“Back in the 50s and 60s, there were 20 times more fish than we have here today,” he reflects. “I can remember seeing a school of tarpon that stretched an eighth of a mile wide, maybe a quarter mile long, as they funneled along this point. We hooked an 80-pounder at the head, fought the fish nearly 30 minutes, and watched the whole time as the rest of the school flooded by the boat. Hell, all you had to do was get your line in the water, and it would’ve been impossible for a tarpon not to have eaten your fly.”

As Bill reflects on the experience, he adds, “We won’t ever see schools of fish like that again.”

RETREATING from Curtis Point, we flnd a hidden bay where the dense, waving turtlegrass yields to white sand depressions, aligned across the bottom like triangular white flngers on a backgammon board. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here, at least not for a few hours.

“We’ll stake off and see if we can’t make something happen,” Bill says. “These bonefish run off the flats on a low slack tide, but move back in on the incoming. The water’s coming up, so we might try it.”

He reaches into the storage chest and pulls out a small hand-crank food processor, tosses in a fistful of brown shrimp, and starts grinding. When flnished, he takes two heaping handfuls of ground up protein and throws them off the front of the boat. Bill explains that when loud boat motors send the nervous bonefish running for deeper water, it sometimes takes a little “special sauce” to coax them into playing.

The fish flnding game may have changed over the past 40 years, but most of the fundamentals, like the bonefish cast, have not. Bill tells us to keep a low proflle, and leave our casting hands below our shoulders. He picks up the rod and starts wiggling it overhead to illustrate his point. The dropping afternoon sun exaggerates the rod’s shadow. He says any change in light, caused by a bird gliding overhead, a passing cloud, and particularly a flagging fly rod, will signal danger to the bonefish, and scare them off.

“When you raise your rod hand overhead, it’s like you’re waving hello to the fish before you cast at him, and he likely won’t wave back,” explains Bill. “When everything lines up just right, it’ll feel like you’ve hooked the bottom, but that bottom will start moving away at 45 miles-an-hour.”

We wait, drink some water, and wait some more.

A LONE PERMIT slinks out of the dark grass and onto the scoured out basin where Bill had thrown the last handful of minced shrimp. Bill, eating a sandwich with nonchalance, is the flrst to notice the fish. We are none the wiser until he shuffles up toward the front of the boat to get a closer look, then starts mumbling to himself through a full cheek of ham and cheese, “twenty Goddamned pounds of something-or-other, standing out like the ace of spades.”

“It’s a permit alright. You might as well give him a shot, because he won’t stick around for long,” Bill says, tossing the last chunk of sandwich overboard.

We wind up with two false casts, off to the side, then drop the fly at the target. It looks like a pretty decent shot — in front of the fish, maybe a foot long, but not bad. The permit tilts down slowly to inspect the fly and refuses. Annoyed, confused, or amused the 25-pound permit turns, momentarily, to reveal his pale chrome flank, like a beat up trash can lid, then vanishes into the grass.

Bill isn’t surprised, and he isn’t disappointed. Of all the fish on the flats, permit are the most flckle and unpredictable. You usually only get one shot, and they are notorious for refusing the fly, even when the cast is perfect. Bill has witnessed this routine many, many times, enough not to expect their cooperation, or believe in beginner’s luck.

“These permit know the difference between meat and potatoes,” Bill utters.
“Was the cast okay?” we ask, seeking to rationalize failure, or flnd some level of approval from our captain.

“Fair,” answers Bill. “You might want to soften the delivery up. Most fish aren’t used to their food attacking them. You haven’t ever eaten anything that was looking to bite you in the ass have you?”

ALMOST ALL good writing on Florida flats fishing — especially stories on the uniquely gritty, sometimes cutthroat guiding culture of the Keys — reflects, intentionally or not, the persona of Bill Curtis. It is hard to read any story about this area’s fly-fishing heydays, turf wars, wild adventures, or working character, without somehow seeing Bill Curtis in the pages.

Bill likes writers, or so he says. He tells us about days on the water with Carl Hiassen, and recounts a prolonged tarpon battle with Jim Harrison, a flght that only ended as night fell, when both men conceded the fish would drag them to Mexico if they didn’t cut it off. Bill’s favorite story involves another writer and angler with whom he had a run-in near Key West, roughly thirty years ago.

“He had a 17-foot center console Mako, and decided to race me for this little channel, but my Hewes Bonefisher was just a little faster. So I made the cut before he did, trimming up my engine so he would eat my spray as I ran across Northwest Channel. When we got into Garrison Bight, I really hosed him out.

“I didn’t know who he was at the time, but he knew me, so he came around looking to start something back at the dock. I had a charter with me, a guy and his wife, but he ran right over, all mad, and started yelling, â??if you do that again you son-of-a-bitch, I’ll ...

“And I said, ‘fine, you just come down right now, and we’ll start swingin,’ but one way or another, it blew over.”

Some time later, mutual friends would introduce Bill Curtis to Thomas McGuane. They eventually forged their own, respectful friendship.

“He got to be a pretty famous writer and a decent friend,” says Bill. “He invited me to a party at his house once, where I met Jimmy Buffett, and he even offered to get me up to Montana to fish the Boulder and Yellowstone Rivers, but I haven’t taken him up on that yet.”

EARLY on the last day, Bill stashes the push pole, and kicks on the electric trolling motor to slide us along the east edge of Oyster Bay. Although the water is discolored, there are droves of 100-pound tarpon rolling and crashing ladyfish across the flat. As we blind cast, Bill says to be patient and keep working ahead of the boat, it will pay off sooner or later.

“Nice cast,” Bill shouts down from the platform. “Now shoot another on the backhand, ahead of these fish rolling at three o’clock.” When Bill Curtis says “nice cast,” it is tall praise, and certainly enough to keep the faith and the effort going. “Come on ‘poons ... eat the fly,” he utters.

Suddenly, there is rock-hard tension at the end of the line. The tarpon grabs the Greenie Weenie, only 20 feet from the boat, and gives us a jaw-dropping flrst glance, flashing below the stained surface like a sunken, aluminum canoe. Time stands still, long enough for everyone, except Bill, to trade wide-eyed, startled glances as the fish rolls in the tannic water and starts pulling away from the boat. We set the hook just like Bill told us — three short, hard tugs to the side, like a hammer driving nails into fresh wood.

The tarpon makes three successive, greyhounding jumps, and each time we bow to the fish, so he won’t spit the hook or break us off. But shock turns to panic when we realize there is a problem: The wind has blown a few loose coils of fly line across the deck, and tangled them around the stashed push pole. Three hands scramble to twist loose the spaghetti-like mess, but the fish already is streaking into Oyster Bay. In another second, the tarpon is off, busting the 20-pound leader like an afterthought.

“It happens,” says Bill, quietly. He offers consolation, but cannot hide his own disappointment. Then he gathers the fly line and starts the long process of building a new leader. He tosses us another fly from the box and tells us to start sharpening it.

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