By Vincent Bini
I’ve always been the adventurous type. Always.
The furthest back I can remember, I was maybe three—four tops. I woke up before anyone else in the house—we were living in New Jersey at the time—looked out the window, saw a good blanket of snow on the ground, and did what any normal kid that age would do. I threw on my jacket and my blue Winnie the Pooh boots and headed outside.
Oh yeah—I didn’t have any pants on. Just my Underoos.
After a solid session in the neighbor’s yard, I walked up the front steps and found the front door wide open. That’s when I heard my mom say, “Forget it, he’s back. But you may have to come out for a murder.”
Apparently, she’d called the cops.
My folks weren’t pleased, but what could I do? That’s how I was built. And it only got worse as I got older—not for recognition, not to impress anyone, but because I just craved the next thing. Whatever was out there, I wanted to find it.
Wonderlust Waterman
Once I discovered fishing and the outdoors, that instinct found its direction. Moving to South Florida in the early 80s lit the fuse. Fishing, hunting, surfing, scuba diving—I was doing it all and loving every second. But when I got introduced to the Everglades, the explorer in me went full throttle and never really came back.
This was long before GPS or the internet. I had crappy old charts and dumb luck. I’d pick a random spot on the map and go—hidden creeks, tucked-away bays deep in the backcountry. I lost my way constantly. I didn’t care.
One of my best discoveries came from one of those random runs—a narrow creek that opened into a series of small bays absolutely loaded with giant snook, redfish, and tarpon. Occasionally a black drum would roll through. Dream water. The only catch was getting there. You had to lay down in the cockpit and pull the boat through some sections by hand. Others were so tight you had to suck in your gut just to get the bow around the bend. The second you squeezed through the opening, it felt like slipping into another universe entirely.
The best fishing was always past the mangrove tunnel, and it was what I came to call close-quarters battle—because that’s exactly what it was. Trying to yank a 30-inch snook out of mangrove roots is not for the faint of heart or tackle.
The creek also had a healthy population of bull sharks and gators, which kept things interesting. Over the years I lost plenty of lures, busted more than a few rods, and collected a solid pile of bruises. But the most painful—and costly—incidents happened within two weeks of each other, in the same exact stretch of water.
The Tunnel of Hate
The first happened while fishing with one of my close friends. We muscled our way deep into the creek, picking up some nice snook along the way, but we were after the spot—the one that held the mother lode. When we finally got there, it was my turn on the bow.
As we crept deeper, a low-hanging mangrove branch blocked the way. I grabbed it and pulled the boat through. My head brushed the branch and I felt a searing pain just behind my left ear. Instinctively, I swiped at it.
Big mistake.
I’d smacked into a hornet’s nest, and they made sure I understood that. In the chaos of swatting at my ear, I knocked my brand-new Costas into the creek. Stung and shade-less, I tried to recover them.
Gone. The Glades had claimed another trophy.
Two weeks later. Same buddy. Same creek. Same cursed stretch of water—and a fresh pair of Costas on my face.
We were running a 14-foot bass boat we’d converted into a flats skiff. It was sweet—a 50 HP on the back, ran great. So great, in fact, that the legend himself, Capt. Steve Huff, saw us at the ramp one day and told us we had a killer little skiff. We were proud of that boat. Maybe too proud.
Back to the scene of the crime.
Paying the Toll
I was up front scanning the creek when I spotted a couple of decent bull sharks cruising by. Not what we were looking for, but cool to see. A second later I found myself shoulder-deep in the water—and once again without my Costas.
My “buddy,” standing on the poling platform, had decided to jump down onto the deck. In doing so, he launched me clean off the bow and into the drink. I came up soaking wet and thoroughly pissed off, sprang back into the boat, and let him have it. He insisted his 225-pound frame dropping onto a 14-foot skiff had nothing to do with me getting fired into the water.
To this day, he swears it wasn’t his fault.
Two pairs of Costas and a hornet’s nest in two weeks—that creek extracted its toll. But here’s the thing I’ve never been able to shake: it didn’t matter. Not really. Every time I got back in that skiff and pointed it toward that tunnel, I felt the same pull I felt as a 3-year-old staring at snow through a window. Something out there worth finding. Something worth the cost of getting there.
The Glades has thrown everything it has at me over the years. Bugs, sharks, gators, bad weather, worse luck. It has taken my gear, my pride, and on a few occasions very nearly more than that.
And it still can’t get me to hate it. And it tries. A lot
