Park visitors catch sheepshead on the pier.

Sleepless for days we sluiced our tan feet through the white sand shallows of a moonsilver saltwater stream, rejoicing in this mosquito-free cool breeze corridor and heatless light blasting from a white hole in space. If we lived on the island, sleep might seem a reasonable option; but for a five-day hiatus in snook fishing paradise, we foresook dreams to stalk our quarry amidst the stark, colorless images of the full moon.

Hoping for comfortable camping on Cayo Costa in June is rolling the dice when you need boxcars. That time optimism was rewarded in a way we never expected. Who knew we would avoid the discomfort of attempting sleep in still night with heat, mosquitoes and no-see-ums by simply skipping it?

Eight months after Cayo Costa was Florida’s first line of defense against 170 mile per hour winds, we returned. Looking for hard evidence of our experience, we couldn’t find it. Hurricane Charley had moved the inlet a quarter mile down the beach and blew that stream to the land of memories. All I have is my last remaining Salty Cisco, incredible snook lure, relic from Cisco Kid of Boca Raton, rear treble hook pulled out by a monster that dragged me a hundred yards downstream to the lagoon, where it dipped beyond the delta and broke my heart.

Off Pine Island Sound, Cayo Costa State Park has exactly what is needed for relative comfort, survival and nothing more. Rescued from the mainland by Boca Grande Pass, it’s the ideal Florida location to get that good ol’ shipwrecked feeling: no phone, no ’lectric, no bridge. Just campsites or twelve three-bunk cabins built during the New Deal. The luxuries are cool showers, drinking water and a place to clean your fish.

The cabins don’t cost much more than the tent sites and they have six beds so we always get a cabin. Before the hurricane each little house sat under giant Australian pines, as in a subtropical paradise, separated from the others by the tall, curtain-like trees. The campsites were in a similar setting, hardly noticeable. Now as we reached the camping area on the cross-island tram, it was shocking to see the weekend campers who waited for their ride back to the ferry dock like refugees from a storm, standing by their baggage in a wide, open space with only the broad stumps of trees reminding them of the shade that once had been.

The cabin area was equally changed, trees gone, the cabins lined up like migrant labor quarters or a rough-hewn fish camp from the past. But like my ten year old Ely said, “Who cares? We’re here for the fishing.” He’d already caught a 15-inch snook while waiting for the ferry on the Pine Island side.

Wading offers good shots at snook.

After unloading our three coolers of ice, too many bags of bagels and soft-oatmeal bread and everything else at cabin number 11, my two boys and I struck off on the trail to the northern point of the island, where we had really gotten into snook before. We walked through scrub forest, after 20 minutes emerging on an uninhabited beach in a brilliantly lit world painted only with lime green, blue and white for the scattered clouds. We strolled along in the light breeze casting, me a rubber jig, Ely a 1⁄4-ounce spoon and Sam a bucktail. Nothing was happening, then Ely screamed and I saw him struggling to hold onto his ultralight spinning rod, drag pouring out like nonsense from a congressman’s mouth. He’d never felt a fish like that before and feared being spooled, so he was trying to slow the line’s departure with his hand. In a moment his head was down as he listlessly walked back up on shore, kinked line hanging loosely from his rod, saying quietly, “Life isn’t worth living anymore.”

Knowing this fisherman as I do, that was more poignant than any amount of ranting and raving. I knew it would be true until he hooked and landed something pretty good. We were in the right place for that. Returning by the beach a little later, new spoon on, he caught a jack and the healing began.