Fisherman's Tale

Early Sunday morning, and I’m gazing out the window.   The tide’s coming in, but no boats are about.  Delivery trucks drive off across the inlet, food for the guests replenished.  A few clouds are rolling in as predicted, the weatherman was right.  Couples are walking under the early day’s sunshine.   Once the sun’s as high as the clouds, a dimmer light will filter through them, or not, if the day clears. 

No birds are feeding.  Have the fish all been eaten, or left for safer waters when the tide went out?  Maybe they’ve learned to hide wherever birds do not expect them.  It cannot be beneath the bridge, the birds always have a pelican posted there on alert.  At low tide it cannot be amid the reeds and such in the marsh, the water’s left them for a time.  Maybe Sunday is the birds’ brunch, holding off on breakfast in favor of a brunch feast as the tide brings back the fish.  

Ah, but this is the day I am slated to become a gatherer of fish myself.  I have an appointment with an experienced fisherman (I can't say a serious one, but...).  In the span of a few short hours, I will go from a man with a retirement gift of a fishing rod sitting in the downstairs closet to a man hooking worms on 8 lb. monofilament.  One throwing the bait out into the brackish water of the inlet that ebbs and flows out his back window. 

Even as I approach the water’s edge with my baited hook and a small orange and white bobber, suddenly at least a half-dozen fish begin leaping out of the water along the shore.   Wait ‘til they see this delicious worm, I thought.   They will soon be jumping on the end of my spinning rod, fighting for their lives.  

Not so fast there, Jim, as it happens, they are having too much fun to notice any old worm being waved in front of their eyes.  Cancel that reservation for extra freezer space to store all those fish; don’t worry about the photo-ops just yet.  These neighbors of yours are not interested in the “fun” you are offering them.  These fish, who jump out of the water—two or three feet in the air—aren’t the kind of fish to go looking for some sorry earthworm.  They are reaching for the sun. 

Ah well, I haven’t yet learned how to clean a fish, and don’t have a filleting knife yet anyway.  I was only hoping to be a “catch and release” guy.  After proving my mastery by catching the fish that foolishly tries to grab the worm I dangle before him, I would graciously remove the hook from his mouth and return him to the inlet’s waters.     

So my thirty-minute interlude as a duly licensed fisherman produces no catch, no release, just a few casts, a hook that gets stuck on a log near the waters edge, and a long walk home.