Magazine Confluenze | fly fishing experience Number 8 Year 2 | Page 55

After having turned off the engine, with
skilled movements your guide starts with
the long pole to drive the boat towards
the mangroves covered shoreline. You are
nervous and watch carefully everything
around, it’s a long time you have been
waiting for this very moment. Yet, you do
not see even the shadow of a fish. Engine
noise, you think, surely scared them and
they are hidden somewhere into the mangroves. Maybe after some minutes of silence they will come out within reach of
your fly line.
You are carefully watching every fishy
looking hole near the mangroves. With
half-closed eyes you are scanning the
water with your brand new polarized sunglasses, notwithstanding the small and

annoying mosquitos which have arrived in
numbers as soon as you got closer to the
mangroves.
But everything is still.
Then, suddendly, you hear a violent thug,
as if your guide was fallen into the water,
but he is violently slamming the pole on
water surface! You lower your arms in
desperation and you think, well now the
fishing is over! You look open mouth at
your guide, thinking which words you
might use to offend him. Then, your
guide indicates a precise point in the lagoon and yells ‘tarpon, tarpon!’ , you turn
to look and, to your astonishment, you
see a school of tarpon which comes out of
the mangroves and starts rolling on the
surface.

Salt Confluenze 55