HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
By Brian Barbeito May 7, 2007 I awoke, and met the morning sun. I dug for a few worms; they were small and lacking, so I got in the blue Buick and drove to a corner where, in a shed, a little man with no teeth sold worms and corn. I told him I didn’t want any corn, but that I needed two-dozen worms. After giving him the money, he took a Styrofoam container from a cooler. I got back in the Le Sabre. There was nobody around at the shore wall, and I sat in a chair that was supposed to have gone to chair heaven a long time before. I felt the warmth of the sun as it gained more power. I was wearing a cotton button-up shirt, and army shorts.
I cut a third off the first worm and slid it onto the hook. It was fat and juicy, and I thought that the perch and sunfish from the lagoon would come to the smell right away. They did, and I couldn’t catch and release fast enough. Then the catfish started biting, and I was more careful unhooking them. Birds watched me. It was about an hour later that the rod pulled down with a weight that was more serious than a small pan fish. I struggled a bit as I began to pull and reel, pull and reel. Soon a giant fish jumped out of the water, and off the hook. For the next hours I waited for the fish to bite again. She was in the area. We’d met, and surely she did not like me, but I hoped she would try again. In those hours there were many pan fish. There was
more sun, and it was hot, proud, and willful, now glaring in my eyes. I put on dark glasses. In the afternoon, I ate the two sandwiches I had fixed, and then drank two bottles of beer. As I looked around and took stock of the lagoon, things seemed quieter than usual. At about four o’clock, I had become discouraged. The other fish were a bother. I had seen the belly of the giant fish, when she had jumped and thrown the hook. I had guessed at her weight and age. Then it happened, and though it was fast, it was as if in slow motion. The line went down. I pulled up with my wrists and arms in one movement. She was hooked, but the give on the line, though set strongly, began to pull out, and she was able to swim downwards for a time. The moment I had waited for was upon me, but
I felt severely anxious, because when the fish had taken the hook, in that slow motion moment, I had known that it was stronger and angrier than any fish I had dealt with. After a while, I was set to begin to reel again. Down and reel. Down and reel. Down and reel. I was able, finally, to bring the giant fish up and over the shore wall. I quickly realized that it was not a fish.
------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
