I caught my first fish when I was about 7. It was as small as I was. We were on a vacation—probably driving up to Seattle from Los Angeles, and we stopped at a lake. I think it may have been Crater Lake. For some reason unbeknownst to me now, we kept the little fellow and took it to our motel room in a milk carton. I do believe it was flushed while I slept.
I remember fishing on a Girl Scout trip to Big Bear. We were out on the lake in a dinghy and one of the advisors told me to spit on the hook. It didn’t work. But a few hours later I developed a 104-degree fever and slept out the rest of the trip in the adults’ room on a canvas cot.
One summer at Manhattan Beach when I was an early teen, unable to surf and consigned to a blowup mattress, which wasn’t cool, I went out to the end of the pier and bought a drop line for 99 cents—but with the tax it was just over a dollar. I only had a dollar and the man fronted me the extra two pennies. I gathered barnacles from the bottom of the pier for bait and, predictably, caught nothing.
On another occasion, when I was a graduate student in Scotland, my friend and I went on a trip with the “Hill Walking Club” from Strathclyde University. We took the ferry over to the Isle of Arran and it poured. We walked several miles to the campsite in the dark…and it poured. We set up our tent, which was lit by the phosphorous of the smoked kippered herring we had brought for breakfast. And, to paraphrase, ‘the rain it raineth.’
The plan of this overly ardent club was to climb Goat Fell in the morning. In the rain. I thought, no. This is just not fun. And not for a girl from LA. When it rains we light a fire and drink hot chocolate. With marshmallows.
So on the wet morning of the proposed hike, I bailed, took my backpack and walked alone into Brodick to await the ferry to Ardrossan and the train back to Glasgow. The wait would be several hours and I bought a drop line, plucked mussels from the rocks for bait and went to the end of the ferry landing. And caught nothing.
What I would have done with a fish I have no idea. I hate trying to get the hook out of a wriggling fish. Add that to the fact that—to this day-- I’ve never gutted a fish and I would going to on public transport with a fish and nothing to carry it in. Not a wise idea. But I did meet a handsome young man on the train who asked me out. We were to meet the following Saturday in George Square. He stood me up.
When we lived in Seattle I bought a rod, reel and salmon eggs and tried to fish in raging rivers, off Edmonds pier and out of my sea kayak. None of these attempts were successful ventures. But I enjoyed it, nevertheless.
Fate brought us to a summer of teaching in American Samoa; living next to the beach in Pago Pago. To keep my almost four year old entertained, we went fishing off the rocks near our hotel room. He caught a tiny fish. We threw it back into the polluted waters of the bay where it could live amongst the plastic carrier bags that floated like multicolored jellyfish.
When I lived for a cold and wintry year in Stockholm, a friend introduced me to Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream. The notion of drinking rum and coconut and fighting with marlin off the back of a boat named PILAR seemed unbelievably attractive. So on our first trip to Kona, on the Big Island of Hawai’i, my husband watched our son while I ventured out on a deep-sea fishing charter. Hemingway was posthumously fueling my passion. No one on the boat caught a thing except sunburn.
When my son was around 8 years old, and we were living in Kailua, I needed something to keep him busy during school breaks. I bought two cheapo fishing poles at the oddly named Holiday Mart and drove him to a Heeia pier. I taught him how to bait the hook, cast, and deal with the disappointment of not catching anything.
A few years later, now living in Honolulu, I took my son to the harbor off Ala Moana and joined a charter for an early morning deep sea fishing trip. Again we caught nothing, but the captain brought my son up to the helm and let him steer the boat back into Honolulu. And we did see a basking shark.
On another occasion my son and I went out on a charter from the same harbor. The seas were very rough. We could see the whitecaps from our house. It was the only time the captain chose to go around Diamond Head and not in the other direction towards Barbers Point. All the passengers were puking their guts out. But not us; we had Australian candied ginger as our secret weapon. This intestinal upset was a good thing because it significantly raised the odds of us catching something as the poles are divvied up. With three of the six onboard curled in the fetal position, our chances were elevated. I honestly don’t remember if we caught something or not. Most likely not, if I don’t remember it. The surreal thing was that one of the pukers was a former student from the Lab School with very bad eczema.
Lest this sound like a tale of fishing woe, things started to change. One year my birthday aligned with a school holiday and I convinced my husband to go deep-sea fishing with me. We got up at 5 and each ate a bowl of saimin because my dad always said never go out to sea on an empty stomach—something he’d been told by Italian—or perhaps Portuguese—fishermen. Rather ironic from someone from Arizona.
As the boat was clearing the harbor and the lines put in, we all drew cards as to which pole would be “ours.” Within seconds, my pole got a major hit. The sunrise was lightening the sky and I couldn’t have been happier. I had a mahi on the line and despite all the movies I seen of people struggling for hours with a fish, I pretty much knew I didn’t have the strength. The fish was brought aboard just as the sky lit up to its fullest extent. A mahi mahi is a beautifully colored fish in the water, but once it dies, the color fades. I felt a bit sad. But I guess we all fade when we die. We had enough fish to share with the neighbors.
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