Reeling In Time with Fish Tales. Brian E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ I took my thumb off the spool and let the rig plummet down to the water. When the rig hit the water a snarl of fishing line billowed out of my reel.

      “Put your thumb on it, put your thumb on it, Brian!” yelled Mr. Sullivan. I was a statue when a big thumb pressed against the spool, stopping the accident from getting any worse. I felt so stupid.

      “Reel this one up and then we’ll work out this bird’s nest” Mr. Sullivan said, gruffly. His rod had two fish on it when he handed it to me. I reeled them up but didn’t feel too good about it. I took off the two croakers and put them in the cooler before walking over to Mr. Sullivan. He was picking and pulling on the fishing line. In a few long minutes, he had the line smoothed out.

      “Remember you have to keep light pressure on the spool with your thumb so you won’t get a bird’s nest.” He warned me.

      “Thanks for the help, Mr. Sullivan,” I quietly said. I looked over at Gilbert and Johnny and they were gesturing me the silent monkey dance. I felt like a dumb monkey.

      My rig still had the shrimp on the hooks, so I stepped back up on the cooler and cautiously lowered my rig into the ocean. A salty gust of air climbed in my face as I watched the rig go in the water. As soon I felt it hit the bottom, I put my right hand on the handle. As soon as I did that, I could feel the fish popping the bait. I set the hook and speed-reeled the fish all the way to the tip of the rod and flung them over the banister onto the pier. I laid the rod down on the deck and squatted over the flopping fish, getting them off the hooks and in the cooler.

      My bait was gone, so I went for another shrimp when I heard, “Use the squid, it will last longer.” Those words came from Mr. Sullivan who had been watching me the entire time.

      Gilbert and Johnny laid a gob of squid on the bench end and put a small wet towel over the bait strips. I wondered why they put the bait where we might end up sitting on it so I asked Johnny.

      “Mr. Sullivan told us to put it there because if we left it on the cutting board or up on the banister, the sea gulls would carry it off and eat it,” Johnny said. I looked around the pier and saw dozens of sea gulls perched up around the sinks, trashcans, and those fishing. They were sitting, waiting for a fast food opportunity. The sky had eyes. The wet towel was to keep the food hidden, as well as to keep the sun from baking it dry, I guessed; I learned.

      I took two strips and pinned them on my hooks. Mr. Sullivan was steady putting fish in the box while Gilbert and Johnny were just getting started. Up on the cooler I went and down went my bottom rig. Again, when the bait hit the bottom, two croakers instantly picked it up. It went on like that for an hour. Gilbert and Johnny tried to go to the other side of the pier, but Mr. Sullivan called them back.

      “Why can’t we fish on the other side, Mr. Sullivan?” Johnny asked.

      “Son, the tide has just started coming in.”

      “So,” quipped Johnny.

      “On the other side your bait will get washed up under the pier and get hung up.”

      I thought, Things aren’t as random as they first seemed.

      For that hour, we were all picking up fish as fast as we could get the bait to the bottom. I’d never experienced fishing like that. It didn’t even feel like fishing. If you had enough skill to get bait to the bottom, without making a mess, you could always catch a fish. I found myself totally in the moment. The heat was gone. There was no wind. There were no odors. I was entirely alone amongst many. The bounty of fish had reduced my world to the tiny area between the banister and the fish cooler on a big pier propped out over an endless ocean. Once Mr. Sullivan asked us to pull the bait out of the fish box and put it in the food cooler, shifting the ice blocks over on top of the fish. We had to shift the ice blocks on top of the fish a second time, before the action began to trickle off and it stopped all together.

      “Boys, let me see your fishing poles,” said Mr. Sullivan. He had already gotten his gear ready to travel. He took Gilbert’s first, pushed the clicker button forward, slipped the bottom hook over the top bar on the reel, and wound the fishing line tight. It made several loud clicks before snugging up. After tightening each pole, he picked up the five-gallon bucket and headed down the pier. “Ya’ll get the coolers and find me about half-way down the pier,” he said, walking off.

      We three boys stood in silence, looking at one another before Johnny looked into the fish cooler and said, “This ain’t cool.”

      The fish cooler lacked but few inches from the top of being full. The fish weren’t big, but it doesn’t take long when four people are putting fish in the box at a quick and steady pace.

      “Now what?” Johnny asked exasperated.

      “Pull the plug on the cooler and let’s drain the water off,” Gilbert said. He had been here before. About a gallon and a half of water and slime fell between the slits in the pier before becoming slow drips. Gilbert put the plug back in the cooler. Then he opened both coolers up and began to put some blocks of ice in the food cooler to reduce weight from the fish box.

      “We need to get rid of this tea and let’s eat the sandwiches, too,” I suggested.

      We took a minute to wash up in the sink before eating the sandwiches and tea.

      “Man, these sandwiches are all mashed up,” Johnny exclaimed, pulling them out of the bread bag. He was right, for the blocks of ice slid around in the cooler and pressed the sandwiches into some unique shapes, none of which resembled a sandwich. We ate three modern art, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and passed the tea jug around until Johnny noticed a string of PBJ awash in the tea jug. Each of us blamed the other for the backwash. We dumped the rest of the tea between the slits in the pier boards, and the jug was tossed in the closest trashcan.

      “We better hurry up and get down the pier, my dad will be waiting,” Gilbert blurted out.

      “We ain’t going to be hurrying nowhere,” I responded. We put Johnny in the middle of the cooler train and started down the pier. Making it less than ten feet, a gravity storm hit the fish box, sucking it down to the pier.

      “Maybe three of us can carry the fish box and come back for the food cooler,” Gilbert suggested.

      “Where is the third guy going to grab the cooler?” I asked.

      “Hey, kids!” a man’s voice came from the other side of the pier. In retrospect, the voice may have come from above. “You can use my pier cart to haul those coolers down the pier if you promise to bring it back,” said a middle-aged man we had never seen before.

      A collective “Thanks, mister!” came from us. He emptied his stuff out of the pier cart onto a bench. The pier cart was a forever-borrowed rusty shopping cart with six short sections of galvanized pipe sized and staggered so the top of the pipes were always at the height of the basket top. The man helped us lift and position the big cooler across the cart toward the rear and the small cooler on the front of the basket. He loaned us a piece of quarter-inch line to tie down the coolers. Working together, we formed a web with the line by running the line through the basket and over the coolers so they couldn’t move, much, forward, back, or side to side. It was a godsend! I told him it was easier to fish on the other side of the pier where the tide wouldn’t wash his bait under the pier.

      He smiled, and said, “Thanks.” We rattled our way down the pier smiling at folks like young men driving a snazzy car.

      We found Mr. Sullivan a bit more than halfway СКАЧАТЬ