Redfish Roulette

Chasing luck on the Texas Coast

Image courtesy of Bay Flats Lodge.

Fly fishing has a way of stripping you down to your core. I’ve spent countless hours with a fly rod in my hand, chasing fish that always seem just out of reach. And in the process, I’ve had to redefine what it means to succeed. The truth is, I’ve failed more times than I care to count, but those failures have become an essential part of the pursuit. Long gone are the days when I believed I could waltz into a new fishery and give 'em hell. That kind of effortless talent is rare, possessed by a select few who are revered in our little corner of the world. For the rest of us, success is something we inch toward, one cast at a time.

Over the years, I’ve learned to embrace coming up empty handed. Gotten good at it even. I’ve learned that not catching fish can be as illuminating as catching them, and it’s helped me develop other qualities that make up for my lack of innate ability. It’s taught me to fish with stubbornness, a grinding determination that suspends disbelief just long enough for the odds to play out. A thousand-to-one shot? Make a thousand casts. Or better yet, two thousand. Sooner or later everything aligns and I come tight and I know I’ve earned it. And when my luck finally hits I cash in before the house can win it back.

On a recent trip to the Texas Coast, however, my well-honed stubbornness is being tested. I’ve failed all morning, which is a hard thing to do on the teeming marshes and flats of the San Antonio Bay. This estuary, just one of seven that dot the East Texas shoreline, is a richly diverse ecosystem home to everything from coyotes to whooping cranes, alligators to white tailed deer. Fed by the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers and sheltered by a narrow barrier island, it’s an ideal feeding ground for countless species of fish including my quarry, the red drum, or simply, redfish. 

But after half a day of fishing I’ve spooked every redfish I’ve seen. I’ve lined them, stripped the fly too quickly, stripped it too slowly, picked it up with too much force, and made presentations too short, too hard, and too close. I am a flailing maelstrom of fly line and graphite, inventing new ways to come up empty with every cast.

My guide, the stoic and affable Captain Doron Lovett, poles his tidy blue skiff through the labyrinth of the marsh like a Zen master. The water is shallow here, about a foot in most places, and when the sun breaks through the clouds we can see crabs skitter away in puffs of mud. Mullet are everywhere and dart around the boat leaving sharp narrow wakes. Their activity keeps my excitement up and I often mistake them for redfish. I feel tantalized and gullible for falling for their fool’s gold.  

Redfish have large spade-like heads and at this depth they reveal themselves in wide rounded wakes they swim. I’d seen wakes before, in Saskatchewan. But there, northern pike, long muscular ambush hunters, streak out from reeds and grassy banks in arrowed azimuths like torpedoes intent on destroying your fly. But the wake of a redfish is often erratic, moving away from you in several pulsing thrusts, each with its own distance and direction. It’s possible, Doron tells me, to intercept their escape with a cast and get them to eat, but predicting the moves of a redfish is something for which I’m solidly unqualified.

I’m surprised to discover how bad my short game is. Redfish plow away from the boat when we’re right on them, urging me to make quick flip casts of ten or fifteen feet. I’m all elbows at this distance and my reaction time is abysmal. My instinct is to make two or three false casts, measuring up my distance before casting, a rookie mistake that leaves my presentations landing far behind the fleeing fish; I’m not accustomed to this close quarters combat. 

When a redfish feeds on small bait like shrimp, it sometimes breaks the surface of the water in an abrupt splashy spasm. My freshwater-logged brain defaults to rising trout and I find myself staring at the spot where the redfish appeared. But these fish were not rising trout. They had no current to ride on, no conveyor belt delivering food to feeding lies and gaping mouths. Redfish are constantly on the move, searching, stalking, chasing, and pouncing on their prey. And when they eat they just keep on moving, in search of the next bite. 

We glide into a large basin, about the size of a basketball court. It’s filled with fish. Redfish are herding bait into the edges of the mangroves and tackling them. From his perch on the polling platform, Doron calls out fish that I struggle to see until it’s too late, and after a few more missed shots we decide to alter the tactics. The dark fly with bead chain eyes is replaced with a gurgler, a topwater lure with a foam back and flared head that pushes pops of water when it’s retrieved in short, aggressive tugs.

He points to a small pod of reds on the surface and gives the green light to cast. I launch the gurgler—a little too far— and work it back towards the boat right over their heads. The hungriest (read: the dumbest) of the group turns, follows, and gulps the fly from the surface of the water. I set and he’s on and the old Tibor does its job. When we land him I feel the wave of relief as the smell of skunk finally dissipates. It’s a good fish, a beautiful copper orange, and a little smaller than average, but those are mere footnotes for my first redfish on the fly. 

First redfish on the fly. Image: Cpt. Doron Lovett.

There’s a lot you can learn about a person when you spend all day with them on a boat. Guides, often cagey, generally don’t make for great conversationalists. Their job, after all, isn’t to entertain with small talk, especially when there’s fishing to do. But Doron and I have hit it off. We’re of similar age and he spent many years chasing trout before guiding here. He’s easy going and offers casual tips about my casting or presentation the way a good fishing buddy does.

Between shots at fish we chat. He tells me stories about guiding, and the month he spent as a trout bum solo truck camping is way across the west. I learn that he grew up in the rodeo, riding broncs and bulls before he had his learners permit. He shows me the long puffy scar from a surgery that rebuilt his forearm after it was crushed by a bull. An injury, I learned, that pulled him off the pro circuit and sobered his young aspirations for eight seconds under the big lights. 

We creep up on a big redfish and I get another solid eat. He takes off and I try to stop him, breaking him off with a quickness. Doron pushes on and tells me about long winters in Colorado and how guiding in the endless summer of Texas Coast is tantamount to a dream job. His new skiff has less than forty hours on it, his captain’s license is less than a season old. I admire his life, envy it even, and try not to think about my own looming large back at the boat ramp. 

By mid afternoon I’ve landed a second average redfish and bungled several more layup shots. Doron tells me we’ve covered double-digit miles of marshland. The sun is high and we’re feeling cooked so he turns the motor on and we speed to another hunting ground. “Let’s turn on the AC,” he quips. Doron’s skiff glides over the skinniest spots with ease, the flat-bottom design and propless jet-style motor can cruise in just a few inches of water. Off in the distance lightning flashes in a patch of woolen sky, a gentle reminder that there’s no cover out here and that I’ve left my rain gear back at the lodge. 

The marsh. Image courtesy of Bay Flats Lodge.

Most guides will make you sit in the middle of the boat when they’re motoring, whether for safety or just some personal space it’s unclear. But Doron lets me sit next to him and I revel in the feeling of playing co-pilot. The motor and the wind make it impossible to chat, so we point things out to each other and nod. He makes quick calculations as we speed over turtle grass. At one point he cuts the throttle and pulls out his phone to mark a sunken concrete foundation, an old duck blind, he thinks. Sitting just a few inches below the surface of the slack tide, it’s the type of hazard that would shear the bottom off a boat and leave you stranded and waiting for the Coast Guard. If a day spent out in nature is a meal, danger is the pinch of salt that makes it memorable. 

We stop at a few places and look for fish but the tide is off or the water too murky and Doron keeps moving. I’ve landed two fish in well over a hundred shots, a dismal batting average that’d bench most players, but I’m unfazed. As we skip over the bluegreen, I reflect on previous saltwater outings. 

My first saltwater trip was brutal. I had discovered a guide on Culebra, a small island off the east coast of Puerto Rico, who’d discovered a bonefish population and cultivated a very respectable guide service. I was still in New York and I convinced an editor friend of mine to let me write a how-to article as a guise for going. I was green and spent two days infuriating the guide. The only thing I managed to hook was the back of my head. It turns out writing about how to catch a fish is a lot easier when you can actually do it yourself. It took me three more trips to Culebra with the same guide before I hooked a Puerto Rican bonefish.   

Then there was Belize, another story idea sold on the promise of catching fish. This time the stakes were raised as I had two photographers in tow, one with an underwater housing and drone. I fished hard for three days straight in fifteen knot winds that hemmed in the tide and kept the water high and off color. By the end I’d brought in a couple small bonefish and landed another tricky conversation with an editor. 

More recently, Mexico, and another long day casting at shadows. The morning consisted of several blown shots at permit which frustrated the local legend of a guide I’d manage to hire. And I’d have logged another strikeout had it not been for a few juvenile tarpon that were as inexperienced as I was. Becoming a skilled saltwater angler is a kind of patina that you just can’t fake. 

There’s one last spot on the other side of the marsh Doron wants to hit, so he drops the hammer. He threads the skiff through narrow elbows with the deftness of a rally driver in a race against the sun that’s already hanging low and hard boiled in the skillet of the sky. As the skiff whips around the last bend of the exit channel we come to a squelching halt. The tide’s left less than an inch of water covering our escape; we’re completely mired. 

Doron hops out and starts shoving and heaving and cursing but the skiff is stuck and my 200-plus pounds are only exacerbating the problem. I watch him pace around the transom like a bullfighter weighing his next move. I can’t help but smile as I watch him perform his quiet calculus, an inner tempest hidden behind a stoic face. I offer to help and he declines.

While his protests are admirable, we both know what needs to happen. So I kick off my flip flops and jump into the thigh-deep mud beside him. The floor of the marsh effervesces long-dormant odors and each footprint bleeds a dark black cloud into the water. We coordinate our efforts and push the skiff to freedom, stopping to rinse the muck from our legs and shorts. We exchange a smile and then a laugh that seems to say, now this is fishing.

A right-minded person would have taken it as a sign, a warning that our luck, and the tide, is wearing thin. But we’re back on the hunt, polling the outside edge of the marsh. Perhaps it’s the hours, or the baptism of mud, but we’re in sync. Doron calls out tailing fish and talks me through each presentation with commands and adjustments until I’m hearing his voice in my head and the rod and the line and my arms all disappear and the fly is alive in the water.  

Out of nowhere we a small pod of happily feeding fish materialize directly in front of us, fifteen feet off the bow. They’re nosed down, rooting, tails wagging out of the water like labradors on a scent. I plop the fly once, twice, feel the weight, and the line goes tight. I play the fish carefully, seriously, knowing in my gut that it’ll be the last action of the day. I work it to the boat and we free the hook.

Image: Cpt. Doron Lovett

As the fish peels away I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Doron gives me a nod, a quiet affirmation with a touch of raw honesty that comes from days like this, where every inch gained was hard-fought.

Doron secures the push pole and nudges the boat to life. I pull the battle-worn gurgler from the fly patch on the console, jamming the hook point into the brim of my hat like a gambler tucking away a lucky chip. I’m sore, sunburned, and reeking of sweat and mud, but it feels like a badge of honor. Tomorrow, I’ll be haunted by the missed shots and bad casts, already craving another chance to go all in on this unforgiving marsh. But for now, I let myself savor the rare taste of victory, no matter how small. I lean back, close my eyes, and let my mind drift off on the thrum of the motor and the sweet salty air of the Gulf.

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