Fishing in Marathon

I love fishing. Today I fished for 45 minutes and caught eight fish. I caught some baitfish just to set me up for tomorrow night. I'm going to fish for the mangrove snapper in the mangrove trees and maybe get some action with some tarpon.

Mangrove snapper and tarpon season are upon us here in the Keys. People travel from all over the world just to hook a tarpon and watch it sail off into the giant sea. Whenever it bites the line it jumps out of the water trying to devour the bait. Then they zip through the open ocean. Some boaters must follow full throttle just to keep up with the 100-pound fish.

I had my first tarpon experience yesterday. I'm hooked. No pun intended. The juvenile tarpon jumped in the canal and almost broke my line. He fell off the hook. I could not eat him anyway because they are too bony. But it is more about the fight they give you. I heard some people fight them for more than two hours.

The Keys are amazing and I am grateful I live here now and didn't try to get here later in life.

Massive development is about to take place. The price of land has shot through the roof. Developers, which have every right to do so, are coming here with their deep pockets and changing things. They are taking waterfront property and buying the public access to the water and putting private gates around them. They are buying affordable-housing units and transforming them into massive gated communities. But they have every right to do so. And the old man who has worked hard to keep up the small Keys motel has every right to sell his property for millions of dollars.

But people are afraid the common man will get pushed out of here. People are afraid they will not be able to afford it down here anymore. People are afraid with the new bus line from Miami to Key West that work will be shipped from the mainland. And maybe there is reason to believe all of this.

I have never really been a fisherman. But I fished as a kid. My greatest days of fishing were with my grandfather at my uncle's pond and with my dad on the Missouri River. My great grandmother taught me the most about fishing. She said when you tie the swivel knot, be sure you wrap the line seven times before slipping the end of the line through the eye. Then spit on it.

My dad or grandpa might have taught the spitting part. But we're a Native American family, and I guess that is what they did just before they put the bait in the water while fishing from their canoes.

In Oklahoma we fished for crappie on Lake Ten Killer. My great grandmother, Nanny, would steadily shake as she tied the knot to lock the swivel on the line. Her snow-white hair bounced in the heat. And we would just sit there all day just waiting for a bite.

But the bites usually didn't come. Fishing in the Midwest was more about sitting down with family and talking about how your great grandfather built the old bridge the state was tearing down. The narrow rickety bridge didn't have the capacity it did before, and development was on the way.

I guess development is everywhere. But fishing is not. Once I fished all night on Lake Ten Killer. I put more than 300 hooks in the water fishing for catfish. I was fishing with a guy named Jason. We waited all night for the mass killing. When the sun came up, we had one catfish that was too small to eat. And all the bait was gone.

Then Jason stole all of my grandparents fishing gear out of their storage shed on the dock. And that was the last time I really fished before moving to the Keys.

Well, last night I caught four sizable mangrove snapper. I had two run ins with tarpon and caught a horseshoe crab. The horseshoe crab proves I am still learning.

But the fishing here is great and I love it.