Matlacha, Florida

July is here and the tourist season on Vieques has come to an end. Amanda and I have once again packed up and headed north for the summer and fall. We’re currently on the southwest Florida island of Matlacha, where my parents live and fish. While tiny Matlacha is an island in the technical sense, it’s actually connected to the very developed west Florida city of Cape Coral by a short drawbridge. And unlike Vieques, this makes all the conveniences of 21st century life just a car ride away.

So right now life on Vieques really slows down to a snail’s pace until late December. I’ve found that leaving the island for a few months to chase Florida redfish instead of Caribbean bonefish is the perfect antidote for not focusing on what Vieques lacks, like movie theaters and big grocery stores, but to be reminded of all that it has to offer. And of all those things, there’s really one that stands out the most. While the fishing is equally fantastic up here in South Florida, Matlacha really lacks for beaches.

On Vieques, when I’m not poling a charter across the shallows of Ensenada Honda, my favorite thing to do is hike down to Encampment Beach just before sunset. Our lunatic dog Maggie will chase every single bird back and forth at full speed, stopping only to dig ghost crabs out of their holes in the sand. I’ll usually get several shots at the resident school of bonefish that live inside the barrier reef at the beach‘s end, often hooking one, sometimes two. When it’s finally time to go home we’ll have an exhausted dog, a freshly eaten bonefish fly, and a pocket full of new sea glass for Amanda’s ever growing collection.

That’s been our routine on the island for the past three years, several times a week, and I’ll miss it immensely at first up here. Matlacha’s shoreline is composed of dense mangroves and oyster bars (we’re talking about both kinds; the natural ones that grow under the water’s surface and the man-made ones built above it that serve draft beer.) There’s nowhere for Maggie to run wild within walking distance. There are beautiful beaches a few miles away on the islands of Sanibel and Captiva but, like almost anywhere in the States, no dogs allowed. Strict leash laws apply everywhere up here and on Vieques Maggie rarely wore a leash. The generous splash of terrier in her mixed up gene-pool makes calmly walking her down the road a true ordeal most days, especially when a squirrel darts across her path.

Maggie goes crazy each afternoon around 5:00 PM when we’re not heading to a beach. With her schedule so messed up we’ve had to compensate and longer walks on the leash didn’t seem to work at first. Fortunately, we’ve discovered that Maggie is an excellent kayaker. Our rental house up here is right on the very shallow waters of Pine Island Sound and comes equipped with several fishing kayaks. A five minute paddle from the back porch can put me in the middle of some of the most productive flats on the entire Gulf coast of Florida. Maggie will sit on the bow of my single seat kayak and not budge while we paddle for miles around the mangrove hammocks. This is an amazing feat of obedience for this thirty-five pound inbred mutt. At the same time it’s great exercise and gets me very close to some big tailing redfish. The drawback is that it’s a less than ideal situation for casting a fly at anything. But Maggie is back on the water and happy. I’ll figure out a way around the dog with a fly sooner or later.

Owning a dog that loves the water is kind of a chore up here in the States when compared to Vieques. The island is incredibly hands off when it comes to rules for dogs. As an animal lover, this is both good and bad, as anyone who works with the Vieques Humane Society will tell you. Watching my dog tear up and down an empty beach and screaming at her for scaring off my bonefish are favorite memories of Vieques. I’ll look forward to doing that again in a few months. Until then, I’ll be like every other Floridian dog owner being dragged down the sidewalk with a leash in one hand and a plastic baggie in the other.