Month: February 2018

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The Flagler Steakhouse

When you fly in on a Friday morning and fly out on Sunday morning, fish six hours, and go to two baseball games, you don’t see as much of a place as you’d like. I never visited the Flagler Museum, or stuck my toe in the Atlantic, or caught some weird exotic out of a canal. Part of the point of this exercise is not just fish. I could stay in Houston and not catch fish. Part of the point of this exercise is to get the sense of 50 states. It’s hard to get much sense in two days.

We were terrible spring trainers. We were in West Palm Beach for Astros’ spring training, but we never made it to a game before the second inning. It wasn’t our fault. We made it to the Budget rental line at the Fort Lauderdale airport by  11 am, and the game didn’t start until 1:30, but we stood in line for an hour for a car.  The drive’s another hour, and when we got to the new Ballpark at West Palm the signage is horrible.  We took two wrong turns before we got to where we could park and that took at least 30 minutes.  Then it’s a long walk to the stadium and another long line for ballpark food. Delicious.

This is the first thing I learned about Florida: It’s not just Donald Trump who goes there every weekend.  The lines for the rental cars on Friday morning are waiting for you.

We were late to the game on the second day too, and missed an excellent first two innings by McHugh, 1 hit, 1 walk, 5 strike outs. We kept fishing until we were late. Ok, that was our fault.

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, Hibiscus House, near downtown, a block off the main drag Clematis. Kris noted that she always feels cheated at Bed and Breakfasts because we never actually get to eat the breakfast. I didn’t find a bakery, but on the way back to the airport we found a good donut shop, Jupiter Donuts, which was neither in nor on Jupiter but near enough to both.

Skip the banana and chocolate. I can’t believe I preferred banana Moon Pies as a child.

We walked down Clematis Street Friday night, top to bottom to a good restaurant, Pistache. I had a martini, and some wine, and a good potato and leek soup which I’d wanted all winter, and the duck breast. I also learned something: everyone in nice restaurants in Florida really is old, as old as me at least. I asked the waitress (who was originally from New York) what we shouldn’t miss. The turtle rescue, she said. She was right, too, we shouldn’t have missed the turtle rescue but we did.

The second thing I learned about Florida: if you’re in Florida, it’s easy to miss the turtle rescue. There’s golf. There’s baseball. There’s fishing.

The third thing? It’s great to feel young again. There are all these old people in Florida and everything is relative.

The next night, after the fishing, after the game, after the two-hour nap and practicing the Sor “Variations on a Theme by Mozart” while Kris slept, we had dinner reservations at the Flagler Steakhouse. It’s easy to see why Henry Flagler is the patron saint of Florida. He came from New York in 1879 with unimaginable amounts of money, a different level of money, and he built the Florida East Coast Railway and the Florida Overseas Railway down the coast, from San Augustine in the north to Key West at the bottom of the world, all to serve his Florida resorts and real estate investments. He was Walt Disney before Walt Disney. He built the Ponce de Leon Hotel in San Augustine. He built Palm Beach to serve the rich and West Palm Beach to serve the not-rich. He built the Royal Poinciana in Palm Beach on the shores of Lake Worth (where the New York lady in yoga pants told us to stop bothering her dog). He built Miami and named it Miami instead of Flagler.  He built the Breakers.

We thought about staying at the Breakers. There was no reason to stay at any other resort on Palm Beach, so if we were going to stay on Palm Beach it would be the Breakers.  It is still the surviving heart of everything that Florida is: ridiculous, extraordinarily expensive, gorgeous from the Atlantic and at night from the land rimmed in light and shining.  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t spend that much money. But I thought eating at the Flagler Steakhouse in the Breakers would be a good compromise.  We could get there early, we could walk around and see the hotel, we could admire Flagler’s vision.

We got there early but here’s the thing, the Flagler Steakhouse is across the street on the golf course.  It’s part of the resort, it’s just not in the hotel.  We only saw the hotel at a distance, like that green light across the water or the Magic Kingdom, and then our Uber driver took us back around the guardhouse and across the street.

As for the Flagler Steakhouse, don’t. Just don’t.  We spent $350 on a pretty good steak with a steamed bake potato.  I had a martini, and two glasses of wine. I had some corn chowder with bits of lobster.  $350 for a steak and baked potato is obscene, even with a martini, and even if service is included. There was sour cream with the potato, so that was good. The place was packed. As our Uber driver said on the way back to our bed and breakfast, the rich are different.

The fourth thing? The rich are different.

I think Henry Flagler might have been proud. I think he reached his audience.

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Palm Beach

Scott Hamilton is a big guy, thick in a strong way through the calves and thighs and shoulders, and thick in a working man’s way through the center. His voice has a baritone authority, only slightly tinged by his Marlborough Menthols. His hair is fine and straight and a bit shaggy, apparently untouched by grey, with a mustache that follows suit. The mustache is whispier than a proper hero’s mustache, but too benign for a villain’s. Before he guided in Palm Beach he guided in Key West, and my bet is that’s where he picked up the diamond stud. Before Key West he guided in Maine.  He’s been guiding fly fishers in Palm Beach since 1991. That’s a lot of guiding.

I didn’t follow any of my rules for picking Captain Hamilton: I found him on the internet by searching Palm Beach and fly fish. There aren’t a lot of choices. He’s not endorsed by Orvis, and while he’s proud of being the longest tenured Redington guide, I didn’t find him on Redington’s website. His boat’s principal interest to me was its oddity: a 26′ Power Catamaran with twin 140 hp Suzuki motors mounted on a jack plate. It has a T-Top. Tidy and well-maintained, Scott says it drafts in a foot and handles five foot waves offshore. I’ve been in five foot swells before, on a 22′ Boston Whaler, and I hung my head over the gunnel and gave my guts to Neptune. I was just as glad it was blowing hard enough to keep us in the Intracoastal.

 

Three things struck me about fishing the Intracoastal at Palm Beach. First, this is an urban landscape. There are boats everywhere. I’ve spent some time on the Intracoastal around Galveston. It’s a relatively narrow deep channel where the most common traffic is chemical barges and bay boat sport-fishers speeding through. Nobody hangs out on the Intracoastal. On the other hand the Florida Intracoastal is an urban landscape, and I saw nary a barge. There are 70-, 80-,  100-foot yachts with three thousand gallon diesel tanks capable of a quick cruise to Monte Carlo, the twin of the Kennedy’s yacht cruising about in a constant state of party, lots of Hinkley’s, 60-foot deep sea fishing boats ready for a quick cruise to the Bahamas, and 40- and 50-foot live-aboard sailboats anchored randomly through the waterway because, apparently, the owners don’t want to pay marina fees. Kris asked Scott if it was dangerous to leave one’s boat anchored in the waterway. Scott said the biggest danger was the bilge pump failing during a heavy rain.

Second, the water is blue, and by late in the day with the incoming tide we could see the bottom in ten feet. There’s clear water further south in Texas, but there’s rarely much clarity in Galveston. We get mud from the Mississippi, Florida has boat traffic.

Third, people who build $3 million houses on the shoreline of Florida waterways surely can have bad taste. Why spend all that money on all that view and then decide that you need a couple of life-size bronze elk statues to make everything perfect? Elk? Elk? And both of them male? Of course the elk aren’t really complete until you surround them with statues of Greek goddesses.

We started the morning with Scott bemoaning the lack of clarity and running a search pattern looking for tarpon on sonar. Scott put Kris on the front of the boat, which I thought was unfair but was too gentlemanly to mention. I fished the back by the motors with a Redington 11-weight and a fast sinking lead-core line. Scott asked me if I had practiced my backhand, and all I could think of was Venus and Serena Williams. I tried to cast like I thought the Williams sisters might, and proceeded to wrap that heavy line around one of the Suzukis. Scott got me unwrapped without yelling and tried to explain again. All day Scott was immensely patient. I finally figured out that I should ask where he wanted me to put the fly and go with it on my backcast, which was what he was saying in the first place. That seemed to work. We fished for a while then moved on. No tarpon.

Thursday, the day before we left for Florida, our daughter Austin and I had a conversation while walking through downtown Houston to her office–I was going to the annual Anti-Defamation League lunch, she was going back to work. “What happens if you don’t catch a fish?” Well of course I won’t catch a fish. I never catch fish. “I’ll have to go back” I said. “That’s a problem for Delaware” she said.

Scott kept saying the same things over and over, trying to drill them into my thick head. The takes would be fast. The fish were hard-mouthed and setting the hook would take a hard strip-set then another and another and another. I’ve fished with guides, especially trout guides, who fanatically checked the integrity of the leader: Scott fanatically checked the sharpness of his hooks. He was justly proud of his own tied flies, and when I kept wrapping flies around every available nook and cranny he switched me out to a kind of bend back with a stiff fish-hair wing and taught me how to slow the retrieve to keep from getting hung in mangroves. Slow, really slow. It was a good lesson, and at least another hour before I lost that fly.

We spent a long time searching for snook against bulkheads, among dock pilings, under mangroves. I got a bump I couldn’t identify and forgot to set. Kris and Scott saw my line get thwacked by a big needle fish but I forgot to set. We caught nothing except a New York lady in yoga pants who wanted us to move along so her dogs would stop barking. If you could fish for New Yorkers in Palm Beach, I’m pretty sure I’d have caught my limit.

Meanwhile Scott worked hard–good guides work hardest when the fishing is bad.

End of the day Scott put Kris on a 10-weight with a clear Courtland floating line and a 9-inch needle fish fly.  Big fly, heavy rod, heavy line. Scott cast, Kris retrieved, I kept the boat in a straight line. The barracuda that took the fly took the leader with it.  Kris said it was like watching the great vicious Jaws maw  come out of nowhere. Scott said it was at least 40 pounds. I think 50, but I was holding the boat on line and didn’t see it. Their yells sure sounded like 50.

One more bump for me by a small barracuda.  I guess I have to go back to Florida.

 

 

 

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Packing List

What do I take on a fly fishing trip that is not a fly fishing trip? Of course I always take too much. In rough order of importance:

Suntan lotion.  I’m heading for the Sunshine State, and I’ve got that whole swarthy northern European thing going on, without the swarthy.

Lifeproof water proof phone case.  I remember to use the waterproof phone case every other fishing trip.  I have drowned many phones, and the next time I dunk my phone in water it will be on the trip when I forget the case.  I did some research on the case when I bought it, but none of the reviews mentioned that the case makes your phone unusable. This is particularly helpful on a fishing trip because it means if anyone calls you can’t answer.

Phone. My phone is critical because it includes my Florida playlist. Did you know that if you don’t like Jimmy Buffett, there’s not much music from Florida? When you look up best songs about Florida, one-third will be rap, one-third will be Jimmy Buffett, and one-third will be songs like Gulf Coast Highway by Nanci Griffith, which I really like, but which is about bluebonnets and Texas. There are some good musicians born in Florida that I never think of as Floridian: Ray Charles, Graham Parsons, and the Allman Brothers. There are some good songs that might be about Florida by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. There’s a whole Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special Southern rock thing that I never much cared for. There are some good musicians who I identify as Floridian: Cannonball Adderley, Tom Petty, and Arturo Sandoval. On the whole though the state’s music sucks compared to the music from Memphis. But then what state’s doesn’t?

iPad. It’s got both Google Earth and my Kindle. I found a great anthology, The Florida Reader, to read on the trip.

Reading glasses. I can still thread the eye of a size 18 nymph with a 5x leader without glasses, but it’s mostly guesswork. Ok, it’s all guesswork. I like to hang a pair of reading glasses around my neck in case I want to read a menu.

Some underwear, some socks, and a tee shirt.  I need a tee shirt to sleep in. Underwear is always a good thing.

My boat bag. That’s a whole other discussion, but do you know where I put my saltwater pliers?

Keen sandals. I bought these Keens when my 26-year old son was 13 to wear with a tuxedo jacket and swim trunks to a private school gala. I never wore the swim trunks again, and there have been years I haven’t worn the sandals. They’ve become my fishing shoes of choice however, and have been re-glued many times. I keep thinking that they’re not going to last much longer.

Some fishing pants, a fishing shirt, a fleece sweater, rain pants, and rain jacket. The low will be in the 50s and a high in the 70s. It’s supposed to rain. I have to remember, I can always buy clothes if I get it wrong, but wet is no fun.

Running shorts, polyester running shirt, and running shoes. I might get a run in. I do get runs in. I really do.

A guitar and a copy of the Sor 20 Estudios. I have a little travel guitar that’s been to Portugal and Argentina and Mexico and Arkansas and a lot of places in between. I glued it back together once. Sometimes with long layovers I’ll sit in the airport and play. It’s always good for a conversation. I’m working on Sor’s Variations of a Theme by Mozart, and when I get through it to my satisfaction I get to smoke a cigar.

Shorts and my Altuve Astros jersey with the World Series patch. This is for spring training, and did I mention that the Astros won the World Series?

A toothbrush. My nod to Jack Reacher.

A 7 weight and an 8 weight, and some bass flies. In case there’s time to get to a canal. Otherwise we’re using the guide’s rods.

Some resort casual wear. Whatever that is.  We have a reservation at the Flagler Steakhouse in the Breakers on Saturday, and that’s their dress code. I hope that includes Keen sandals. We couldn’t afford to stay at the Breakers, so I figured we’d go for dinner.

Dramamine. This will not be flats fishing, and I get seasick.

 

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Stoneman Douglas High School and Mar-A-Lago

West Palm Beach is about 40 miles from Stoneman Douglas High School, where  a 19-year-old ex-student killed 17 students on Valentines Day.   There’s nothing special about Florida in that. It will happen again, somewhere, sooner rather than later.

Mar-A-Lago, President Trump’s Florida White House, is also about 40 miles from Stoneman Douglas, 4 miles from where we’re staying in West Palm Beach. I understand that the President has polled members of Mar-A-Lago about gun control, and actually I think a little better of him for it. Most of us are looking at our friends and asking what can be done.

I still have friends saying arm teachers, bring God into classrooms, restore decency. I’m fond of my friends, but some of them are nuts. Most teachers don’t want to be armed, and either God can go where he wants or not.

As for decency, there was the story today of a 15-year old victim, Peter Wang, who was murdered while he held the door open for other students.  He was wearing his JROTC uniform. Apparently he wanted to go to West Point, and yesterday, five days after he died, he was admitted to the class of 2025.