DH STEINOUR

A version of this article was published in Florida Sportsman's December 2018 issue.  Please check it out!

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A grizzled Green Beret who's worn the ‘Special Forces’ tab longer than I've been alive once told me his favorite CQB (close quarters battle) training scenario was the hostage recovery operation.  Imagine you’re on the stack with him.  It’s nighttime and you’re piled up at the gate of a compound.  You’re sweating under your kit and you’re on night vision, but in the green haze you see the breacher blow the gate and you stream into the room.  Maybe a flashbang goes off and you’re half-blind, maybe you step on a cat and an old lady is screaming.  You have milliseconds to decide if you need to shoot the strangers in the room.  Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?  “I always shot the damn hostage,” he laughed.  “Maybe that’s why I was never put on those missions.”  ‘Violence of action’ is a phrase used to describe the speed, surprise, and aggression required for success in a CQB situation, and if I had to think of a fishing equivalent that prescribed violence of action, it would definitely be nighttime kayak fishing for bull reds.  I’ll explain.

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When I was stationed in Florida’s panhandle I took notice of a few long bridges spanning bays that were studded by streetlights.  I resolved to see if those lights attracted fish after dark, and on my first trip out I parked near a bridge and thumped my ten-foot kayak down a hill of riprap to the bay’s edge.  There was no moon and I could hear the bay sloshing with a modest chop.  It was hot and damp in late summer and the streetlights had foggy haloes and I wore long pants and a fishing shirt with a life vest on top and a military-issue reflective belt over everything like a beauty queen’s sash.  I wore a headlamp like a necklace and kept a spare in a shirt pocket with my license and ID.  My 360-degree beacon was improvised; I chopped an old rod in half and duct-taped a flashlight to the top.

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I shoved off and paddled toward the first pilings topped with streetlights.  They threw conical yellow over the bay like tractor beams from flying saucers.  I was sweating under my kit and my night vision was settling in because I kept my headlamp off.  It was pitch black under the bridge and I bobbed carefully between pilings until I came to a section with light thrown on either side.  The water looked too dicey on the up-current side; I wasn’t confident I could hold position and cast in that chop, but when I peered at the downstream side my heart leapt.

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The water was alive with violent activity; copper ghosts flashed across the lighted arena.  Blue crabs, bobbing on the surface like toppings on a sundae, disappeared in sudden explosions as a herd of bull redfish marauded past.  A school of menhaden awaited their fate just under the tawny waves, splayed like fingers on pale hands.  I sat transfixed, not sure what to throw at, with action and targets all around.  I decided to pitch my Gulp! shrimp jig dead-center in the light and I followed it down to a shaking bite.  It wasn’t a redfish but instead a white trout, apparently one of the thousands of white trout stacked on those bridge pilings.  The small fish fluttered against my heavy spinning tackle and I released it quickly to get after the fleeting glimpses of bulls.

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I learned patience the next hour, wading through white trout after white trout, roving just outside the half circle of light that illuminated a boiling cauldron of life and death.  I kept shooting the hostage, as it were.  The copper-sided redfish moved deeper and a cloud of menhaden whirled and a few shrimp swam past with pathetic speed.  I nearly felt sympathy for those shrimp, wandering through the battlescape like gladiator fodder just waiting to be cut down.  Some time passed and I hooked something bigger that pulled like a flopping bowling ball.  It was heavy but didn’t meet my expectations for a fighting redfish and when I got it up my fluorocarbon leader and a couple feet of the braided line were slick with goo.  It was a sail cat (saltwater catfish), gray and whiskered.  I grew concerned that I was doing something wrong and I wasn’t going to crack the redfish code.  I kept missing my target.

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Minutes later a dorsal fin bobbed on the edge of the light and although it was black and ominous against the Pensacola skyline I could tell it was a dolphin and not a shark.  I don’t know which would have been worse for business, though.  The dolphin blew a couple blasts and slapped the surface with its tail and surged into the baitfish swarm.  That shut down even the excitable white trout bite and I moved on.

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There was a break in the lights and I paddled past quiet pilings in the night until I arrived at the next bright kill zone.  I casted and felt my jig fall into the familiar fluttering grasp of a white trout.  I brought the writhing fish up until my rod jolted underwater.  I wrestled it back as the reel buzzed.  A bull had clobbered the trout and was on the run.  It surged at the nearest piling and continued under the bridge as I tried to rein it in and turn it.  Growing up stream fishing for smallmouth did not prepare me for a fish that strong.  The fish bored through the bay in long spurts, dragging me against the current into the blackness below the bridge.  I blindly fended the kayak off pilings with my foot as I fumbled for my headlamp and paddle.  I’m not sure how the redfish stayed buttoned considering it bit the fish that bit my lure, but after a few moments it quit lunging for the pilings and headed down current to open water.  A hundred meters or so below the bridge the fish was high in the water and turning easier.  I got my knock-off BogaGrip clamps into its jaw and swung it onto the kayak.  The trout, which was a little worse for wear, joined us; a dead hostage.