When you think of Maine, what do you think of? Lobster. Beaches. Summer. These are the associations of the summer tourist economy. Bu you can surely add to this list things from the other tourist economy: Moose. Rivers. Deep woods. Mountains. And the state bird, the black fly.
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We had been chasing tarpon — a giant fish constructed of silver dollar scales, dark eyes the size of plums, and a mouth that could swallow a basketball — in the warm, blue waters off Boca Grande. The pass at Boca is renowned tarpon water, and the coast nearly so: it’s here that Americans, who can’t be bothered (or afford) to fly south to South America or elsewhere, go to chase tarpon. All morning, we had been doing just that: driving with our guide up and down the coast in his 18′ center console boat, searching for schools of tarpon. We blazed past islands and boats and fishy looking sections, stopping here and there, with not a single fish in sight.
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Facing a weekend with apartment to myself, I did what I suspect many fly fishermen in the Northern Hemisphere are doing: tying flies in preparation for the rapidly approaching season. As one tier said to me recently, “If I don’t start tying now, my boxes will be empty!” While that’s not entirely true — fishermen always fear a scarcity of flies, but rarely face it — the feeling is accurate: with the days warming up, it’s now a race.
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