July
is here and the tourist season on Vieques has come to an end.
Amanda and I have once again packed up and headed north for the
summer and fall. We’re currently on the southwest Florida island
of Matlacha, where my parents live and fish. While tiny Matlacha
is an island in the technical sense, it’s actually connected to
the very developed west Florida city of Cape Coral by a short
drawbridge. And unlike Vieques, this makes all the conveniences
of 21st century life just a car ride away.
So right now life on Vieques really slows down to a snail’s pace
until late December. I’ve found that leaving the island for a
few months to chase Florida redfish instead of Caribbean
bonefish is the perfect antidote for not focusing on what
Vieques lacks, like movie theaters and big grocery stores, but
to be reminded of all that it has to offer. And of all those
things, there’s really one that stands out the most. While the
fishing is equally fantastic up here in South Florida, Matlacha
really lacks for beaches.
On Vieques, when I’m not poling a charter across the shallows of
Ensenada Honda, my favorite thing to do is hike down to
Encampment Beach just before sunset. Our lunatic dog Maggie will
chase every single bird back and forth at full speed, stopping
only to dig ghost crabs out of their holes in the sand. I’ll
usually get several shots at the resident school of bonefish
that live inside the barrier reef at the beach‘s end, often
hooking one, sometimes two. When it’s finally time to go home
we’ll have an exhausted dog, a freshly eaten bonefish fly, and a
pocket full of new sea glass for Amanda’s ever growing
collection.
That’s been our routine on the island for the past three years,
several times a week, and I’ll miss it immensely at first up
here. Matlacha’s shoreline is composed of dense mangroves and
oyster bars (we’re talking about both kinds; the natural ones
that grow under the water’s surface and the man-made ones built
above it that serve draft beer.) There’s nowhere for Maggie to
run wild within walking distance. There are beautiful beaches a
few miles away on the islands of Sanibel and Captiva but, like
almost anywhere in the States, no dogs allowed. Strict leash
laws apply everywhere up here and on Vieques Maggie rarely wore
a leash. The generous splash of terrier in her mixed up
gene-pool makes calmly walking her down the road a true ordeal
most days, especially when a squirrel darts across her path.
Maggie goes crazy each afternoon around 5:00 PM when we’re not
heading to a beach. With her schedule so messed up we’ve had to
compensate and longer walks on the leash didn’t seem to work at
first. Fortunately, we’ve discovered that Maggie is an excellent
kayaker. Our rental house up here is right on the very shallow
waters of Pine Island Sound and comes equipped with several
fishing kayaks. A five minute paddle from the back porch can put
me in the middle of some of the most productive flats on the
entire Gulf coast of Florida. Maggie will sit on the bow of my
single seat kayak and not budge while we paddle for miles around
the mangrove hammocks. This is an amazing feat of obedience for
this thirty-five pound inbred mutt. At the same time it’s great
exercise and gets me very close to some big tailing redfish. The
drawback is that it’s a less than ideal situation for casting a
fly at anything. But Maggie is back on the water and happy. I’ll
figure out a way around the dog with a fly sooner or later.
Owning a dog that loves the water is kind of a chore up here in
the States when compared to Vieques. The island is incredibly
hands off when it comes to rules for dogs. As an animal lover,
this is both good and bad, as anyone who works with the Vieques
Humane Society will tell you. Watching my dog tear up and down
an empty beach and screaming at her for scaring off my bonefish
are favorite memories of Vieques. I’ll look forward to doing
that again in a few months. Until then, I’ll be like every other
Floridian dog owner being dragged down the sidewalk with a leash
in one hand and a plastic baggie in the other.
Capt. Gregg McKee,
WildFly Charters
