Paul Bunion and The Statuesque Patina are in Florida after deciding to face down fear and deliver their premium Xmas trees anyway. As we reported last month, they were worried about being detained at the Canada-U.S. border or attacked and abducted by mistake along their way from Quebec to here.

“My feet are killing me,” Bunion said when they arrived at the Fish or Cut Bait Society’s clubhouse. “Luckily, nothing else is. Let’s go fishing somewhere obscure. Is it safe to be on a boat here?”

We assured him that it was. Nobody had been blasted to smithereens on Florida waters.

“Not yet?” Patina asked, peeking out a window for signs of ambush.

We couldn’t blame her and Paul for feeling a little paranoid, even though we had coached them in the art of being inconspicuous.

It was easy to say, not so easy to do. No one would pay much attention to their pair of 18-wheel tractor-trailers rolling south. As for themselves, anyone would notice Paul and Patina from three blocks away on a busy city street.

I dare not give away many secrets here, but I can tell you that by the time we were done with them, they scarcely recognized each other.

Tyro the new guy happened along as Paul was directing the offloading of the deluxe tree that he always brings us.

“Who’s that?” he asked me. Before I could answer, Patina said “Hi, Tyro.”

“Who’s this?” Tyro asked me.

In her natural state, Patina strongly resembles the Statue of Liberty. We got her to lose the spiked hat, rested spectacles on her nose and ears and took her to a dressmaker to raise that floor length hem. We made her stash the book she carries everywhere.

Except a few students, or in November when the Miami Book Fair happens and it’s chic, nobody here carries books around. It’s a sign of weakness.

A barber shaved Paul’s beard and head. A fashion consultant in Miami confiscated his buffalo plaid shirt and flannel-lined jeans.

Now he’s wearing a linen sport jacket over a T-shirt, yoga pants and two-tone loafers, no socks. His feet are killing him.

Singly or as a couple, they blend in just about anywhere.

The day after they delivered the rest of their tree crop to high-hat pop-up sales lots near the best neighborhoods — Las Olas, Miracle Mile, Worth Avenue and suchlike — we got them on the water.

The timing coincided with a strong cold front. You know how those work, right? Your enemies order them up when they know you plan to go fishing.

We weren’t worried about this one. Trickle the rich guy and his favorite fishing partner, penniless Stoney Brokium, were taking Patina and Paul on Trickle’s big yacht. Hopefully they would find a few schools of mangrove snapper over the patch reefs alongside Hawk Channel. There would be porgy, and maybe hogfish.

If the wind should lie down some, it would be worth going farther out to the 180-200-foot depth range for mutton and yellowtail snapper.

Stoney looked up the marine weather forecast and reported that the cold front looked like a one-hander: 15 to 20-knot winds, which meant 20 at least. Maybe a one and a half but maybe not a two-hander.

“A one-hander means you’re going to have to hold on to something a good bit of the time, say with 3 to 5-foot seas at the worst and decent spacing between the rough episodes,” Stoney explained. “Most of the time you’ll only need one hand for holding on, so you can still fish.

“A two-hander is a front with wind that makes you hold on with both hands most of the time, and if you let go with one hand to scratch yourself somewhere you’re liable to fall down. That makes fishing too much work. You have to put your gear in the rod holders while you hang on to whatever you can. Any big fish that bites will eat your bait and take off before you can reach your reel.”

Headwind said in that event, the wisest move is to call someone back at the marina and ask them to look around for anyone you owe a lot of money to, never mind what for.

If someone suchlike is hanging around, you stay out until dark-fall.

“You can probably go in then. If the wind speed slacks off some, maybe you can change the voyage to a night trip and still catch some fish.”

That’s what Headwind said. He’s an inshore fishing-doer himself, but he’s fished offshore often enough to own an in-the-head stockpile of experience and folklore about it.

Give us more, Headwind. How about sharks?

“If sharks are stealing more than half the fish you hook, up anchor and go somewhere else (Headwind’s saying that) unless you have a generous holiday spirit and like feeding apex predators that will eat your hands if you rinse them overboard.”

Headwind is old-fashioned. He says “up anchor” even though he knows most boats nowadays have electric trolling motors that can keep a boat where you want it to stay.

You carry a real anchor only for backup. Headwind recalls the last time he used his only because he sprained both his shoulders upping it. I recall it only because then I had to haul it. The trolling motor he bought cost him $1,600-plus.

He doesn’t own a power pole anchor because he’s a fly fisherman and that thing would be in the way whenever he cast sidearm from the stern.

Stoney Brokium got a confidential tip that Paul Bunion and The Statuesque Patina were taking their chances on eluding the ICE. Stoney, disguised as a bargain hunter, shopped at yard sales in the suburbs and the bargain bins at Big Buck’s Big Box Bait & Tackle store. He found some hats and shirts with nautical motifs.

He gave those to Patina and Paul, so if anyone was doing helicopter surveillance they would mistake our friends for waves, pelicans or waterspouts. Wasn’t that clever?

They were skeptical, so to make them feel safer Stoney climbed to the flying bridge. Every hour or so, he looked down and cried out “Where’s Patina? Where’s Paul? OMG! Avast! Heave to!”

Paul and Patina would take off their ocean camouflage hats and shirts and shout back “Here we are! What great disguises! What a brilliant idea!”

A couple of days later, Headwind and I took them out on Biscayne Bay in his 18-foot boat. We found a school of Spanish mackerel rallying around a channel marker.

Paul and Patina fished with light spinning rods and all-white jigs with short nylon skirts, not bucktail hair. Good bucktail’s expensive compared to nylon, and shreds easily.

Headwind offered them light wire leaders. Patina took one. Paul turned up his nose and used fluorocarbon, 20 pound test.

They both got bites on every cast. Every bite bit Paul off. Patina, using 10-pound knottable wire, put all the fish she wanted in the cooler without replacing her jig even once.

Paul lost half a dozen. Then he reached, palm up, toward Headwind, who put a wire leader in his hand.

Later at the marina, someone asked Paul how they did.

“We caught a few,” he answered, perfectly imitating a true Miamian.

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