THE LAGUNA MADRE
WHEN YOU’RE SKIMMING THE SURFACE of the Laguna Madre at 30 miles an hour, nature doesn’t just rule. It overwhelms.
Shortly after daylight on the most remote stretch of the South Texas coast, husband-and-wife captains Aubrey Black and Sally Moffett zip past concentric circles marking spots where mullets work the surface. A redfish wiggles its silvery, one-black-dotted tail above the water to dine on shrimp in the seagrass, and squadrons of sea trout push by in semi-organized vees.
As we approach a sandbar in our inches-drafting catamaran fishing boat, a swirling swarm of several hundred ducks launches into the sky above us.
The horizon line vanishes. I can’t figure out where the water ends and the sky begins. When the morning sun finally climbs high enough to burn through the overcast, it pierces the gray gloom with bright-yellow rays shooting between the swiftly scudding clouds coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Pretty soon, patches of blue peek through, and the gray falls away. In full sunlight, the tranquil water appears startlingly clear.
There are few places in and around Texas where the visible fish—plus dolphins, peregrine falcons, and brilliant-pink roseate spoonbills—outnumber the people viewing them. The Laguna Madre is one of
