A Fishing Family
Father, mother, daughter team fourth after Day One of SLAM
KEY WEST, Fla. — Brooke Denkert made one mistake Saturday. And what she did wouldn't be considered a mistake under any typical fishing situation.
"The problem was I hooked too big a fish," said the 23-year-old daughter of her fishing partners Saturday, father/guide, Dave, and mother, Linda.
Linda would land a 19-inch bonefish and a 26-inch permit later in the day, leaving them only a tarpon shy of a slam. That's "a tarpon" as in any ol' tarpon, no matter what size. Just keeping that 40-plus-pounder hooked for 15 minutes on 12-pound test line is a credit to Brooke's fishing ability.
It wasn't her intention to hook one of the biggest fish in the bunch when the Denkert's came upon a small school of tarpon "rolling" on the water surface around 8 a.m. Saturday. Rolling is the tarpon equivalent of porpoising, a breathing behavior they sometimes exhibit. Without the visibility available to sight cast to a particular fish, Brooke cast a pinfish bait just in front of all the surface activity. And, unfortunately in this case, hooked a big one.
It wasn't a matter of not having the ability or experience to catch a big tarpon on light line. Brooke won a Rolex watch as the champion of an International Game Fish Association tournament at age 17. And Brooke won the Red Ghost Tournament (redfish and bonefish) at Islamorada, Fla., three years in a row, while guided by her dad, before she decided to "let someone else win it after that," according to LInda, and declined to participate anymore in the event.
This time, the big one simply came unhooked. It happens to everyone who fishes, no matter how experienced.
That lost tarpon didn't come close to casting a pall over their day. When Dave, Linda and Brooke are fishing together, there are no bad days. That's made for a lot of good years and produced a 5-foot-2, blue-eyed daughter who is determined to leave Florida fishing in better shape than she found it.
"I'm only 23, and I've seen the fishing go down a lot in that time," Brooke said. "Fishing has given me so much, and I'm ready to work and give back."
When you ask Brooke how long she's been fishing, her answer is "since the womb." And that's not far from the truth.
Dave and Linda both grew up in Miami. By the time Dave was 16 years old, he'd fished so much that he knew guiding would eventually be his occupation. And even though he kept a "real job" with a business records archival service for 20 years, Dave earned his guide license in 1994.
Linda, on the other hand, wasn't much into angling when she and Dave started dating. She'd been bowling since she was old enough to roll a ball down the lane. And at age 17 with an average in the "185 to 190" range, Linda had dreams of becoming a professional bowler.
But Dave told her that would involve "way too much time indoors" for him, and he convinced Linda to apply her talents to angling. She has proven to be considerably better than average, both indoors and outdoors. Linda puts the Ladies Master Angler title in the massive Miami Metropolitan Fishing Tournament among her list of outdoors accomplishments.
"She's probably one of the best plug casters in the world," Dave said.
And Dave's not so bad himself. When Brooke graduated from high school in 2001, he and Linda decided that would be the perfect time to move from Miami to the Keys. Dave's been averaging 230 to 240 days guiding ever since. The Denkerts, thus, have become the definition of a family.
When Brooke mentioned how much she'd seen fishing decline during her two decades on this earth, she added, "I can't imagine what my dad has seen."
Dave didn't have to think long when he considered that question.
"There are one-tenth the amount of fish there used to be," said the 51-year-old Florida guide.
In describing the relationship she and Dave have with their daughter, Linda said they are like best friends. And she told a story about how only five or six years ago Brooke's stated goal was "to change the world."
Linda had to explain to her daughter that it just wasn't realistic for one person to think she could change the world, at least not by herself.
Brooke's goal has narrowed and become more specific since those high school dreams. Restoring the health of the Florida fishing environment, at least to what she saw early in her life, is still a daunting task.
But fishing "since the womb" may just give a young woman extraordinary power. And neither Linda nor Dave Denkert is about to tell their daughter she can't do something, well, anything short of change the world.
