A Consciousness of Speck | Chesapeake Bay Magazine

I looked at my fishing partner with a conspiratorial smile, and he returned it. The facial contortions were more like sneers, as if The Grinch and his twin brother had just swallowed Little Cindi Lou Who.

“Man, that’s a fishy spot—gotta be holding specks, right?” I hissed at my fishing partner.

The skiff’s trolling motor pushed us along a jagged “marsh tump,” a phrase I’ve heard used to describe a slice of saltwater marsh jutting out into deeper water. The dull, almost soothing slap of water pinged against the small skiff’s hull, like pans gently clanging together in the distance. A flooding tide carried ocean waters deep into stands of spartina, eel grass swayed gently below the surface. On the shoal…