on the strike. It was a cardinal sin, and to say that Capt. McKee was unhappy, would be painting a much rosier picture than was actually encountered on the water.

Day two started out very well, as I quickly jumped a baby tarpon and then Big Al Baydin brought in a great permit. However, we should have known it wasn't our year after what happened next. At around 10am, Big Al hooked into another monster tarpon. As the stripped line began to clear through the rod, we realized we had a problem. The line was wrapped around his leg. With ~70 lbs of fish jumping 30 yards out and line being taken fast, we had to move quickly to save Al's leg, and more importantly, this caught fish. He lifted his leg and I made a diving sweep, pulling the line over his bare foot as it came taught. Terrified that we had lost the fish in this commotion, we watched the rod tip as he took in line. Suddenly, it bowed again and Al pointed the rod to sea just in time for another jump. The fish was still on. However, this story didn't have a happy ending. After a 30-40 minute fight, it looked like we had the fish in the bag and were heading for a banner day. But, as Capt. McKee reached to tag the line and make it an officially "caught fish", the fly suddendly popped out of the tarpon's mouth.

Through the lens of my video camera, I watched the whole thing unfold. One second we were screaming and getting ready to tally points. The next, Al's knees buckled and it looked like he'd been shot in the gut as he fell to the boat. With his head in his hands and his tear ducts working overdrive, the image on my camera was one of a broken man.

And that was it. The rest of the day was as cold as the morning was hot. Motoring home that afternoon, we knew that we had seen enough fish to take a run at the title, but that our mistakes were likely going to cost us a victory. Luckily, the team that won caught 6 tarpon on fly, so it really wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Any way you slice it, it was an amazing two days on the water. I want to offer a huge thanks to Capt. McKee for continually putting Al and I in front of some beautiful fish, and gracefully dealing with our poor casts, mis-set hooks, general lack of sleep, and strange habit of calling tarpon like they were yeti. I can't wait until next year.