LAST CAST
HOOKED ON KAYAKS So I’m having dinner with a bunch of folks I’d just met when
his iPhone breaks.” And, “He used ‘it’s’ three times instead
this dude from Texas asks, “Okay, who wants a butt rub?”
of ‘its.’ I mean, come on. It’s a simple contraction with an
Awkward silence, to put it mildly.
apostrophe. Figure it out, dude!”
After a brief moment of strangeness, I noticed that the
A gaggle of laughter ensues. Yes, we are hopeless geeks.
dude was sprinkling a red powder called Butt Rub on his
However, we are also geeks who fsh hard. Then we write
steak. Ah, that Butt Rub! Thanks man, but I’ll stick to the
some stuf. Then we get paid for it. That’s a pretty sweet gig.
salt and pepper. The question was popped by Keeton Eof,
Just consider that three days of my work-week consisted of
a marketing guy from Hobie Kayaks. Eof is a homegrown
staying in a luxury condo at the beach, fshing for six hours
Texan where everything is big, the food is spicy and,
a day, and then consuming food and drink someone else
apparently, Butt Rub is a popular condiment. He was also
bought. I love my life.
one of the hosts of our gathering, so I just smiled and decided to write about it. I realized I’d fallen into a quirky crowd—a mixed bag of
The irony of this particular press outing was that my very frst kayak fshing experience was in Port St. Joe 15 years ago. I’d gotten this kayak, which was molded to hold
FRED GARTH
media peeps who had converged on the tiny, coastal town
a scuba tank in the back. I quickly discovered that scuba
For the past 25 years, Fred D.
of Port St. Joe, Florida, for a week of kayak fshing. The Hobie
diving from a kayak makes about as much sense as eating
Garth’s articles have appeared in
Writer’s Conference, as it was suspiciously called, brought
soup with chopsticks, so I had the idea of using the plastic
numerous books, magazines and
together an eclectic (the nice word writers use for “weird”)
craft to sneak up on trout in shallow water. And Port St. Joe
newspapers around the world.
group of personalities from all over the country to fsh hard,
bay is stacked up with big, leery trout on miles and miles of
Read his blog at:
yak it up, yuk it up, and commiserate about fshing, life, love
grass fats. My best buddy liked the idea, too, so he bought
GuyHarveyMagazine.com.
and the truly amazing variety of meat sauces available to
a kayak. We strapped those suckers on my truck and packed
the general public.
the cooler for the trip. Two of our redneck friends laughed
Over the years, I’ve attended a bunch of these press trips where we underpaid writers get free food and lodging and the opportunity to bitch about freelance writers and magazine editors we really hate. That may sound boring to
when they saw our rig. “Hey man, y’all look like Lewis and Clark,” one said. “Ya got any beaver traps in there?” They were towing a 17-ft. Aquasport with a
you, but to those of us in the media biz, it’s gripping stuf—
115-horsepower outboard and a trolling motor—an ideal
especially when the booze starts fowing, voices get louder
setup for Port St. Joe. But after three days of fshing, ol’ Lewis
and, inevitably, some poor freelancer gets tossed into the
and Clark had about twice as many fsh in the cooler. The
blender (not literally).
bubbas didn’t go out and buy kayaks. That was like voting
Typically, you hear scathing comments like, “His
Democrat to them. But they didn’t give us any more grief
articles change tense more than I change the channel.” Or,
either. And I’m not saying I predicted the current kayak
“He thinks a deadline is something that happens when
angling revolution, but I knew we were onto something big.
