In a secret location, which I am free to identify precisely as “Somewhere in Everglades National Park,” our man Headwind set the trolling motor on spot-lock, plucked a spinning rod from the boat’s vertical holders and prepared to tie on a lure.

We were too far from port for the launch ramp mosquitos to follow — so far that their message relay hadn’t yet reached the bug tribe ruling the territory where we stopped.

“Speak softly or you’ll spook the fish,” Headwind murmured as I chose a fly rod from under the gunwales.

Then I looked at the fishless GPS screen on the center console.

“You already spooked them, with all the commotion you made deploying the trolling motor,” I murmured back.

I had left my rod rigged overnight so I cast first, trying for a finesse landing to avoid spooking Headwind.

He always squawks about noise when the knots of my tapered leader hit the water. When he throws a lure, it splashes, like a beaver’s tail slapping on a coldwater trout stream, ka-foom!

“Your flies land like an iguana falling out of a tree, ka-foom!” he reminds me.

While I made few more slight-splash, biteless casts, Headwind smeared his face with white sunscreen. He looked tasty, like cream cheese on a bagel.

Next he reached right-handed for the tackle bag behind him. Then he reached for it left-handed. Finally he swiveled around, lit up and announced semi-calmly:

“We left our tackle bags on the garage floor.”

“Both of them?”

I would have asked that dramatically, profanely and with excessive exclamation points, spooking the fish if any were there. That’s my style in a crisis.

Not in this case, for I was freshly coached in prep-craft by Justin Casey, the ready-for-anything guru who always has the right replacement part, the tackle item nobody else thought to bring, a Plan B for the day when nothing can go wrong but it does anyway.

Justin had helped me stock the good ship ‘Witz End 5 with what we thought ought to be on an 18-foot back country skiff rigged to fish both salt and fresh water.

I reminded Headwind that the hatch under the port-side helm seat was loaded with clear latching boxes containing jigs, plugs, flies and wiggly soft plastic lures, all labeled. Beneath the starboard seat there are popping cork rigs, chum bags, stink lures, terminal tackle, leader spools and a few other things I can’t recall just now but if we need one it’s in there.

Justin Casey convinced me that taking most of one idle day to choose and load all that as semi-permanent cargo would save me a lot of hurry-up time the night before a fishing day.

“The idea is to be pre-supplied for every type of fishing that you or your crewman might do on any fishing trip, fresh or salt,” Justin Casey teaches. “You’re not likely to run out of anything, but the other guy is. Other than that, when the fish aren’t taking flies you want to be ready to throw them jigs, stink baits — whatever — with a spinning or plug rod.”

[Before a voyage, I’m supposed to look in the hatches for spiders, ants, lizard eggs, mildew and damp desiccants. They’re not in the way, but I prefer to fish without them.]

As that day in the back country demonstrated, the system works splendidly. Later, after we hosed away the salt, Headwind put both our tackle bags on the boat. I wondered what we would forget instead the next morning.

Justin also talked me into using space gaps in the bilge to carry spare gasoline because there are no gas stations anywhere I fish.

Three one-gallon plastic cans fit in there, niched beside the tank. I only notice them because they’re bright red. I forgot they were there until a rental car arrived as Headwind and I were about to go home from an everglades landing along U.S. 27.

“That car looks desperate,” Headwind said. Before I could ask how he knew, the driver stepped out. I could see he was desperate.

“Do you guys have any spare gas?” he asked. We guys dislike being called “you guys,” but we let it go because the man told us he was desperate — running on empty and in a hurry to get to the airport.

I hauled out one of my red gallons and handed it to him as he opened his rental gas cap.

“Do you know how to open this and use the spout?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered, meaning “No,” so I opened it and taught him to pour. He did it well for a rookie. He was so happy that he asked for my other two gallons.

I explained that the boat gas was R-90, a specialty fuel meant for boats and certain other engines but not for passenger cars.

I said if it damaged his car’s engine, the rental company would blame him. They would charge him an arm and a leg, both ears and his tail. He trembled.

“Don’t cry,” I said. “One gallon won’t do any harm and it will get you to a gas station 10 miles down the road.”

Later I wondered if I knew what I was talking about, so I asked my friend Petrolero. He used to run a place called a “filling station” where he wore a peaked hat and plastic bow tie, pumped his customers’ gas, cleaned their windshields and chirped “Happy motoring!” as they drove away.

“Shame on you,” he scolded me. “R-90 gas works very well in a car’s engine. The only downside is that it costs so much more than 87 octane regular gas. A car needing premium gas wouldn’t run well on it. “I think people assume it’s bad for cars because regular gas with ethanol is bad for outboards. That’s sort of true, but not necessarily so. If you can’t find a station selling R-90, you can get away with using regular but you should add a fuel stabilizer. Also, unless you’re fishing a lot more than now and then, you’d better burn it all up or pump it out of the tank and put it in your car.”

It gets more complicated if you let it. Some outboard engines require 93 octane gas, so you’re stuck with ethanol — and more fuel stabilizer. The boating industry, as you know, assumes you can afford to pay more for everything, and even if you can’t you will.

Petrolero said if regular gas stands very long in a boat’s tank, the ingredients separate. Water forms. So do gum and varnish.

When you run the engine you get rough idling and noises that are telling you to visit a mechanic and bring a credit card with a high balance limit.

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