“Right before sundown—don’t miss it—by those rocks at the mouth of Sawpit Creek, you guys throw topwaters. Trout’ll be bustin’ all over! Or, bring your little boat over and fish that dock up there,” he enthused, gesturing up the Sound a ways. “You’ll catch dozens on these white grubtails.” When I asked, he said the marsh creeks were always worth checking for reds and flounder. The beach was good, too, especially by the jetties.

Myrtle Creek, behind the campground, is one of many inviting creeks in the area.

I marveled at the intel received in exchange for buying a two-dollar bag of mullet, a 75-cent soda and a handful of swivels.

Bluefish dominated our surfside catch, par for the course on the Atlantic coast. We added a few trout and a flounder which I jigged up on the light spinning rod. The hoped-for reds eluded us, but one angler I spoke with said a guy had landed a 28-incher down around the corner. By the time we got around the corner, slip-sliding along a peninsula of sand, we may as well have been rolling across the Gobi Desert, lost in our daydreams.

The heck with it.

We never made it to Sawpit to confirm Johnson’s report, but we did devote some time to the creeks closer to home. In the lee of the barrier islands, fractal curls and whirls of saltmarsh beg for exploration. Myrtle and Simpson creeks, behind Little Tal, feed the Fort George River. Simpson is unusual in that it’s a two-way street of sorts, also flowing into Nassau Sound, to the north. The river and sound are big water, but the little creeks—narrow enough to cast across, even jump across in places—are just right for paddle craft and skiffs. There are lots of surpises back there.

Mark’s 12-foot cartopper was barely able to contain our enthusiasm, and one morning on Simpson Creek we nearly capsized when a pair of kayaking mermaids stroked past. One of them had altered her attire in such a way as to—how can I say this delicately—ensure no tan lines. She smiled as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I didn’t have my camera, which was fortunate, because I would have dropped it in the water.

Later, Mark and Jim fiddled with the stubborn 4-horse kicker (which seemed to have contracted the same illness as Mark’s lately departed windup radio) while I paddled the canoe solo down Myrtle Creek.

At high tide, the stream had been a brown, languid serpent snoozing in a bed of spartina grass. As minutes drifted past, the water came to life, and curtains lifted on little dramas.

Jetties at the mouth of Nassau Sound attract trout, flounder and other surf species.

There is a 5-foot tidal range in this part of the state, and the arterial estuaries change character quickly. Where there was unbroken grass there were suddenly oyster bars and little runouts feeding the main flow. Baitfish materialized out of nowhere. The creek was receding, skinnier and shallower. Near the intersection with Simpson, a south wind perfectly offset the outgoing current. I sat stationary in the canoe and cast up- and across-stream with a light plug outfit and a red-and-white topwater. The sunlight was fast declining and mullet were rippling past the points. A steep, muddy shoreline marked a dropoff, where a feeder joins Myrtle. On my second cast, a frothy boil turned into a 15-inch seatrout. Two casts later, a 20-incher. With a swish of the paddle, I moved back upstream toward camp, finding more seatrout around every bend. No trophies, but in this miniature waterway, they all seemed like it. At one horseshoe-shaped bay, I got the topwater redfish I’d been looking for, except it barely measured 14 inches.

Back near the ramp, I heard Mark shouting something about flounder. In the twilight I could barely see my two friends standing on the pier, swatting bugs.

“You got a flounder?” I yelled.

“Yeah, right there.”

Mark’s flounder turned out to be a 6-pound doormat that barely fit into his cooler. He caught it slowly bumping a 1⁄4-ounce curlytail jig along the bottom.

“Eatin’ good tonight, guys,” I said.