Crude Water: Chasing Tarpon in Curaçao's Toxic Beauty
When I think about fly fishing for tarpon, the first thing that comes to mind is the setting. Flats stretching as far as the eye can see, flowing like the strokes of a watercolor painting, shades of turquoise melting into deep cerulean blue. Flats rimmed with thick green mangroves. Well, that’s not where I ended up.
Instead, I was in a ten-foot inflatable raft, held together with duct tape and Flex Seal, floating through an oil slick. A scene that looked more like something out of an environmental campaign, than an idyllic watercolor painting. Every time the bottom stirred, bubbles rose like someone had dropped an Alka-Seltzer. Then came the oil, not a faint shimmer rainbow sheen, but raw, black crude. I stared at the water, wondering how any fish could live in it. The thought didn’t last long. Hydrogen sulfide gas and other volatile compounds burned my nose and eyes. As I stripped line through the clouds of oil, it turned slick in my hand. And I thought, even if I hooked a tarpon, how the hell was I going to strip set?
As the sun began to set, the refinery stood taller than ever. Looming soulless towers seemed to sprawl in every direction. The outlines lost all detail, turning into little more than endless black monoliths. The intense equatorial sun flooded the refinery, with its intense reds and golds. The plumes of oil disappeared with everything else into the darkness. Michel never seemed to lose his confidence, as we bounced around the bay, from the lights of the harbor ships, to the hard concrete ledges of the loading docks. We tried everything from giant beast fleyes to imitate the massive mullet that the tarpon key is on, to traditional tarpon bunnies and shrimp patterns. Just when it seemed like we were gonna head back to the dock empty handed, Michel cracked a smile and said “there is one more chance we have a place” and brought the boat into a pitch black corner of the mangroves, where a broken light pole from the refinery illuminated one patch of water the size of a volleyball.
The rest of the piece is available in The Drakes 25/26 Winter print edition, as well as online here. https://drakemag.com/crude-water-on-curacao/
