As I get older I find that, while I still have the willingness to stay on the water until I catch something, I don’t have as much fortitude as I once did. It’s the old saw about the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I hate to give up without having dinner in the boat, but I after two hours or so of beating the water to a froth with nothing to show for it, I often conclude that a nice grilled steak would taste just fine tonight.

Still, I don’t give up without a fight. I usually plan my inshore fishing trips so that I start out farthest from home and then work my way back hitting favorite spots one by one, depending on the wind and tide. When none of that works, I still have a fallback position, a dock that I pass on my way out to the flats. It’s in deep water at the corner of a cove, surrounded by mangroves. The owner doesn’t have a boat and hasn’t maintained the lift, which is falling down. Altogether it’s a great haven for fish and has probably yielded more nice fish—trout, snook, pompano and black drum—per square foot of fishing area than any other place I fish.

Thursday’s afternoon trip perfectly illustrates what I’m talking about. I left the dock around 3 p.m. and went out onto the flats, where I drifted in about two feet of water for over an hour, covering the same ground that the day before had given up three very pretty trout. But Thursday it could have been the Sahara Desert for all the action I saw. On the way back home I stopped off in the lee of a spoil island that usually been good to me. I let the current sweep me down the length of the island and while I saw both a trout and a snook of some size, neither was interested in my live shrimp or my curly-tailed jig. By 5 p.m. I knew I had to start home to get the trout already in the refrigerator ready to cook. I only had about half a dozen shrimp left in the livewell.

It only takes about ten minutes to stop by the dilapidated dock. I hooked on a shrimp, lowered the trolling motor and crept up close to the dock. I flipped the shrimp right under the edge of the dock and got ready—if there’s a big snook or trout under the dock the fish will usually hit the shrimp within four or five seconds. Nothing happened. I retrieved the shrimp and pitched a few feet to the left. Nothing. But I let it sink for several seconds. Then BAM! A very hefty mama trout slammed the shrimp and it was all I could do to steer her away from the barnacle-encrusted pilings. After a short tussle she was in the boat and I was heading for my own dock, about three minutes away. She’s going to fry up very nicely.