The Best Part of the Day

Thats what my grandpa used to say about getting up at 5 am. And its true. Every morning I either meet Slah at 5:30 or I walk the beach here at the house and cast. One way or another I'm always the first person to make tracks on the beach. Generaly I work my way north and look for any movement in the water that would indicate Pargo or Robalo, not seeing that I kick around in the new shell piles for treasure.

But the big pay off is the sunrise itself eh? On our beach theres many new high rises that block the sun for the first few hours. But that doesn't keep it from doing a wonderful job of bouncing off the early morning clouds to the west. I take a picture like this figuring its just about as pretty and bright as it can get and wouldn't you know that 5 minutes later its brighter. Thats a cool deal . Its like the northern lights at home, always changing, just life I guess.

Finally its time to stop screwing around and fish. With my small rod I like to walk and cast to cover a mile of water in an hour or so. Its a bit of choreography as you step sideways, slip down to the water line to cast then back tread to miss the next wave. Repeat. The guys that are dialed in have this body language about them that is hard to miss and a beautiful thing. Lots of times I'm doing this in front of a new condo complex. But even though there may be coffee drinkers watching I'm facing Hawaii and feel totaly alone....man, thats nice.

So whether I catch or not I usually end around 9 and either meet MP along the beach or up on the road or I return to the house for a morning fishing critique with my friend Alejandro. Alejandro and I have been friends for years. He prefers to put out a few hand lines with bait and as he monitors them he has a couple rods ready and rigged with different lures for what ever swims by. Its uncanny, he can tell what fish it is by the splash or even how nervous the bait fish are. I don't have the patience for the bait fishing and its to bad because if I did I'd catch more fish. Alejandro and I have our own language it seems. Its kind of a cross of hand signals mixed with facial expressions and alot of the common words like grande, mucho and pescado. But through it all we've learned alot about each other. He fishes for food, teaches school in the afternoon and is my age. He raises wonderful oranges and limons (key lime). He's crazy in love with his wife. When she was in a bicycle accident last year he was worried sick and missed a week of fishing...thats love.....

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