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my fly rods and I should add a few different spinning rods and reels, too. You know, expand my abilities. I’m a fishing guide myself.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned into the Winn-Dixie parking lot, turned around again and started driving north, toward Key Colony Beach. I like a woman who’s strong and decisive and this lady was a real take charge kind of woman. Knowing that against a strong willed woman like this, arguing would be pointless, not that I wanted to anyway, I said, “Well, if you’re sure, I’d enjoy the company.”
    Five minutes later, we turned into the Sunset Beach Apartment complex on Key Colony Beach. As we ran toward the overhang to get out of the rain, she said, “I have some shirts that will fit you, but I don’t think you can get into my jeans.” She laughed again, all the way to the door of her apartment. I was somewhat dry now. Well, at least I wasn’t dripping on the floor and laughed with her. She disappeared down the hall and came back a minute later with a well worn, long sleeved, denim shirt. “Give me five minutes,” she said and disappeared down the hall again. I pulled my tee shirt off, looked around and just deposited it in a trash can in the kitchen, then pulled on the denim shirt she’d given me. It smelled faintly of clean girl smell. I looked around the living room. It was functional, not at all girly or anything. There were three fly rods supported on hangers along one wall, a fly tying table and chair were under the window with several boxes of small hooks and assorted pieces of cloth and feathers. I found a few pictures on a bookcase. Her, several years younger, standing with a teenaged boy and an older couple. Family picture, maybe? Several pictures of her, fly rod in one hand, holding a trout in the other, with mountains in the background. There was another of her with the teenaged boy, probably taken a few years later, as he had a moustache in this one. She was wearing a black skirt and white blouse, with her hair longer. He was wearing the cap and gown of a graduate and she had a very proud smile on her face.
    “My little brother, Mark,” she said from behind me. Her sudden appearance startled me a bit, as I didn’t hear the slightest sound. “That was his college graduation. Our folks died when he was seventeen and I took over, helping him get through those tough years.”
    “I can see the resemblance,” I said, noting the tall young man in the picture, with the same blonde hair and high cheek bones of his sister. “Sorry about your folks.”
    “Shall we go shopping?” she asked. And without waiting for a reply, she was heading toward the door. She’d changed into more comfortable clothes, I’d noticed. A pair of khaki fishing shorts and a baggy, short sleeved guayabera shirt, in light blue and her usual long billed fisherman’s cap.

5
    Sunday evening, 10/23/2005
     
    We were in Bogie Channel now, in the lee of Big Pine Key, approaching Spanish Harbor and Southeast Point, where Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge is located. “Stay over on the left side of the channel, in the shallows there along No Name Key,” I said. “It’ll be rougher than going along close to Big Pine, but not too rough and it’ll save us time. Then we can make a straight run across the shallows on the north side of Spanish Harbor, toward Bahia Honda and be out of the chop. It won’t be so rough in the shallows over there. Once we clear Little Duck Key though, we should turn northeast and head out away from the old bridge to Pigeon Key. That way, we can kind of ride between the waves, with a following sea and get in the lee of Vaca Key, before turning back south in the calmer waters. Riding a following sea in this chop will be difficult, but I got confidence in you, Jules. It’s gonna be rough going around Knight’s Key and getting into Boot Key Harbor, though. If we put in at Dockside and tie up to my dinghy dock, we can walk to the Anchor."
    “Good idea,” Julie