The Gap

All his life, the veteran angler had lived on the Texas Coast, working hard, playing harder. When he retired, proud to have accomplished so much, he rewarded himself with a sporty skiff built to run swift and skinny in front of 300 wired horses. He adorned the sleek craft with all the modern gadgets a salty freak could want. Needing no loan to finance the purchase, he bought his shiny new object with crisp cash. On a balmy May morning, he stuck the Talon in the sand beside the big bar in Alazan and readied himself to wade, expecting a hot topwater bite.

Benign winds and recent results had him champing at the bit. As the rising sun illuminated puffy clouds in the east, he slid into the water and began earning some blow ups. The old boy knew how to walk the dog, but he tended to wander without much focus; he did catch a handful of solid trout and missed a few bigger ones. When the sky in the west turned gunmetal gray, and thunder began to rumble, the man with all the right stuff pulled his craft close to Starvation Point and crawled onto the bluff to wait out the storm.

Knowing better than to try and outrun such extreme weather, he hunkered down during the torrential downpour, watching as lightning repeatedly blasted holes in the hallowed ground of the King Ranch, hoping the screaming winds wouldn't break his anchor and blow his new boat onto the bank. He lost most of the day while the lightning flashed, but sometime early in the afternoon, conditions improved, and he went back to the bar to make another wade. After working hard to make something big happen, he decided the storm had blown his opportunity away with the clarity of the water. With only a couple hours of daylight left, he steered out around Starvation Point, intending to head on home.

But as he hugged the shoreline at East Kleberg Point, a shaft of light burst through the clouds and illuminated Baffin Bay, suggesting another pathway. The whispering winds fell silent, and he figured the fishing might be good in the Badlands, so he stopped to check it out. As he approached the South Badlands Bar from the west, he noticed a lone wader way out on the rocks, halfway to Marker 4. He didn't immediately head toward the man, but an inevitable gravity eventually pulled him that way, and curiosity got the better of him. He couldn't understand how the guy could have gotten so far out on the rocky bar.

When the wondering man with the clean camo ball cap came within earshot of the wader, he said, "Hey dude, I don't want to bother you, but I'm wondering how you got out there to those rocks? I've been wading here for years. Every time I try, I can't make it across the gap. It's so treacherous."

The weathered face of the dark-skinned wader with long black locks and a chiseled chin swiveled slightly toward the source of the question, before turning back toward where his lure danced on the water. "I'd have to show you. It's hard to explain."

A medicine-ball of water erupted beneath the shirtless man's floating plug, and both men laughed out loud. "Wow! You're getting a ton of blow ups. Looks like you know what you're doing with that topwater," the newly arrived one mused.

Swirling emerald water caressed the possibly naked man's belly, obscuring his lower body. "The harrier flies low over the field, looking hard into the grass. The falcon climbs high, then dives down fast. I wade with my Ghost and walk the dog," the one on the south side of the gap replied.

"Ghost? Don't you mean One Knocker?" the one on the north side countered. "They stopped making Ghosts a long time ago."

The white man thought he saw anger flash in the eyes of the brown man, but he was not sure. "Mine's a Ghost," he insisted. Another monster trout blasted off on his lure, flying completely out of the water without becoming hooked, causing the wader wearing a necklace of horse-hair twine clutching a crystal to laugh again. He started reeling the lure quickly in. Fascinated, the light-skinned one watched the plug skip over the water, following it with his eyes until it reached the other's rodtip.

The medium-sized topwater twinkled. When it came out of the water, a strange truth became evident; the plug held no hooks. The old competitor could not restrain himself. He mused, "The first time I ever knew of somebody fishing without any hooks was back in the 90s. I was entering a Troutmasters tournament in Port O'Connor. Dude walked up and started bragging about some big trout he'd seen that day. Said he didn't catch any of 'em because he'd taken the hooks off his Skitter Walk. Didn't want 'em to have sore mouths. I thought he was nuts, still do."

With the natural grace of a reddish egret, the tan man sent his lure soaring westward again. While it flew, he smugly remarked, "I was there."

"What? You fished Troutmasters back in the day? I don't remember you," the ever more inquisitive one replied.

While twitching his rodtip rhythmically to nudge the head of his Ghost from side to side, the artisan with the coffee-colored skin explained, "I looked different back then."

"If you don't mind me asking," the perplexed one continued. "What's your name?"

A veil of white foam engulfed the long-haired angler's plug. His chest heaved with delight.

"Blow ups are all the same. The next one is every bit as exciting as the first one and the last one. Can't say that about many other things." As if on cue, another obviously giant trout snapped at his lure, creating a noise akin to the blade of a hatchet splitting a seasoned stick of firewood. He laughed again.

"Those are some big trout," the man on the quiet side of the gap observed.

The man on the noisy side bragged, "Out here, they're all big."

Feeling a sense of discomfort, offended by the simplicity and arrogance of the other's words, the white man asked, "Don't you want to catch 'em, so you can see how long they are, how much they weigh?"

Rather than answer the question directly, the one earning all the blow ups remembered, "My Ghost had hooks back in the day. The sun and salt burned 'em off before I crossed over to this side. Now I don't want 'em. I love that pop, but I don't need to put fish on a string."

The bald dude took off his camo cap and scratched his head. "Ohhh..kay..." he said, dragging the word out to communicate irony. He then realized another bizarre aspect of the encounter; one he hadn't previously considered. The angler on the rocks to his south apparently had no other equipment with him―just the rod, the reel, the line and the Ghost. "Where's the rest of your stuff?" he asked.

"I have everything I need."

Shaking his head, becoming more frustrated by the moment, the one with all the questions continued, "Where's your boat?"

"She ran aground in a graveyard."

"The Graveyard?" inquired the nosy one. "That's miles away. How'd you get over here?"

"You didn't hear me right," corrected the amber man. Then he burst out laughing again, when a trout punched his lure fully three feet up into the air. When his chest fell still, he finished, "I have help."

"Oh, so somebody dropped you off?" the one getting no blow ups asked.

"Something like that."

"I looked at the weather. It's supposed to get stormy again tonight," the mouth under the camo cap announced.

"Lightning and thunder thrill me," said the man with nothing more than what he needed.

Refusing to relent, the man with everything he wanted asked, "You sure you don't need a ride back to town?"

"There's nothing in town for me," the maybe naked wader explained.

"But you can't just stand out here and fish all night," the old boy with the new boat insisted.

The stubborn one with the stripped Ghost shook his head in defiance and flatly disagreed, "All I need is a drop."

As he turned to leave, the exiting one admitted, "Seems crazy to me."

The staying one nodded, "One man's crazy is another man's cool."

The proud tournament veteran with the best fishing days of his life still ahead of him heard the laughter of the seemingly insane, probably naked wader all the way back to the boat. Before he cranked the motor to head home, he turned to the south for one more look. In the dying light, he could barely see ashen puffs of foam blooming in front of the man who waded with nearly nothing; the setting sun gilded everything.

On the way in, the retired fellow with the finest equipment money can buy contemplated what he'd heard and seen. He kept thinking he knew the wader, but he could not put a name with the face. Before he pulled up to the dock at Bird Island Basin, he made a solemn promise to himself. He speaks to no one about the encounter he had with the mysterious man content to tease the trout with a hookless Ghost on the other side of the gap.