My fishing trip
This story is five months old, but it's a warm story. On a day like today, when 35 degree temps are a respite from the 16 degrees of last week, warm stories are what we need.
The ocean inlets of Maine are warm on Labor Day. A month later is a different story, but the sun sticks around enough to reach September.
The only time the temperature drops on one of these days is when you open up the boat's engine and the wind makes the air like your cold drink. When you drop the anchor, you wait a few minutes and the warm returns.
Waiting is no promise of fish, of course. Your stopping doesn't streak them away, but you bring lure for a reason. If you're fishing for the first time in 20 years, you need all the help you can get. You wait and prepare not to screw up.
When the line starts flying off a rod on the stern, the prep has its shot. Your girlfriend's dad calls out this one for you, and he hands you the rod — a beloved one, catcher of fish around the hemisphere — line running all the way. It's flying off the pole, bending TV-style, and by God you're going to hold onto that rod and not drop it in the ocean and you're going to set your feet like subway surfing on the chair-less deck and not fall down or into the ocean. The line still runs, and your girlfriend's dad wonders if it's the seal you all saw earlier.
The line stops. You reel a little in. The seal pops to the surface of the water, 40 feet off the boat. The seal dives and the line takes off.
Now. You're instantly in a recovery mission. You're at one end of the line and a living, breathing seal is flying away with the other end, and you're only going to get back what you can reel in, and you're not going to reel in the seal. You've had your fun and the line is enough, but first a little more fun. Your girlfriend takes pictures with the cell cam, and her dad hauls up the anchor, fires the motor and takes off in the direction of the line. You stand up! You hold onto the rod, bending, chasing the seal! You reel as much as you can and you don't fall down or into the ocean, both hands on the rod except for a brief hat tug to not lose that either, a danger until half a minute later when your girlfriend's dad roars to a stop and take his pocketknife to the line, saving enough, and letting the seal swim away, the chase over.
You catch your breath. The seal has a bait mackerel in the belly and a hook in the mouth, but the metal's one of the new alloys that rusts and falls out harmlessly soon enough. When a coast ranger happens by in a bit, he's not worried either. You get back to your cold drink on a warm sea day. The seal pops up nearby, now and then, to take another look at the boat. A draw leaves everyone wanting more.
January 8th, 2008 at 8:55 AM
As a follow-up: Dad DID, to his credit, resist buying a stuffed animal seal for Pat for Christmas, opting instead for a nice bottle of wine.