Gag grouper inhabit the rocky bottom of the pass, as well as nearby reefs.

It’s the Friday afternoon before Labor Day, nary a boat bobbing on Boca Grande Pass as Irby Pugh guns the 27-foot Putopia at black towers and malevolent castles of water vapor squatting on this Gulf inlet.

The source of our reckless courage was, of course, those great pilchards we’d finally managed to put in the livewell.

“It’s when a man has live bait that he becomes a danger to himself, isn’t it?” the usually lightning-shy Irby needlessly pointed out.

“And his crew.”

“The question you have to ask yourself,” he went on as we careened across the vacant inlet like a bat into Hell, “is whether life is more valuable than live bait.”

At the time it seemed a rhetorical question, possession of those pilchards clearly having crippled his judgment. Sighting another boat comforted us, halving our odds for the lightning strike, until we could see it was heading in.

For sure the snappers didn’t give a dead clam about the weather as rain and lightning drew around us like a shower curtain. Our presence held the thunderheads at bay and we drifted the storm-free zone between Gasparilla and the sand rimmed Cayo Costa Island, pulling pound to two-pound mangroves and little groupers off the bottom as quick as we dropped into the 30-foot depth.

“See? Storms are like dogs,” Irby illuminated. “As long as they don’t smell fear, you’re okay.”

He sucked down some Gulf air like a thirsty hobo on a frosty bottle, then looked me in the eye. “This is great, isn’t it?”

The tide was running out like a swollen river so we dedicated a few ounces of lead to get the unlucky baits to the bottom where they lasted only moments. My partner’s automatic fish-on grin lights up every time he sets the hook so it was pretty much constantly there. We got snappers for supper and threw back half an ocean’s worth to boot. This was simple, fun fishing.

Fishing that’s not fun is also available on Boca Grande and rarely is the comparison between humans and their prey less flattering. Here’s your majestic tarpon cruising en masse into Boca Grande Pass, stately, awesome and cool as a sea cucumber. Let’s submerge and take a close look into the calm, steely eyes of these hundred-plus-pound fish that have survived from an inch long fry in an unforgiving world of predators. Back on the surface we have fishing guides cussing each other out and bumping boats, horrified families from Pennsylvania notwithstanding. It’s the local live baiters pitted against the interloping jiggers, all humans understandably trying to hang onto a way of making a living without getting a job. The live baiters are sore at the jiggers who allegedly gun around out there with intrusive outboards displaying something like the obtuse bad manners of a jetskier, not willing to wait until a tarpon is darn good and ready to bite, just looking for a pod to drop their hooks into. And Harold and Maude from Kalamazoo got their money’s worth as long as they see a big bend in the rod, a splash in the distance and a silver king by the boat. The live baiters, who’ve been doing this for generations, but these days are crabbier than ever, reckon the jiggers are running off the tarpon along with their guiding careers. Trouble arises, they all go to Tallahassee to tell on each other.

Tarpon? Humans? Which is the dignified species? You decide.

The moral of this story is that when you introduce money into a fun activity, it always sucks out the fun. If Mr. Nevercaughtafishinhislife from Flapdoodle, Iowa wants to wrastle a tarpon before he’s ever tempted a bluegill, rent him a boat and a fishing rod and wish him luck that he don’t drown.

Back to the real fishing, the fun fishing, the kind where you eat your catch for supper, next day we were up early with some more of Irby’s friends to experience Putopia 25 miles out. They seemed strangely familiar, like a favorite sneaker you haven’t worn in years. The captain had some GPS numbers where he’d caught fish four years ago. We would soon learn that live bait and weather reports have something in common. We cast netted pilchards on the way out, so we had both.