It isn’t easy for friends to land a fishing trip with Furtivo, a tournament competitor who would fish solo if the rules allowed it. Not that he’s pathologically devoted to solitude; as he sees it he’s just practical.

“There’s a reason why prize-money tournaments require winners to submit to polygraph exams,” he will say if you ask. “Nobody trusts anybody. Nobody should.

“Everybody’s looking for an edge. Not just their own edge. They want my edge. I want theirs. If I have an edge and I tell you what it is, I don’t have it any more.”

Where he fishes, how he fishes, baits he uses — all that is elaborately guarded. You’re thinking if he’s a tournament guy, all the others must know at least where he goes.

Sure, but not exactly. It’s widely rumored that during weigh-in on the day of a recent bass tournament on a popular north-south canal, a competitor asked Furtivo if he had fished north of the launch site.

“No, I fished south,” said Furtivo, who in fact had fished north.

Furtivo won’t throw a bait in the water if he can see anyone. That would mean they can see him, and he doesn’t want them to have any idea where he found fish — or even looked without finding, because that might tip them off to something.

Enormé Barrigón, well-known local authority on malt, hops and exotic barleys, tried for years to score a trip with Furtivo. The answer almost always was, “I’ll let you know,” except for when it was “Maybe next time.” Both replies meant no.

Enormé had an edge in those attempts, although it took him a while to realize it and then put it to use. In case you forgot, I remind you that Enormé is chairman of the beverage committee here at the Fish or Cut Bait Society, which we boast is the most prestigious fishing club in Florida.

Using the best premium lager, he got Furtivo a little bit tipsy. Not enough to leave him unable to drive home, just enough to loosen him up enough to let Enormé join one of his R&D runs.

I hope he doesn’t get mad at Enormé for telling me what it was like:

“He put all his rods and reels on the foredeck and insisted that I keep all of mine at the stern. He didn’t want me to notice how he rigged his. I reminded him that his tournaments all have the same line and leader regulations that everybody follows, and he said ‘yeah,’ but nobody knows what knots he ties or how he trims the tag ends.

“He made me sign a non-disclosure agreement before we launched,” Enormé told me. “Then he made sure I didn’t see anything I could disclose, just in case I could be bribed.

“He turned his back to me whenever he opened his tackle bag or changed lures. He didn’t want me to know what he was using or what he was doing.”

I asked Furtivo to confirm that. He did:

“It’s true, and I gave Enormé permission to tell you. Why not? Everyone knows I’m secretive.”

That’s true too. I found out the first time I met Furtivo, maybe 10-plus years ago, at a bass tournament that he won. I asked him about his bait and he said, “plastic worms, same as everyone else.”

A little later, I saw him hiding his hands in his rain jacket (it was not raining) and then stuffing an extra long plastic worm (visibly unlike everyone else’s) into his right hip pocket.

The tail end protruded a little, as though the worm was burrowing downward and had bumped stone.

I asked to see it. Here’s a pretty close transcript of our conversation in me-he order:

Can I see that?

See what?

That worm.

What worm?

The one you just put in your pocket.

What pocket?

That pocket.

You saw that?

I did.

You didn’t.

Furtivo reached back, felt the bait’s back end against his palm and pressed it deeper into the pocket. He had the face of a guilty man.

I guess it felt foolish, because later he beckoned me behind the portable toilets and showed me the worm. It was the color of wet sand, and longer than any I used or ever saw before. Other than that, it looked ordinary.

“I have these custom made,” he said. “I design them myself.”

Then he pulled a Zoom bait zip package from another pocket and pushed the worm into it. At the time, I supposed it was just a container.

“No, that was a disguise,” Enormé Barrigón told me. “The day I fished with Furtivo, some guys at the ramp asked what bait he was using. He didn’t exactly lie. He showed them a name-brand worm package.

“One of the guys said he never catches anything on those. Furtivo smiled. He doesn’t catch anything on those either. He uses the brand’s package as a disguise to fool people.”

Polonius said: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”

I’m glad he interrupted because I don’t want you to think Furtivo is just a nut, with his reputation for excessive secrecy. His ways don’t have to make sense to us, as long as they make sense to him.

You may know other fishing-doers like Furtivo. I sure do.

Once for a shark story, I visited Capt. Mark the Shark Quartiano at his dock in Miami.

His mate was on the boat, sewing a hook to a large squid. I started to shoot a picture. The mate hit the deck, protecting the squid with his own body as if they were brothers and I were firing bullets.

Mark cried out, “No pictures!” He explained his bait rigging methods were trade secrets.

When I mentioned it later to other charter captains, they told me everybody in the offshore charter dodge knew how the Shark rigged squid. Most of them did it the same way.

Maybe he used a Duncan splice where they all used blood knots. I don’t know; he wouldn’t say.

I met boat builder Sam Gheen while roaming amok in his Titusville factory, in 2013. Nobody demanded to know who I was or what I wanted. In Miami, men at arms would have seized me.

When I found Sam, he said not to go in the paint spraying room if the door was closed, and not to take photos of his hull molds because he did certain things in certain ways that nobody was allowed to know. I didn’t ask what was so secret.

Two years ago, Headwind bought one of Sam’s boats and I went with him to Titusville. Sam was working on Headwind’s boat. When I took out my phone, he asked if I was going to take pictures. I think I know now what one of Sam’s secrets is, but I can’t tell.

When Enormé arrived at Furtivo’s garage that morning they fished together, he started putting his stuff on the gaudy, overpowered bass boat that Furtivo uses in tournaments.

Furtivo told him to put it instead on a comparatively invisible 10-horsepower john boat, dull green except for the orange and yellow registration sticker.

“I didn’t even notice this,” Enormé said.

“You’re not supposed to notice it,” Furtivo told him.

Enorme is a mariachi musician. When fishing, he likes to wear an elaborate ceremonial sombrero.

“You’ll leave that in the truck,” Furtivo said.

“Too conspicuous. I don’t want anyone knowing where I go.”

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