Fly Life South Florida • Florida Keys • Bahamas
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FLY LIFE March 2010 - Vol. 1, No. 1 SOUTH FLORIDA • FLORIDA KEYS • BAHAMAS DOUBLE ISSUE SAILSBEING FLY P.12 DRAGGING THE LINE P.36 SHARKSKIN: BETTER THAN ADVERTISED? P.46 EXCLUSIVE: CHIP GILES’ BEST SELLING BOOK “CONCH KILLERS” - Part 1 Inside P.51 STARTING IN MAY: Great places to toss your bags THE SCIENCE OF FISHING P.70 + Exclusive: specials for IS A FLY ROD REALLY WORTH $800? P.79 Fly Life Subscribers • SIGN UP NOW • THE BEST FLY TYER YOU NEVER HEARD OF P.90 IN MY NATIVE TONGUE EMAIL: What’s Worth Opening? Skip Clement, Managing Editor “IT CHASES YOU DOWN” Despite the fact that we can’t do without email, and it’s brought a lot of convenience to the work- place - at some point in time it turned into cigarettes, trans fats and the evening news. A few weeks ago, Sandy Moret and I were having lunch at the Green Turtle Inn, a landmark restaurant in Islamorada, FL. Sandy and his wife Sue own the world famous Florida Keys Outfitters & Florida Keys Fly Fishing School which is housed in the same building. Islamorada, by the way, christened it- self long ago “The Fishing Capital of the World,” and they’re right-on. As partners in Fly Life, we were discussing sources of online distribution for this new magazine and the subject of email came up. We both cringed - admitting that just saying “email” conjured up dis- comfort. I told Sandy that a recent study by Harris Interactive (2010) concluded that 50 emails or more a day brings on employee stress, and that business owners lose 28% of their employees work time because of ‘useless’ emails. Sandy said: “It follows you into your house - it chases you down no matter where you go . I just hit he delete key when I get frustrated . it’s impossible to read everything.” On my way back to Fort Lauderdale, I thought more about email. Sandy was right, it does chase you down - we’re all bombarded. When I got home, my inbox had 43 messages including five stupid jokes from a college roommate (and his ditzy wife) whom I don’t have the heart to say enough already, Facebook alerts telling me that 11 people I never heard of want to be my friend, an ad for some pills that claim they can keep me casehardened for hours, and a laundry list of stuff remotely associated with “fishing” that I some- how got targeted for by Wikileaks-like internet wizards that “phish” for a living. Anyway, we hope you can pick-up some useful info and find real reading pleasure with your copy of FLY LIFE . thanks for trying us on for size. We think you’ll like the fit. neXT issue LEARNINg TO SpEAK BONEFISH REELS: THINKINg IN “DRAg” HOw CAN A FLATS BOAT COST $65,000? SpINNERS: MORE pOwERFUL THAN A LOCOMOTIVE, ABLE TO LEAp TALL BUILDINgS . gETTINg TO THE BAHAMAS: SHOULD YOU gO COMMERCIAL OR CHARTER? THE COMpLEAT ABACO ANgLER FIND OUT wHAT HAppENS! pART TwO: CHIp gILES’ THRILLER CONCH KILLERS + Cameras • Flies • Books • Shop Talk wines & Cigars • BTw • Noteworthy • Boats • UNBELIEVABLE Deals Pat Ford photo BEINg FLy WItH SaILFISH IN tHE BEgINNINg: Part One NUISSaNCE CatCH tO REVERED tO a BIg EaSy ON a FLy ROD . tHE SaWLEy SyStEM 12 FROM ZANE GREY TO GEORGE SAWLEY fter coming out of the 1890’s depres- sion (Wall Streeter shenanigans and Aeasy credit - nothing changes), Amer- ican ingenuity created unimagineable wealth in the U. S., and it accumulated into the hands of just a few. America’s ‘new world’ had been plutonium enriched by the Industrial Revolution phenomena that mor- phed into the era of the “Robber Barrons.” By the beginning of the 19th century, the east coast’s newly anointed socially elect began expressing their nouveau riche modele by wintering at Henry Flagler’s Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. They came in droves, each trying to out “Jones” the other and to move up in the ranks of a newly inaugurated Social Register, and to bask in the warm winter sun while nannies attended to full diapers. While golfing, croqueting and bowling on the manicured lawns of the Breakers were the “outdoor” sports for the light-on-their- feet-boys with rich daddies, fishing was the outlet of choice for hardier lads. However, the sailfish was considered a lowly, nuisance catch and marlin fishing wasn’t on anyone’s Photo courtesy of Capt. John Kipp dance card; the sport fish of the day was king mackerel. Zane Grey, a dentist from Zanesville, Ohio, and grand-daddy of the western novel would soon change the status of the lowly sailfish, BEINg FLy WItH SaILFISH as well as that of the uneatable tarpon and By Skip Clement bonefish. Grey made these pescados new gamefish targets, and along the way intro- IN tHE BEgINNINg: Part One duced new angling methods, which created professional guiding and chartering; and in- NUISSaNCE CatCH tO REVERED tO a BIg EaSy ON a turn exalted those proficient at catching and finding onto the pages of outdoor journals, FLy ROD . tHE SaWLEy SyStEM magazines and newspaper columns. 13 FROM EL PILAR Romancing billfish got its ignition in 1910. And here’s how. The Grey’s (Zane and his brother Roemer) were on their way to Mexico for a fishing trip, but before arriving they learned of an epidemic there and made their way back through Cuba to Florida. On a hunch about great fishing in the Keys, they headed to Long Key, FL, via the still under construc- tion Over-the-Sea RR. The railroad extension (Miami to Key West) had made it to Long Key, which was also home of the just completed Long Key Fishing Club (LKFC). Henry Flagler had built the club hoping to entice his socially-elect rail customers into a stopover for some remark- able fishing. Serendipitously, Zane Grey and his brother vaulted the LKFC into “the” place for sports-minded gentlemen of the day to meet up in the winter months and go fishing. Zane also taught his “tweeters” (actually called the Bonefish Brigade) how to pursue new targets: bone- fish, tarpon, and sailfish, as well as other species. King mackerel was no longer the only trophy fish in town. Zane Grey served as president of the LKFC for several years (teens and into the early 1920’s) making it and the entire Florida Keys internation- ally famous as sport fishing destination. By introducing light tackle fish- ing to the world, he also ushered in the common man to the sportfishing game. An unheralded player in all these changes that took place at the LKFC was a guide by the name of W. D. (Bill) Hatch, a New Jersey native. In a 1925, at a LKFC sailfish tournament - the records show that Capt. Photo provided courtesy of the authors of “Fly Fishing The Florida Keys” and Hatch’s boat, Patsy, caught 113 sails while 12 other captained boats the International Game Fish Association. Photo taken in Bimini, circa 1934. caught only 106. Hatch had, by accounts of the day, figured out bait & Left: IGFA founder Michael Lerner with his lifelong friend and IGFA VP Ernest Hemingway. The angler is Helen Lerner - wife of Mike Lerner. Although not well switch - teaser. Catch records (length of sailfish) for that era in the Keys known, she was an accomplished angler and remarkable woman. indicate that the sails were quite a bit larger on average than today’s South Florida, Florida Keys and Bahamas catches. “... Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water The Long Key Fishing Club’s members included Presidents Hoover and showing all his great length and width and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as other notables of the day. The club would entertain visitors from 1910 to it’s last season in 1934. It would never all his power and his beauty. He seemed to recover from the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane and the Great Depression hang in the air above the old man in the - both fast forwarded the bankruptcy of Over-the-Sea Railroad. Today, skiff. Then he fell into the water with a the track bed of the original RR is now the southbound lane of US 1 in the Keys. Numerical mile markers (MM-82) for addresses in the Keys crash that sent spray over the old man and are a RR hangover. The site of the LKFC is now a park. However, part over all of the skiff. ...” of the original Long Key land mass still lies in its watery grave in the Atlantic Ocean . it was the receding water, not the initial flood surge NOTE: The excerpt above is from The Old Man and the Sea. that did the most damage. The passage describes the old, Cuban fisherman Santiago’s thoughts while in the throws of killing a big marlin in Gulf Stream. By the 1930’s, Grey had set the bar so high for accomplishments and The book was written by Ernest Hemingway and published in written or interviewed for so many “how-to” fishing and bill fishing ar- 1952. The novella won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it ticles that celebrity fisherman of the day measured themselves against likely cinched the Nobel Prize for Hemingway in 1954, as it was his feats, and all copied his innovations and techniques; including Hem- cited for particular recognition by the Nobel Academy. It was the ingway. last novel published in his lifetime. Suffering from bipolar disor- der, and in a state of deep depression, Hemingway ended his own life in ketchum, ID, on 7/2/61 .