I’m staring at a drilling rig. I’ve never been so close to one let alone fished around one. It’s for natural gas and it’s impossible to ignore. I’m so intrigued by the massive machine on stilts in the middle of Mobile Bay, Alabama that I startle when Glassy hollers, “Three o’clock!” I haven’t had second breakfast yet so I know it’s not three o’ clock. It’s nowhere near noon let alone afternoon.
Glassy turns right and accelerates, his flats boat spraying the stilts with saltwater like dust billowing behind my truck on dirt roads back home. I’m from Idaho. Wild West runs rough through my blood, bones and brain. I suspect the South does the same with Glassy. His comforts of home come with more humidity and drawl than I’m used to, but his obsession with a local fishery is something l can relate to even when he doesn’t know what time it is.
I scoff looking away from the rig and toward Glassy, also known as Capt. Sam Glass. He owns Flyway Charters. He’s one of the first Alabama guides to figure out how to fly fish the state’s coast. He started fly fishing Alabama in 2005, but he didn’t started guiding until 2019.
“I wanted to make sure I was good enough to bring people on board,” Glassy had told me when we’d met at the boat ramp shortly after sunrise. “If I didn’t feel like I could put you on fish every day, I couldn’t put you on my boat in good faith.”
I’d faithfully climbed in his boat watching him stash my streamers and 8-weight fly rod out of reach. With long red hair and matching bristled beard, he’d politely told me I’d need a bigger stick. That stick is an 11-weight for throwing poppers at monsters much bigger than the trout of my home water. I didn’t doubt his recommendation until he declared three o’clock at nine in the morning.
As I follow his pointing finger with my eyes, he says it again, “Three o’clock.” I search, finding sparkling spikes poking out of flat-slick surface water unintentionally taunting us. The pod is chaos with frenzy piled on. It’s a school of crevalle jack at three o’ clock. Glassy isn’t telling time. He’s spot fishing while using hours as directions.
“Step up and get a lot of line ready,” he says with charming, contained, no cuss excitement.
I step up with a lot of line already unspooled and start casting as Glassy switches from motoring to drifting with a little trolling for precision. The 11-weight fly rod feels foreign so I’m a coiled mess on the casting platform before I sort myself with a mental mellow-down-crazy-lady lecture and throw line again. I’m so ramped up over the approaching riot that my hands shake. Add forearm strain to that shake when a jack takes my popper and starts wrestling.
Glassy catches 30-pound crevalle regularly on fly and spin. Based on the circus he’s witnessing, which is my first ever hook up with a crevalle jack, he estimates I’m connected to a 25-pounder. It’s voracious life on the line and I’m barely hanging on. I cuss when the reel zings with the wild animal’s retreat. I cuss again when I nearly go overboard. I cuss more when my arms accidentally give and the fly goes slack in the jack’s jaw. The fish is free. I’ve pulled my famous move, the LDR. That stands for long distance release. Cuss words come with it, but don’t let the loss of fish or loss of manners confuse you. I can LDR all day and still call it a fantastic trip.
“Again!” I yell while laughing like a toddler playfully tossed in the air by her parent and begging for more.
When Glassy realizes I’m not angry about losing, but rather addicted to catching, he starts laughing too. The pressure is off. The cussing angler doesn’t care if she lands a fish. She just wants to fish. Glassy gets it. We can do this all day. We want to do this all day.
Landing one would ratchet things up, but catching overcharges my amps anyway and I cuss enough for both of us so…again. I ask Glassy to land a few so I can watch. He’s happy to oblige. He recognizes shared addiction. We’re Wild West and Southern Comfort speaking the same language. The next time it’s my turn on deck, I know exactly where Glassy wants me to throw. Three o’ clock.
About the Author
Tight Line Media CEO Kris Millgate is a bold storyteller, but she wasn’t born brave. Millgate, an outdoor journalist born the same year as the Endangered Species Act, grew up painfully shy and afraid of beards. She spent a decade in TV news before starting Tight Line Media in 2006. With three decades of multimedia storytelling, the Emmy-winning reporter traverses the country in search of dynamic topics. She’s outgrown her shy side too. She talks to strangers daily and she hangs out with beards often.
