Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
whipping me in T.R.O.U.T., she caught on just as quickly in clays. Our guide, Scot Varnadoe, drove us along the bluff to platforms that looked out over the rice canals and salt marsh, and he provided the keen insight and calm advice tantamount to good shooting instructors. At noon we went back to don fishing clothes and found two steaming Guests use this chart to designate when they want their fish to be served. The huge dock is the perfect place to greet another spectacular sunrise on the Georgia coast. plates of homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and cookies on the main lodge table. Fighting a mean urge to nap, we eventually waddled toward the dock under scudding clouds and breezier conditions to meet Captain Toby, who had (no surprise) fully provisioned his 24-foot BayScout for our afternoon. We had live bait, ice, drinks, at least eight rigged spinning outfits, a console restroom and a captain who offered an enormous amount of accommodating energy that began with safety, geography and boat layout and segued into a calm ride up the Cumberland. Our first stop was a deep creek-bend whose sheer hardpan bluff was layered and carved out before us like a crosssection of time. While I gawked at the striated mud, Toby rigged Jeni a shrimp and slid the cork stopper way up the line to allow a deep drift. He said a few final words, danced a little jig and offered some brief instructions – not knowing the extent my wife had trained for this moment at his boat slip the night before. The balsa float left us, growing smaller and smaller . . . then "Gone! It's gone! S P O R T I N G Reel, reel, reel!" until the wounded shrimp returned to the boat with both men carrying on and Jeni shaking her head and laughing like we were nuts. We picked away at the trout on each drop, working our way down Cumberland Island, marveling at the muddy-maned wild horses that grazed on spartina grass. Captain Toby talked about the horses, the early settlements, the Carnegie family and their houses on the island. We passed one of the old plantation homes blinking white among the oak shadows. And we looked across the mud and grass flats at the island's tall sand bluffs crumbling and littered with 4,000 years of cultural artifacts – of Mocama and Yamassee tribes, of Spanish missions and French pirates, English forts and 18th-century hunting camps. At one point we fished to a small knot of redfish along a low tide edge. The water had glassed over, so the fish felt our pressure wake and shoved away like bowling balls under a satin sheet. No way to catch up with them in that game, but it was a great show in the low November light. Captain Toby nosed the bay boat to C L A S S I C S 106