Our First Fishing Trip...Kinda

My husband Beau is a great lover of fishing. That’s cool with me, I love it myself, though my own background is limited to my years fishing with my 12-foot pull-in (no reel) bamboo pole with its dainty bobber. Don’t chuckle, I could catch about one blue gill per minute with that thing. And I also got my first job ever – a babysitting one – at 12 years old with that stylish pole. A couple walking by with their two small children saw me pulling (literally) in fish and within minutes, I had quickly taught and helped their five year-old son to yank in his very first fish. That boy was screaming for joy. The parents must have been impressed, or thankful, for I went on to babysit those two children for the next several years.

Anyway, back to the here and now. Beau being from Montana, you would think he stepped right out of A River Runs Through It, and he basically has, since he loves Montana and loves fly fishing. I think he’s still a little bit heartbroken about all his fish stuff he had to leave behind in the U.S. (he did manage to lug his fly fishing reel with him, but no pole). Since we live right on the ocean and there are also several rivers around, Beau has had a couple opportunities to accompany some locals on boats where they’ve happily caught such fish as red snapper (yummy!) and returned to fry them up for ‘fush n chups.”

Finally, finally, finally Beau went and bought his own fishing pole set, one for fishing from the shore, since of course, we don’t have our own boat as many other do around here. Actually, we’re supposed to buy two poles, but since Beau’s paycheck is still Still STILL -OH MY GOD- fucked up with the Ministry of Education, our money is very tight. I’m still an unemployed slob (though rapidly becoming one goddamnhelluva cook!), and he’s STILL being paid at level 1 despite the fact he’s been here since late July. Nonetheless, I twisted his arm to go ahead and finally buy it, despite his constant state of financial nervosa. There aren’t a lot of things to do around here besides walk on the beach and get in your car and drive somewhere else. But fishing is one of them, and since I am in my own constant state of Is-Beau-too-unhappy?-nervosa, I thought we absolutely had to get at least one pole, and I twisted his arm to just suck up and spend the money.

So, of course, we had to travel to ‘town,’ to get a pole where there is a decent sports shop that has these package deals. Beau bought a modest pole of a modest price along with a modest supply of extra hooks, weights, etc. The salesman taught us how to put the thing together (the three parts of the pole when assembled must be about 15 feet in length), and I tried to force myself to pay hawk-like attention as he threaded the thing and attached all the thingie-ma-jimmies to it. I know though that if a gun was held to my head, I’d probably be a dead woman before I could figure out how to put that thing together from pole to hook. Beau gave that manly “yeah yeah yeah” gruff nod here and there to show his testerone-given innate understanding. I was suspicious, but we’ll see.

Later on that day, as the sun was sinking on the sea’s horizon, Beau decided now was a good time to get out there and give the pole a try. So, we dressed warmly (once the sun goes down here, the temperature drops about 15 degrees), and I packed several things in a backpack that I thought would be necessary, like…um, a flashlight and a book *cough*. I left all the fishing stuff to Beau and just packed the squid bait, and then we were off.

We asked each other where the best place to fish from our beach was. The tide was extremely low and the multitude of lava rocks were visible and bare far out into the water. Finally, we thought, the best way to get the line out to the deeper part of the ocean, was to walk out across the rocks as far as we possibly could to get out to the deeper parts of water. The tide was lower than I’d ever seen it, and it was obvious we could walk very far out into the ocean across them. So, as it started to get slightly darker, we continued the hike across the rocks, which is always somewhat aerobic through the changing shapes, height, and surfaces of the rocks, as well as the occasionally mini-chasm to leap across. Keeping our eyes glued to the rocky…rocks, we picked our way quite aways out and Beau brought forward the pole. I was taking the opportunity to do what I always do, take photos. Sunset, rocks, Beau with pole, more rocks, more sunset, more Beau with pole.

Now the moment had come! Beau had the pole ready, and a small amount of bait on the hook. He leaned back slightly and cast. Whoooooosh. Beau exclaimed with delight at just how far the line sailed through the air. What a proud moment.

The hook and line finally fell and landed….into a nest of lava rocks. One quick tug by Beau and his face immediately clouded over. Uh oh. Now with a look of slight embarrassment, Beau began reeling in and tugging harder on the pole. The top of the pole curved dramatically into its own rendition of a giant fish hook. This tugging, letting out line, reeling it, 'tugging to tha left, tugging to tha right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight' continued for some time. Beau’s face was grim, “I’m going to have to cut the line.”

“Oh,” I said, “What a bummer. Where’s the other hooks?”

“Um.”

“Um?”

“I forgot them,” Beau mumbled.

I bit my lip to keep from exploding in laughter. “Oh well, here, let me try.” I made a few attempts at dislodging the hook from the rocks, but it was pretty clear that that that puppy wasn't moving. I turned around and looked toward home, which really wasn’t that far away, but now it was getting dark, and we realized our next mistake, in what was becoming a real series of them. Crawling across uneven lava rock in the light of day is challenging enough. Now we were supposed to pick our way back in the dim light, retrieve the new hooks, and then come back when it was surely to be well into darkness?

Okay, so here we are, our brand new fishing pole hooked upon a giant rock, standing far out into the ocean, ourselves perched on a rock, it’s getting dark and cold, and we have no more hooks. Our entire fishing experience had lasted about 30 seconds. Yipee. Well, unless you want to count the 15 minutes it took us to walk from our house out onto the distant rocks.

Well, I guess we’ll just have to try another day. This story is to be continued. Better luck next time. Cliché cliché ad nauseum.