Welcome to spanel.com

Thursday morning, 5 a.m., Mike knocks on my camper door, “5 o’clock, ‘bro”, up and after a breakfast of milk, peaches and coffee we’re off – we have to be in Fort Bragg by 6:45. Good grief – later, I heard someone say Haley (7 YO girl and a charmer) asked “Dad, why do the fishes get up so early?” Well said; why get up so early to get yanked out of the water and suffocated in a burlap bag? The smart fishes sleep in…

On the boat we got a quick orientation from Valerie, the deckhand, a burly, buxom woman who appeared not to suffer fools lightly. The drill was, when the boat stopped, the Captain or Valerie yell “drop ’em”, you take your rod and unhook the treble hook, open the bail, chuck it out as far as you could from the boat and let the line run until it went slack, which meant the lure had reached the bottom. Close the bail, turn the reel a couple times, and you’re fishing. Lose the lure on the bottom, and you’re out $3.

On the way out to sea, Chuck and I were riding at the bow, and I told Chuck “Don’t screw up today or Valerie will kick your ass.” Which we both believed, I think.

Nice ride out to sea, cool and foggy, then it’s time to fish. Really like fishing in a barrel – drop the lure in, reel it up a little, jig it until one of four things happens:

1. The line drifts under the boat, which Captain said was a bad thing, and you reel the lure in and recast.
2. The lure gets caught on the bottom and you can’t free it; Valerie or Captain snap the line and tie on your new $3 lure and you recast.
3. Valerie or Captain yell “bring ’em up” and we motor off to a new spot.
4. You catch a fish, reel it in, unhook and determine if it’s legal to keep and if so, chuck it in your burlap bag.

As it says here, somewhat snarkily, “Using jigs where fish are not is a complete waste of time”. It seems like the main skill involved here is picking a Captain that knows where the fish are. Things went pretty well, I was catching fish fairly regularly (much to the annoyance of those who weren’t) and then I got sloppy and caught my treble lure in my burlap sack. Rather than endure the scorn of Valerie, and possibly get my ass kicked to boot – so to speak – I bent down and worked two hooks out of the sack myself, spending maybe 3-4 minutes staring at the sack instead of the horizon. Oh, oh, run to an empty spot on the the rail and baaarrrfff, repeat until volume goes to zero. Chuck, full of sympathy, says “Wow, I’ve never seen someone projectile vomit all the way off the boat, at the bow, in a headwind before!” Nice to get the recognition for a special skill.

A little subdued and queasy, I kept fishing, getting 9 keepers and throwing back 5 for being under the legal limit, illegal species or to grow up and become real fish. Not bad, the limit is 10, but now I have 9 fish to deal with. Yuck. I like my fish best filleted and wrapped in plastic. Ha.

Back at the pier, Valerie is filleting catches for everyone. I observed that this wasted a lot of fish meat and decided to keep mine whole and be part of the whole process. Live and learn.

Back at camp, it seems the operative term in seasick is “sick”, I went to bed for a couple hours.

That night I gutted a couple fish, wrapped them in foil with EVOO, salt, black pepper and grilled them until tender. They were good, but if that’s as good as fresh fish can get, then I’m not convinced it’s worth it. Off to bed, I tell Chuck I won’t be getting up early go to with them tomorrow while they dive for abalone.

In the night guilt sets in as I think about Mike, Chuck and Tom (who is a big guy to start with and fairly overweight to add to it) crammed into Mike’s small pickup, which was cozy with Mike, Chuck and I in it.

Story continues tomorrow…