About a mile below the oxbow, we come upon a couple of deep pools that are loaded with fish. Then, the creek bed turns bone dry. It’s well past noon, and JT, who’s never much for understatement, wants his lunch.

A foggy dawn makes for great topwater action.

“Let’s eat,” he says. “I’m so hungry I could eat the rear end of a dead skunk.”

We double-time it back to the access point, devour a couple of sandwiches each, and then transport our gear across the water to a high spot we found on the western side of the oxbow. While I clean the fish, Read and JT pitch the tents, set up the kerosene stove, and gather firewood. The afternoon heat makes us drowsy, and it’s siesta time.

Two hours later, tree shadows fall across my tent and awaken me. JT follows me down to the bank, and we shove off quietly. We work our way upstream to a big flat created by the flow of the creek into the oxbow. A buzzbait would best cover the flat, but these schoolie bass aren’t picky. Every time JT’s chugger or my popping bug hits the water, we get a strike. I mean this place is 4-weight heaven. One fish swallows my popper, and while I’m performing surgery, JT tells me to look up.

“Holy cow,” he says sarcastically, “Here comes a Seminole.”

Read’s paddling toward us, but he’s paddling from the stern so his bow rises high into the wind. The wind blows across his port side, and plays hell with his progress. He makes three furious strokes on one side, but he’s paddling so hard that his bow gets to port of the wind and it tries to turn him around. He makes three furious, reactionary strokes on the opposite side, and the canoe turns broadside in the other direction. Like a drunken sailor, Read winds his way up the creek, but by the time he gets to us, the fish have shut off.

“You should have paddled faster,” JT ribs him.

“No,” I say, “you should have paddled smarter. When the wind’s coming across your bow, paddle on the opposite side just hard enough to offset the push. When you get into a lee or if there’s a lull between gusts, use your J-stroke to keep a steady course. No matter what, try to paddle from one side only.”

Read pulls alongside me and I showed him the J-stroke motion. The latter part of the stroke re-centers the bow after the thrust naturally pushes it toward the opposite side. It’s awkward at first, but I make him practice it on the way back to Burnt Bridge, and looking back, I watch him discover that like fly fishing, the art of canoeing isn’t an exercise in force; it only requires subtle management of opposing forces.

JT hops in the other canoe with Read, and both ask to borrow a fly rod. They’re both learning to fly fish, and either they’ve ripped enough lips wormin’ or the creek’s subtle rhythms have inspired them toward a more graceful approach. I leave the two novice fly fishers to flog water around the old bridge pilings. Paddling away, I hear both of them hoot as a bass whacks one of their poppers.

Below the oxbow’s mouth, the current flows at just the right speed for me to stand in the canoe and cast to the shoreline. By now, the sun is low, calm spreads over the water, and the loudest sound in the air is the hiss of my fly line rushing through the guides. Every time my popper hits the water it disappears beneath a swirl. Small bass after small bass comes to hand until approaching dusk an enormous bucket devours my bug and breaks the six-pound tippet as easily as corn silk. In the gathering dark, and beneath an aerial ballet of kites, bats and barn swallows, I head back toward camp. While the bullfrogs sing in chorus and the gators bellow, my paddle plucks a soft, carrying chord from the creek. It’s a timeless song.

FS