We had fished the fly early that morning, from the shore. By the time we came to the point the tide was rising, and the point was doing what a point does on a big tide — driving water hard around the headland and dragging it back across the reef that sits out of sight beyond it.
You cannot see that reef. That is the whole difficulty of the place. You have to carry it in your head: where the ground rises, where the water stands up over it, and where it goes slack behind. The bass were in the lee. Not up on the reef, not out in the rip, but tucked into the dead water behind the structure, letting the tide do the work and waiting for whatever came over the top.
They wanted nothing on the surface. I gave them the surface anyway, because over a reef on a rising tide the surface is usually the answer. Nothing came up. Not a swirl, not a follow, not a fish turning under the lure and thinking better of it.
So I stopped asking the question I wanted to ask and asked the one they were already answering. The Lucky Craft Staysee, worked slowly, holding its depth, sitting still in the current whenever I stopped it. That was all it took. They came to it as though they had been waiting on it — which they had, at the depth they had chosen, not the one I had chosen for them.
There is a lesson in that and it is not a new one. I had read the ground correctly and the level wrongly. The sea will let you get one of the two right and still call it a good day.
Days like these.
I run saltwater fly fishing workshops on this coast, September and October — details here.