Next up in our “Global Rescue Members in Action” series is Mark Weeks, who weathered a mighty storm while fishing in the Everglades.  Read on for details of the adventure behind his eerily intriguing photograph.

 

“[This photo was taken in the] Gulf of Mexico off of Everglades National Park in Florida.  I was fighting a 100+ pound tarpon as a nasty thunderstorm rolled in and the guide, Andy Thompson (a superb tarpon fly fishing guide), took the photo as he admonished me to land the fish fast as we needed to get the hell out of there.  It reminds me of great and challenging tarpon fly fishing with Andy in the Everglades, a place in Florida where cell phones don’t work and that is still completely wild and that day when we landed two over 100 pounds and then got caught in the storm while trying to outrun it back to Flamingo.  We spent at least an hour lying on the floor of Andy’s skiff while waiting for the storm, which brought lightning, hail and sheets of rain, to pass.

“I am facing shore in the photo but you can’t see the beach because the low hanging thunderhead has already enveloped the beach, which is only a few hundred yards away. (The photo would have been perfect had the big tarpon jumped just as it was taken but I still love to look at it.) Later when we were lying on the bottom of the skiff with lightning dropping around us, I suggested to Andy that we beach the skiff and make a run for the shore but it was low tide and we could not get closer to shore than 100 yards or so. Neither of us wanted to get stuck in the mud or risk running into a saltwater crocodile.”