This tripletail, found close to the Canaveral shore, was happy to take a well-presented fly.

Days and nights of stiff northeasterly winds had hampered our attempts to venture into the windblown Atlantic for more than a week. But now the long wait had ended with the arrival of calm winds and moderate ground swells. Huge patches of sargassum weed had ridden the stiff breezes across the ocean and were now pushed against the currents formed by the inshore shoals of Cape Canaveral. This sargassum, peppered with boards, buckets and coconuts, had created a vast weedline.

I hopped down from my mini-tower while ordering my companion to keep a watchful eye on a piece of flotsam I had just spotted a hundred yards directly to the north. The adrenaline runs high when inspecting new flotsam. Not knowing what you will find swimming under or around it has immense appeal. This is one of the reasons I savor the time I spend sight fishing these waters off Florida's Space Coast.

Most anglers would assume that on a day like this my flyfishing partner and I would have our sights set on catching dolphin, or some other gamefish that prowls the Atlantic Ocean. However, we had something else in mind. We were stalking an adversary that most anglers, even the most serious ones, overlook because of its sullen approach and chameleon-like characteristics: the tripletail.

Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis) resembles the freshwater crappie with its rounded dorsal and anal fins extending almost to the tail and the very small face; but this is where their resem-blance ends (except for the fact that both are considered excellent table fare). Found throughout the oceans of the world, tripletail are tough competitors. They can be spotted along all of Florida's coastlines, bays and lagoons. The average size of a tripletail is usually three to eight pounds, but along Florida's Space Coast tripletail of 20- to 30-pound world-record proportions are not uncommon; in fact more IGFA world-record tripletail have been caught outside Port Canaveral than all other places combined.

This fishing excursion would be a particularly memorable one for me because of my companion Art Broadie. Art started his flyfishing career in the foothills of the Catskills of New York and gained his nickname, Blackie, from his exclusive use of the Black Ghost fly, which he used while fishing the Catskill waters for brook, brown and rainbow trout. Art once told me that the reason he preferred the Black Ghost, a streamer fly, over more conventional trout flies is that it caught bigger fish.

Over the last few years, Art's interest in big fish led him to saltwater fly fishing. He now spends the better part of his time between October and May indulging his saltwater passion in Florida. Today was the day we were going to put his skills to work on his first fly-caught tripletail.

We dropped my skiff, Mangle Tangle, into the water at the Central Park Ramp on the south side of Port Canaveral, then idled our way east to the port entrance. Once there, Art and I paid little attention to the surf pounding along the south beaches. We had a plan, and we were sticking with it.

We powered our way ahead, at times flying above the northeast ground swells; but what struck me was the character of the ocean's surface. Except for the rolling seas, it was smooth as silk. As we raced for the open water of the Atlantic, the tip of Cape Canaveral and its miles of shoals came within sight. I pulled back on the throttle and slowed our pace; in the foreground, tools of America's space memoirs lay among the sand and sea oats. Active and abandoned launch pads and gantries, where some of our nation's first rockets were hurled into space, dot the shoreline for miles north and south of the Florida east coast's only cape. These instruments of space travel, past and present, have not altered the beauty of these shores. To the contrary, they add to the backdrop with towering grace.

Just ahead, a raft of sargassum did little to conceal a giant slab of mahogany. I'm not sure what was more exciting, finding this piece of wood from the tropical rain forest or the sight of one lone tripletail hanging in the shade of the plank.