Everglades Assault by Randy Wayne White Page A

seemingly endless.
    Florida Bay is a tricky pocket of water. On a spring low tide, there are thousands of acres of exposed grass flats, all rivered with a complex network of deeper troughs that would take a lifetime to know well.
    It’s easier to follow Northwest Channel out of Key West, then cut a rum-line northeast for Nine-mile Bank where you can pick up the intercoastal waterway for Flamingo.
    So that’s what we did.
    I ran Sniper from the flybridge, fresh dip of Copenhagen between lip and gum, a cold ration of Tuborg in my hand.
    For as much as I am on the sea, the love of heading for open water aboard a boat you trust has never left me.
    Away from the cumulous buildup of a landmass, the sky opens clear and blue and flawless. The wind birds and the dolphin that run before the boat are your only company, and it somehow recharges your respect for them, knowing they live and hunt and reproduce upon the far reaches of water, where few men ever go.
    With nothing else to do, Hervey got one of the light-tackle Penns out. He rigged up a trolling leader, added a big silver spoon, and trailed the artificial seventy yards behind us as we cruised.
    The big lion of a dog slept comfortably at his feet.
    â€œFish on!” Hervey yelled after a quiet twenty minutes.
    At the speed we were going, I knew it could only be one of a very few species: a king or cero mackerel, or a barracuda. Or maybe even some wild-eyed amberjack.
    But it was a ’cuda—and a big one at that.
    I cut the throttle back and took some time to enjoy watching Hervey play the fish.
    People who only fish freshwater miss a lot. We have the jumping monsters—tarpon and billfish and snook—which come out of the water much like giant bass.
    But there are also the greyhounding pelagic fish which make long skipping jumps beyond belief.
    The big ’cuda made a veeing oblique run away from Sniper, then made a twenty-yard skip that had all the velocity of an arrow. Hervey tried to bring it up short, but the fish got the best of him and stripped off more line.
    â€œCase of beer that he’s more than four feet long!” Hervey yelled as he worked the fish.
    â€œYou’re on,” I yelled back—not altogether sure that he wasn’t right.
    It took a sweating, back-creaking twenty minutes for him to get the barracuda alongside—and there was no doubt that it was well over four feet long. It gasped on its side looking for all the world like the blade of some ancient king’s sword: the chrome bulk of it blotched with black, its yellow cat eyes blazing, and its mouth a slash of stiletto teeth.
    â€œYou want ’cuda for supper?” Hervey asked.
    â€œI don’t know. This far away from the reefs, he’s probably okay, don’t you think?”
    It wasn’t a matter of taste of which I was speaking. Barracuda is an excellent table fish. I was talking about the danger of eating a fish especially prone to ciguatera, a disease toxic to man. For many years it was commonly believed that fish like this great barracuda became poisonous because of their feeding habits around tropical reefs. The truth is, no one really knows why certain fish can cause the tingling numbness of lips and throat and, in severe cases, total paralysis. The old wives’ tales will tell you that small barracuda are safe to eat—but that’s not always true. Another story tells you to place a penny on the’cuda’s flesh overnight. If the penny turns green, the fish is poisonous. It’s a very strange disease. In the Caymans, they eat only the barracuda from the south side of the island, where it is highly prized table fare. Supposedly, only the barracuda on the north side of the island are poisonous.
    But like so many things about the sea, few “facts” are sure to be true.
    â€œGuess we just ought to let him go, huh?” Hervey said.
    â€œSounds good to me.”
    But before he had a chance to snip the wire