I said…
“No, thanks, but can I have a vodka tonic instead?”
Okay. I didn’t say that, but the thought of drinking at beer at 6am was not appealing at all. Just then, I was wishing I had the guy, the one we almost left, behind bring me a keg ‘o coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. So, what really transpired was…
“No, thanks.”
“What?!”
“I just can’t drink a beer at 6am, Dave.”
He said “Okay,” shook his head, and then walked off like I had just refused a date to go to the Academy Awards with George Clooney. Ten minutes later, about ten people had passed me, all with beers in their hands. I didn’t miss Southern Comfort Sours at 8pm on a Saturday night training, because I got that training in college; however, somehow, I missed the beers at 6am on a Saturday morning while fishing training.
No matter how much I tried to think about drinking a beer, I still wanted coffee. I tried to think about beer in the context of breakfast; however, it seemed there was just no way I could make beer a breakfast item. Even if you served it with a piece of toast to this lass, put it in a juice glass, or served it over Cheerios while showing me your ass, I’d have to pass; me and Dr. Seuss, well, we’d “Just say no!”
After two hours, the boat finally stopped. Amrit, Jasjit, and I stood by our poles. The ship hands (okay, that sounds very “pirate”, but I don’t know the PC name for them) dropped containers of bait along the boat railing every few feet.
I have a bait phobia in addition to a black socks with sneakers phobia. My bait phobia goes back to when I first started fishing with Quinn; my black sock with sneakers phobia goes back to when I first started working with engineers. Anyway, I could never ever bait my hook with those icky night crawlers. Quinn always did it for me; yes, sometimes I’m helpless when it concerns some things, and I’m proud of it.
Anyway, I had mentioned to Amrit that I didn’t want to bait my hook; however, I had forgotten that in deep sea fishing, you didn’t use icky night crawlers. You use icky clams. I peered into the plastic bucket at the gelatinous little creatures that I thought I liked to eat occasionally.
These weren’t really the creatures I was used to eating; these were clams on steroids crossed with scallops and maybe even with one of those creatures that lives 20,000 leagues under the sea. I took a second look. I thought if I could pick up cat turds (which got stuck on fluffy pants and ended up on the floor occasionally instead of in the cat box), coughed up furballs, Nathan’s petrified socks, and food items that Iz had left half-eaten in her lunch box over a weekend, I could pick up one of these!
I reached into the bucket and pulled one out. It was very long, pale, and goo dripped off of it as I held it. At any minute, I thought it might sprout claws, climb into my mouth, and begin to reproduce itself. Yes, someone was totally freaked out by Alien.
After ten seconds, it still dangled from my fingertips with no threat of bodily infiltration. I said, “I can do this!” I grabbed my hook and wrapped the clam around it several times; I had it all going on.
I was feeling so clam cocky that I offered to bait Jasjit’s hook for him. Like Amrit, he had never gone deep sea fishing before. Of course, this was my second time, so I was pretty much an expert, and I noted to myself that I should pitch my copy of “Deep Sea Fishing for Dummies” when I arrived home.
We all took our rods in hand, and the ship hands gave us a 30-second deep sea fishing tutorial. Click this, let your line drop to the bottom, click that, and then wait for a tug. Really, it was that simple.
Of course, when the line hit the bottom, you could feel it. There was a definite “thud” that said “Ding! Two hundred and fifty feet. Ladies lingerie!” To me, it often seemed I had a bite, though because I knew the boat drifted, I tended to think my line was snagged on a plant, a sunken ship, or Jimmy Hoffa’s cement life jacket.
I pulled my line up several times thinking “Fish!” I was always disappointed when I only saw my gelatinous little friend, the clam. We had a love/hate relationship, because he was the friend who might catch me a fish or the friend who might replicate himself in my warm body before the trip was over.
When no one seemed to be catching any fish, we had to reel our lines in. The Captain announced, “Bring your lines up,” and we moved to another location. When we stopped again, we were told to bait our hooks again, because apparently the fish could tell if it was your bait was "used." I envisioned the fish swimming by the hook, sniffing the bait, and then saying, “Oh, that’s so last cast bait!” as if my gelatinous little sea creature were a 2009 Gucci dress.
It seemed that our side of the boat was always in the sun. At one point, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and thought this fishing thing was for the seagulls. I’d rather bike 50 miles and eat those gelatinous little sea creatures than stand here, wait, and sweat.
Bored out of my mind, I asked one of the ship hands how you could differentiate a bite from your hook and lure dragging on the bottom of the ocean. He took my rod, tugged on it, and then said, “Hold this.” He moved my rod up and down and then said, “This is how the bottom feels. It will feel heavier when you have a fish.”
Satisfied, I said, “Okay, thanks.” I tugged on my line; I felt nothing. A few minutes later, I tugged on my line; it felt different.
I began to bring up my line, hoping that I would not be facing the gelatinous little sea creature once again. I cranked the reel, I cranked it some more, and do you know how much work it is to get that sucker up from two hundred and fifty feet? I was sweating and hoping that I didn’t have a VW bug or Jimmy Hoffa on my line.
One of the ship hands saw that I might have something or was in labor (the physical reaction was pretty much the same), so he stood next to me. He said, “Keep reeling,” and I said, “Jeez. This is tough.” He took the rod from me and said, “I’ll do some for you.”
He then passed the rod back to me. I began to wind the reel furiously. As we looked over the side of the boat, he said…
Tune in to tomorrow’s blog.
Same fish time.
Same fish channel.
♥
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