Mosquito Lagoon is one of the few places in Florida where you can stand on a poling platform, look east at water that has not changed much in a thousand years, and then turn your head slightly left and see the building where they put together rockets. It is a strange combination and everybody who fishes there stops noticing it by about the second trip. What you do notice, every time, is how little water there is. Eighteen inches is a normal depth. Ten is not unusual. The lagoon does not have channels so much as opinions.
September is a good month there and a hot one. We were off the platform and pushing by six thirty, which is the only civilized hour left in that part of the state, and the surface was flat enough to see a mullet flip four hundred yards away. That is the whole game. You are not fishing, you are looking. Anybody who tells you sight fishing is relaxing has never done four hours of it with sweat running into their sunglasses.
A school of redfish in clear shallow water does not look like fish. It looks like a shadow that somebody dragged across the grass on purpose, copper on the edges, moving slower than you expect. We found the first one about an hour in, maybe sixty fish, easing north with two black drum tagging along at the back like cousins who were not invited. The rule with a school that size is that you get one cast. Not one good cast. One cast, total, and then whatever happens next is already decided.
I put it three feet in front of the lead fish, which sounds correct and is in fact about two feet too close. The shadow came apart. Sixty redfish went four different directions across a flat you could see for half a mile, and the sound of it was less a splash than a sort of hiss, like something letting the air out of the morning. Nobody said anything, which is worse than being yelled at, and we went and found another school.
The second one we handled better, because failure is an excellent instructor and pride is a poor one. Two fish, both around twenty seven inches, both caught on a shrimp fly landed a polite ten feet ahead and left alone. We were back at the ramp by eleven with sunburned wrists and a fair amount to talk about. On the drive out my buddy said the first school did not count because I never really had a shot at it. I have decided to let that stand.
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