As we know, I’m not much of a sportsman. When I was in the dating world a couple years ago I always marveled at all these photos of obviously very outdoorsy women holding up the day’s catch, posing with a big marlin or out on a boat with a fish on. I always knew they could never be the woman for me.
That is a good thing – it got easier and easier to edit the possibilities – holding small dog or have more photos of dogs than you – DELETE. Tons of travel photos and only one of you – DELETE. Holding fish – DELETE.
My own first foray into fishing should have been an indication of how I felt about the “sport.” My family went fishing out of Depoe Bay in Oregon. I can still remember lying in the cabin of the boat, about six years old, heaving my guts out for the entire trip. My mother was next to me, well, sort of. Only half of her was really in the boat. The other half was hanging out the side door of the cabin. My father had hold of her legs. I asked my dad what mom was doing and he said nonchalantly, “Fishing, son.”
I always thought that was an odd way to catch a fish. The only other fishing I did as a kid was at the Springbrook Trout Farm in Renton. If you grew up in the 60s, you remember these places. They would stock a big pond with tons of fish and then not feed them. When you dropped your line into the water with the bait, a dozen fish would glom onto the line at once, any one of them begging to be the lucky one to be dragged ashore and beaten over the head, just so they didn’t have to starve another day.
I alwyas caught a lot of trout there. I didn’t know the whole thing was rigged. I was a little kid and just thought I was one helluva fisherman.
I found out many years later that I wasn’t. My girlfriend at the time, Cathy, loved to be one of the boys. Each year her father and a couple of his good buddies would drive all the way to Neah Bay to go fishing for Kings and Chinook. We’re not talking in the straights. No, this is a man’s sport. We were heading out to the open ocean.
To get there, you had to traverse the cut by Tatoosh Island. It was always inhospitable to small craft, including our tiny fishing boat. I clung to the back seat for dear life, hoping I wouldn’t die. I didn’t. But after eight hours in 12 foot swells on the open ocean, I wish I had.
It didn’t seem to matter what I did. If I ate I chummed fish all day. If I didn’t eat, I chummed, but the fish got cheated out of anything useful. If I took seasick pills or put on the patch, I felt like a zombie. This was better, largely because I didn’t really care if there was a fish on or not. The whole damned boat probably could have sunk and I would be too zoned to notice.
The first day, of course, I was down below in my usual fishing position. And damned if I didn’t get a fish on the line. “Fish on” went the call. I didn’t move. “Robb, fish on.” I remember distinctly what I said in reply, “I don’t care about now Fiissshhhh (yes, while hurling).” Someone else caught my fish for me.
Why? Not because of some mystical sportsman’s code. It’s because there was a limit. I was a warm body that could bring in two fish that day. It didn’t matter if I caught them or anyone else on the boat did. I just had to be conscious enough at the dock to nod my head when the game warden asked if they were mine.
Fishing wouldn’t have been so bad if there was beer. I know for a fact that fishing and golf are always better with beer. But Neah Bay is a dry town. Native Americans live there and they don’t seem to drink. Or if they did, it wasn’t in their dry town. So, no beer and worse, no tavern.
It wouldn’t have mattered, mind you, if the tavern had beer. It served a far more important purpose – bragging rights. What is the point of catching a big honking fish if you can’t tell a “And it was this big!” story in the bar.
I had one of those stories. The very next day, I was actually up on the deck, finding out that that was far better than being down below. The fresh air and and an eye on the horizon was supposed to be good for seasickness. So I felt a lot better.
Suddenly, the line started zipping off the reel. I had a fish. A real fish. And I wasn’t in a chumming mode. I grabbed the reel and started playing with the tension so the line wouldn’t snap. OK, I confess. I still don’t know what that means. I had just watched the other guys and did a cheap imitation of it. I set the hook with a big pull and then began the fight.
The fish didn’t fight much. Even a dogfish put up a bigger fight. It was really strange because I could see the salmon breaking to the surface now and then. It was a good size, but it wasn’t fighting for its life.
And then I found out why. Somehow, I had lassoed my first salmon. When it hit the line, it must have spun around and the fishing line had looped around its tail. I wasn’t fighting a fish, I was drowning it. The poor thing was being dragged backwards, filling its gills with water. Finally, I had reeled in enough line to get the fish in the net. He was already dead. Well, borrowing a diagnosis from Miracle Max in the Princess Bride he was just mostly dead which meant he was still partly alive. A quick thump on the skull with a billy club solved that problem.
I haven’t been fishing since. Sure, you could say it’s because I always got seasick and found it boring as snot bobbing around like a cork for eight hours in the open sea, but that’s really not the reason. No, I just figure that being a fish roper took far more skill that fish catching. I didn’t think it was fair to the other fishermen to have a skilled fish roper out there with them when they had to rely on amateurish hooks to catch fish. How primitive.
Out on the Treasure Coast, living across the beach but getting my fish from Lake Safeway and Lake Publix the days,
– Robb