Hurricane Charley plowed this fishy cut.

The cabins are situated halfway between the north end and the lagoon inlet, our two main fishing spots. Our evening stroll to the inlet was a bit longer because the cut was farther and all it was was a cut, a gash joining Gulf and lagoon, 30 feet wide, 50 yards long; but worth it when we got there. At the bottom of an outgoing tide, mullet were piled up on the lagoon side, getting busted, no one there but us. Used to casting purely on faith that a fish might be around, the boys were stunned by this opportunity, never having seen its like and suspecting I never had either. Sam caught a snook and a jack, both of which shot down the cut with him in hot pursuit. The jack he passed, the snook he couldn’t. The pattern for the trip was set: random moments of glory for all, usually arriving with that element of surprise that separates lightning from the lightning bug.

The fishing is a marvelous combination of great and easy. Anybody who can cast an artificial lure will find exciting potential just off the beach, at the pass or the lovely lagoon a half hour walk from the cabins. We live on snook, flounder and seatrout on the island, this pure diet a probable boon to our biology. Most of the flour-based food made it back to the mainland intact. Boca Grande Pass is famous for the fabulously exciting tarpon and plenty of them wander over to Cayo, providing a wild and sometimes unexpected thrill for an angler. The simplicity of it all feels very fine and natural.

We left a canoe at the dock for when we weren’t splashing around in the shallow current of the lagoon inlet, snorkeling, hunting buried treasure or fishing near our wee house. It’s a fairly long paddle from there to the Manatee Hole, a deep cove off Pelican Bay featuring a spring that attracts hordes of the friendly mermaids in the cool months. North America’s largest mollusk, the horse conch is common in the shallows along with many other beautiful shellfish and live sand dollars high and dry, black as the tar on California beaches. The boys returned the dollars to the Gulf to spare them concern about the tide not rising. One evening, returning from the inlet, we chanced upon a sea turtle laying her eggs.

As always, when you go to the sea for adventure, you see amazing things. One morning just after dawn, we were casting into the gently lapping waves when Sam yelled “Look at that!”

Ely and I looked and it happened again, so startling and odd that I just yelled something like, “Whoaowww!” Imagine you’re standing there fishing and one hundred feet to your left and the same distance out, a black whale shoots straight up so its tail is 10 feet off the surface. That’s what it looked like to us. It actually was an enormous dark dolphin that had grabbed a fisherman’s fish and halfway spooled him.

Kids can't help but have fun here.

Sam switched to a fancy bucktail which took charge of the morning, getting him three snook, three jacks, a Spanish mackerel and a whiting. Ely’s spoon got him snook, jacks and a Spanish. I was getting only jealous until next to a sandbar our first keeper snook smashed my rubber jig five feet from shore, shaking his big mouth out of the water before dragging me and my 6-pound line around for a half hour. As we returned to the cabin, a woman asked me if we had seen any pigs on the beach. I found it a surprising question and didn’t really know how to respond. Well, that evening, there it was—a big black pig rooting on the beach.

That evening we were heading for the cut but found every baitfish packed into the back of the lagoon by every predator. First cast Ely got an 18-inch snook on his spoon, Sam got a jack on his bucktail and I broke out my new fly outfit, tossing a white streamer. I haven’t done much saltwater fly fishing so when I felt a powerful pull on my streamer, I was excited. The 9-foot rod developed a deep bow and the line was leaving. So they could share the significance, I yelled over my shoulder to the boys, “This is the first decent saltwater fish I’ve ever gotten on fly rod.” That got them all exuberant and I’m still convinced I had been fighting a large snook up until I said that and it turned into the butt-hooked mullet I eventually landed.