TRCP Media Summit
I’m just now catching up from a very hectic but satisfying month. I’m a little sleep deprived and a little overwhelmed right now, but that’s good, it means there’s lots to share from my little corner of the world.
Hosting their first annual Saltwater Media Summit in Sarasota, FL at MOTE marine lab, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) invited me to attend as a member of their media team and to document the convention. For three days journalists, environmental writers, biologists, former lobbyists, and leading figures in the saltwater fishing community congregated to discuss the future of our fisheries and coasts. The shoot was to be pretty straightforward: afternoons filming indoors during presentations, evenings mixed with interviews and testimonials, and mornings filming backcountry fishing. By the end of the conference, TRCP wanted to be able to compile a video to release to potential attendees and sponsors for future events, so I would need to take both stills and video with enough footage to fill 4 minutes. Seems pretty easy, right? Well, if you’re banking on two days of in-the-field video, which is the heart of the final product, and then you’re suddenly only given ONE, you start to sweat a little.
TRCP decided to have this summit in Florida because our sunshine state has the largest fishing and boating industry in the US (17 billion dollars). We’re a state that understands the importance of these businesses for our economy and we’re trying to get it right. Fishing in Florida supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and steers the livelihoods of people from coast to coast. Fishing is a hot topic in the environmental community but the bottom line is that we need it, but we need to manage it properly. TRCP is helping by providing a network and platform for the marine scientists to converse with writers and the policy makers who affect change at the legislative and public levels.
Thursday morning I was scheduled to be in a boat fishing and filming with Whit Fosbourgh, president of TRCP and Guy Harvey, of, well, Guy Harvey. That is, until a rogue cold front sent straight from the devil himself shattered those chances with 30 mph winds. You can imagine how bummed I was. So instead, as a backup plan, MOTE marine lab offered us a tour of their aquaculture center.
I’ve been to many fish farms in the past, but they were only glorified holes in the ground that offered city-anglers the chance to catch their dinner. MOTE’s facility was a fully self-sustaining laboratory that harvested sturgeon for caviar and filets. While I love to catch my own fish from the Atlantic, after three hours in their center, I started seeing this operation as a real solution to meeting market demands of threatened species or a slew of other fish for that matter.
Later on that evening the winds died down and we had a green light from the local fishing guides for our sunrise outing on Friday morning. Since this would be the meat of the final video, we decided to dedicate a chaser vessel strictly to bounce me around from boat to boat to get footage of as many anglers as possible. We had beautiful light and I was amazed at the diversity of fish that people were catching. One boat counted 12 species of fish in just three hours! If that doesn’t speak to the productivity, diversity, and importance of Florida’s waters, then I don’t know what will.
In the three days at the summit I made some great connections and learned a lot about the necessary marriage between resource management and Florida’s economy. I’m excited for the conversations that were sparked and even more thrilled about the actions that will follow. Spreading the word is what it’s all about and I’m honored to be part of that movement.
Washington DC received two of my canvas prints as gifts for their support.
Stay tuned for the video!
Trolllin’ and Pollin’ Everglades Style
The same places I’ve been visiting since I arrived here are still continuing to surprise me. There’s no shortage of adventure and discovery in Everglades National Park, that’s for sure. With my friend, coworker, and backcountry fishing guide Pete Frezza, we headed out before dawn to meet the sun as it rose over the Everglades. Launching his boat we battled swarms of mosquitoes fully understanding our blood was a necessary sacrifice for our plans that day.
Right off the bat, the calm water began rippling out from the banks as juvenile tarpon rolled violently on unsuspecting minnows. I had never seen anything like that in South Florida. The only time I watched fish rise this frequently was on the North Platte River in Wyoming, and those were 15” trout. These were 30” tarpon. By my third cast I had one on the fly and it sent itself rocketing into the blue morning sky. What a way to start the day!
Pete was nice enough to let me have the first casts, but promptly after I wanted to see how it was done by a pro. Watching a seasoned fisherman cast into the tight spots around mangroves is like watching an artist at work. His fly danced and line undulated in beautiful loops and fell silently on the water, presenting an unresistable morsel to the fish below.
And just when we thought it couldn’t get any better than fishing on a Monday, a double rainbow appeared over the water. We stayed in this spot for the next two hours and found a few young snook which was encouraging to see since their numbers declined so abruptly after the 2010 freeze.
The bay was like glass and we could see redfish tailing in the flats as the tide drew out. Along the banks, dense mats of turtle grass floated on the surface, uprooted by storm surges and water currents, then elegantly arranged in lava-like tendrils of varying colors. Great white herons dotted the horizon waiting for unsuspecting toadfish and crabs to swim by. Just when it couldn’t get any better, all of a sudden by the shoreline we spotted it; my very first wild flamingo.
I’ve seen plenty of flamingos in zoos and postcards in all the stores down here, I’ve even drunk out of a plastic one, but never fully appreciated these birds until this moment. I couldn’t believe how they dwarfed all the shorebirds and wading birds along the coast. Maybe because they’re rare, maybe because we pulled 5 miles to get there, whatever the case I was overcome with this entitled feeling that I had been let into some special club. My camera was working, batteries at full charge, and an empty memory card, things were looking good. We approached slowly, but we couldn’t quite get close enough for a candid image. Wary of people, the flamingo would promptly take off as soon as we got within 50 feet, extending its long awkward neck and using the flats as its runway. It seemed to take forever for the bird to get into the air.
After another hour, we saw the flamingo land near some other wading birds. Hoping that power in numbers would make this bird feel safer we headed towards them and were able to get a little closer. Just then, my polarizer fell off my lens and scared the bird away. I managed to get some frames off just before, but still, with such a rare sighting, the images I was making didn’t match what I was feeling. Fortunately, the flamingo landed with a group of white herons. Seeing the image line up, Pete helped paddle us into a position to juxtapose the mangrove islands of Florida bay and this odd family of birds against the afternoon horizon.
Given the light and the physical circumstances, I couldn’t have been happier. And just in time too, because looking behind us, a storm was brewing, forcing us off the flats to bring our 15 mile pole and paddle to an end. I’m still buzzing from the energy.
Fishing (not to be confused with catching)
I can’t think of anyone who took the cold snap this winter more personally than Pete Frezza. A widely published National Audubon biologist, the research manager at Tavernier Science Center, and reputable catch and release fly fishing guide, he has nurtured an intimate relationship with the Everglades and South Florida since high school. During the second week in January temperatures reached and sustained an all time low in the Florida Keys and Everglades National Park. The sudden freeze affected local fishing businesses, agricultural industries, and most notably, fish and wildlife within the Florida Bay and Everglades National Park area. For an entire month, dead fish, endangered American Crocodiles, turtles, and manatees continued to wash up on the shores. Although exact numbers are impossible to glean from such a large area, while accounting for variety of species scientists estimate the death toll in the hundreds of millions… Ahhem… That’s Hundreds of Millions.
Snow in September
For the last week false weather reports flooded the airwaves promising 8 inches of snow for Carbon County. Most of the staff hailing from the southeast coast waited in anticipation for the bleak and unpredictable snowstorms Wyoming is famous for. Every morning over a period of five days I set my alarm for 5:30 only to open my blinds and find frost, but no snow. Finally, on Monday a cold front pushed through Colorado, spilling over the border and into the southern section of the state.
I shot out of bed at 6:00 and ran to Patrick Shehey’s room, a fellow fly fishing guide. We had been trying unsuccessfully for about a month to collaborate on an image of him fishing in the river. Due to fickle weather patterns and poor light I was never able to get the right shot. So when I knocked on his door at 6:00 am and told him to crawl from under his warm blanket and dress to get wet, he was a little reluctant. Eventually, after pleading and mimicking the menacing sound of an alarm clock, he finally obliged. An avid angler, Patrick guides professionally in Connecticut. He has entered plenty of fishing competitions and throws one of the most beautiful loops I’ve ever seen.
On our way out to the river, we stopped by the Sunday Left pasture and watched the wranglers jingle in the horses. The sound of soft powder creaking beneath 400 hooves followed by the piercing cries of cowboys echoed across the ranch.
After the horses were gathered in the catch pin Patrick and I headed for the North Platte and parked along a beautiful stretch of scattered boulders. We spent 30 minutes fishing and photographing until the bitter air and freezing water got the best of us. Unable to move my fingers enough to trigger the shutter, we called it a morning and headed back to the Fish Shack. Even though we only clocked in a half an hour, that morning on the river ranks in one of my top five fishing adventures.
Angler’s Paradise
Ten o’clock, two o’clock, ten o’clock, two o’clock, the rod flexes sending the fly soaring through the air while neon line loads the next 10 feet. Golden light dapples on the water’s surface and a trico hatch emerges from the river. Thousands of insects spin helplessly back toward The North Platte and into the mouths of rising fish. The angler adjusts and ties on a new a fly. Targeting the feeding frenzy he lays his line just left of the riffle. A cutter cadis lands softly on the water, the 6x tippet invisible to the fish below. The angler points downstream and with the flick of a wrist mends the line back toward the rock, correcting for the fast drift and buying his presentation another three seconds. As the line unfurls, his free hand steadily strips in the slack until a wild brown trout breeches to swallow the fly. In a split second he raises his rod and tightens the line. With the hook set on the jawbone, the fish takes off downstream in zig zag patterns. The reel spins, zinging line and sparks of water from the cork handle. With the rod held high and keeping the line taught, the angler starts running, splashing through the water, dodging slippery rocks and avoiding deep holes. His focus never leaves the fish and after 15 minutes of cunning resistance the tired trout idles into the net. This scene will replay itself over and over again every day on the ranch throughout its 13 miles of private stream and river.
The international popularity of fly-fishing seems inevitable. A sport that demands such physical, mental, and emotional immersion into the natural world often lands fisherman in some of the most scenic and pristine areas of the globe. For many, catching fish is merely a bonus.
Mac Stone Photography 