When Nostalgia Turns on Us
What Homosassa taught me about memories, change, and arriving “too late”
Written By: Hunter Leavine
Photos By: Brett Rigsby
“Where are you going next?”
“Homosassa,” I said.
“You’re about thirty years late to Homosassa.”
I paused, embarrassed by my prior excitement.
“I’m about thirty years late to everywhere.”
At its best, nostalgia honors what came before us. It gives a place a type of weight. It reminds us that the water beneath our skiff has carried better anglers, better stories, and, depending on who you ask, much better days than the ones we are living now.
Find any hole-in-the-wall bar along Florida’s coast. Look for a sun-stained older man and pull up a stool. Before you are fully seated, you will find yourself in a story about how it once was.
But nostalgia can turn on us. It can stop simply honoring the past and start harassing the present. It can convince us that anything worth experiencing has already happened.
The fish were bigger, the crowds smaller, the guides better, and the glory days have drifted away like dust in our rearview.
Recently, the Drifter Fish Club hosted a tarpon camp in Homosassa. Before the trip, our members received signed copies of Monte Burke’s Lords of the Fly, which chronicles the obsessive pursuit of a world-record tarpon and the history of the place where that pursuit unfolded.
In the weeks leading up to camp, many of our members listened to old podcasts about Homosassa. Our group text was on fire with music playlists, articles, and pre-trip chatter. The buildup to a fishing trip is its own kind of experience. Long before you arrive, the place begins taking shape in your imagination.
Nostalgia is part of what draws anglers to Montana, the Bahamas, the Keys, and every other fishery that has entered the fly-fishing lexicon.
There is something significant about stepping into a place that mattered long before you arrived. You climb onto a skiff at the same docks where history was made. You run across flats that once held your heroes. In a way, you enter the story you were once drawn to.
And even if you are a little late, at least you are there.
On the first morning we launched at McCrae’s, one of the landmarks of old Homosassa. Coffee was savored. Boats were loaded. Guides and anglers made cautious conversation while rods were stowed.
When you fish with a guide for the first time it carries some of the same awkwardness of a first date. It carries a similar kind of hope too. The kind of hope where even those who are not religious pray for success, and at a bare minimum, to not make a fool of themselves.
We left early enough to catch the second act of sunrise over a dark river lined with palms and pines. One by one, the skiffs slipped across the surface, weaving through hidden rocks and obstructions with their anglers in tow.
Almost everyone in our group was seeing this part of Old Florida for the first time. They were stepping into a physical landscape that, until then, had only been experienced in their imagination.
That can be a dangerous way to arrive somewhere.
When a place has been built up through decades of stories, it can become difficult to see with new eyes.
When we returned to McCrae’s for the mandatory post-fishing beer and what I can admit was an unnecessarily assortment of fried-food, the excitement began to spill over.
Justin described strings of high-rolling tarpon running into the boat. Eric explained the wonder of seeing a daisy chain of circling fish. Stephan appreciated getting to hear his guide share stories on the water. We all enjoyed hearing about each other’s day.
I confessed that my one real shot that day had been blown because I did not have enough line stripped out from my reel. I wish I could say that had been a first for me.
When I made the cast, I heard the dreaded tink of the line catching. The fly fell two feet short of a daisy chain so perfect I thought Thomas McGuane had written the scene.
I did not get a second chance.
One of tarpon fishing’s cruel little mirrors of life.
We laughed. We forecasted what the next day might be like. Naturally, we ordered another pitcher of beer.
Over ten years of hosting the Captains Collective Podcast, I have had the opportunity to chase tarpon in several fisheries outside of my home waters of Florida’s Forgotten Coast.
I have fished for laid-up tarpon in the Everglades, rolling fish in Mexico, and beach fish in the Virgin Islands that added unnecessary strain to my tenth wedding anniversary.
Every fishery has its own personality. The environment changes, and with it the behavior of the fish, and the way the guides pursue them.
Homosassa has a style all its own.
During a roundtable conversation with five members of the Homosassa Guides Association, I shared that their movements reminded me of one of those old vibrating tabletop football games.
Seen from above, the Homosassa guides might look like tiny little figurines buzzing around in random directions.
From inside the skiff, their intentionality is undeniable.
Fish are spotted. Angles are chosen. Lines are respected. Guides communicate throughout the day. The amount of calls made is at such a high volume that AT&T should consider building them their own tower.
What appears from a distance to be random zigging is, up close, an elaborate dance.
Homosassa tarpon fishing is not chaos. It is choreography.
Like any legendary place, Homosassa carries the burden of its own reputation. Some of those who used to give it praise have resorted to a kind of shit talking usually reserved for exes. What was loved “at its best” gets reframed to something else.
In their stories, the numbers were unmatched. The fish were enormous. The schools were endless. The whole place seemed to demand recognition as something more than a fishery. It was an era, a proving ground, a kingdom of guides, writers, anglers, and unimaginable fish.
I do not doubt their stories.
I do question the conclusion people sometimes draw from them: that because Homosassa is no longer what they remember it to be, it should not be celebrated for what it is today.
Everyone has a theory about what changed. Fishing pressure. Changing salinity. Reduced spring flow. More boats. More sharks. Alien magnetic fields. Whatever caused the shift was probably some combination of the above. Minus the alien thing. I made that up.
The decline of our fisheries should not be dismissed. Loss is real, even when we cannot agree on how it all came to be.
But grief becomes destructive when it persuades us that what remains is unworthy of our attention. It’s one of those things that requires us to be ambidextrous, holding grief and hope.
Many Homosassa guides say the fishery has rebounded over the past ten to fifteen years. They argue that some of its harshest judgments come from people working with outdated information.
Without a doubt, there is still a strong Old Florida charm. There are still well seasoned guides. There are enough fish to make any modern angler’s day, and there is an always present possibility that you might have a chance at a fish of a lifetime.
On our final evening, we gathered over tacos, smoked meat, and good whiskey. We recounted the week in the way that only anglers on a porch, and old men at a ball field can. We shared the moments throughout the week that we would hold onto moving forward.
Fresh nostalgia was already at work.
Perhaps the problem is not that we romanticize the past. Maybe the problem is that we get stuck in it. That we are so comparative with what it was, or what it could have been, that we misvalue what it is.
As we recounted our time on the water, talked about the enduring charm of Old Florida, and considered what the week had meant to us, it was hard to believe we were late to anything.
Hunter Leavine is the host of the Captains Collective Podcast and cofounder of Drifter Fish Club. His work explores fishing as a lens into culture, travel, and the people who shape the places we love.
Sponsors: Skinny Water Culture, Purpose Built Optics, Turtle Box Audio, YETI, My Captain, and Hone Health.
Learn about traveling with the Drifter Fish Club HERE.
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The dangerous thing about nostalgia is that it's a form of love, so it never announces itself as the enemy. The old-timers trash-talking Homosassa like an ex still believe they're honoring it. They can't feel the exact moment reverence curdled into a refusal to see what's actually in front of them. That's the trap. It arrives wearing the costume of respect and only later turns into contempt for the present. Holding grief and hope in the same hands, like you said, is the whole discipline, and it's harder than it sounds because grief always argues it's the more honest of the two. It isn't. It's just louder. Great piece.
Grew up for a piece in Lecanto. Dad and I fished Homosassa and Crystal River areas of the coast from a 17-foot bass tracker through my high school years in the late 80s. Dad always loved chasing reds and the gator trout that were in fact plentiful down there on low tides. Your story brought back a lot of vivid memories of a better time in life. I might need to come back and reminisce and rekindle some old flames from down there. And I agree, it’s unhealthy to only hold on to what once was and not appreciate what still is.