Waiting For Godzilla

After 20 minutes and a total of six jumps, the fish breaks off. Outside of us, Tom Evans is casting to a fish we cannot see. We watch the loop unfold and the fly line lay out ruler-straight; Evans crouches like a catcher awaiting a fastball, snicking in the fly in short six-inch pulls. He strikes—and misses.

A loud, heartfelt obscenity roars across the water.

"That's not very sportsmanlike," Bob chuckles.

"What rude language," echoes Gene. They grin at each other.

But now the tarpon fade away and schools of porpoises take their place on the flats. Every time they roll and blow, Bob jumps to the alert, then scowls. "Snortin' bastards," he grumbles in anti-Flipperian irreverence. The wind picks up again and we head north toward home.

Back in the Riverside Villas bar, over the customary Margaritas, the anglers are lamenting the slowness of the action. "You can really get bored out there," says Jim Lopez, the Miami contractor who once held the tarpon fly-rod record at 162 pounds and has more than a dozen other records to his credit. "The other day, for the lack of anything better to do, I served myself out of the boat. I was demonstrating my tennis serve to Hal Chittum, my guide, and I ended up neck-deep in the drink."

Everyone is staring out the window at the low light on the water, at the hunting ospreys and at the little islet just off the docks where a family of spider monkeys resides. The monkeys are playing Tarzan on their ropes, or else scampering up on a warning sign—THE MONKEYS WILL BITE—to beg food from passing boats. A miniature lighthouse, striped like a barber's pole, rises from one end of the island. The monkeys are a lot livelier than the anglers.

"Maybe tomorrow...."

The fish are still there in the morning. Over the citizens-band radios by which the guides exchange information we learn that Stu Apte, the Pan-Am pilot and outdoor entrepreneur, has already hooked and released tarpon of 80 and 130 pounds. Apte, once a guide himself, holds the records for 6-pound-test tippet (82� pounds) and 12-pound-test tippet (154 pounds); now he wants the 15-pound record as well. This is the first time he has fished Homosassa seriously, though he push-poled Al Pflueger Jr. around here a couple of years ago. His earlier records were set in Flamingo Bay and at Key West .

The wind today has backed around to the south, and as the morning wears along, its velocity increases to whitecap level. I'm fishing with Gene Montgomery today, while my partner, Art Brawley, who jumped the 80-pounder yesterday, is teamed up with Bob. We're staked out with six other boats at Oklahoma when Bob pipes up on the CB: "Into a good fish down here—150, maybe more."