“Our friends had told us we should start this book project with Bill Curtis. They said most of what we would see in the coming months had been, at least in part, created, improvised, explained, or experienced by Curtis. He is, by unanimous account, one of the fathers of saltwater flats fishing, and one of the last living legends of this game.”

That’s how Kirk Deeter and Andrew Steketee–newcomers to saltwater when they co-authored Tideline: Captains, Fly-Fishing and the American Coast in 2004 — introduced flats guiding legend Bill Curtis.  Tideline is, in my mind, a true sleeper, worthy of any saltwater angler’s bookshelf, and a book that you’ll come back to more than once, not only because of the luminous photography by Marco Lorenzetti, but because the essays have an objectivity that can only come from authors who were looking at the sport mostly from the outside in.  Unfortunately the book is often in short supply and might go out of print, as did the authors’ other book, Castwork.  I’d suggest snapping one up if you get the chance.

Meanwhile, here’s a bit more from the MidCurrent excerpt:

“WE LAUNCH from the outside ramp and run past Palm and Cormorant Keys into the northern reaches of Florida Bay, then Bill sets up in a channel near a mangrove island swarming with roseate spoonbills. He wants to see if we can fish before he starts talking. It seems we are on the spit to start out, as he begins to interview us with rods, not words. As he eloquently explains, “There’s chicken salad and chicken shit, and you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

We find a mixed bag of small jacks, spotted seatrout, ladyfish, and pompano, throwing gaudy, rattling ‘Cajun Thunders’ and shrimp-tipped jigs into the channel with spinning rods. In doing so, we extract some of Bill’s basic history. He tells us he is from eastern Oklahoma, and learned to fish in New Mexico in 1934, throwing Adams flies with split-cane rods on the San Juan River under the guidance of his uncle. He even held the world record for rainbow trout on six-pound tippet for a fish he caught up in Alaska, but could care less, when we ask, about its length and weight.”

It’s hard to forget the first time a gator comes up and challenges you over the redfish that you’ve worked so hard to get, hissing and humping and generally doing his most badass modern dinosaur imitation.   There is a form of revenge available, though.  Consider alligator what Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods, calls a “stunning alternative protein.”

Of course if you really want to help in the battle against invasive species, you could choose to hunt and cook what some South Americans call “the chicken of the trees.”  Heck, the residents of Gasparilla might even pay you to make a meal of their pesky invaders.

Not challenging enough?  Reports are that python meat is “chewy but sweet.”  And the first cook to take on a giant boa constrictor will get a free copy of Carl Hiaasen’s new book Chomp.   We might even be able to get Carl to sign it.

Everyone needs a secret ramp.  They let you get in and out of the water without enduring a parade of bad launchers, discourteous boat owners and nosy fishermen.

My last secret ramp was at Cow Key Marina, a tiny and historically rundown entry point on the west edge of Stock Island.  I loved the history of  the place: Stock Island was originally called “Cow Key” because that was where the herds of cattle and other meat-providing animals were kept.  It wasn’t renamed Stock Island until entrepreneurs realized they’d never sell real estate on something with an unglamorous name (not that Stock Island was a major improvement).  Somehow this place held onto the old name. And the filming of the movie based on Thomas McGuane’s 1975  ”Ninety Two in the Shade,” starring Peter Fonda and Margot Kidder, was centered at the marina and its bar.

From 1990 to 1997, no other skiffs launched there.  And as I was in the mode of waiting for all the other guides to leave and drive past my favorite fishing spots, it was the perfect setup, with the added benefit that there was no one at the dock at the end of the day asking how our fishing was.  In fact, no one cared at the Cow Key Marina.  And every day’s fishing was somehow more perfect when no one wanted to know where we had gone or what we had done.

Of course secret ramps don’t last forever. The marina’s famed bar was dismantled before I got there, and by the time I left the place was gussied up and filled with jet skis.  Still, the tiny ramp there holds lots of great memories–of stretches of months at a time without a day off, of many big fish caught and released, and of favorite clients, some of whom have now passed on.