I went to Westport Tuesday with my father and brother to go fishing to celebrate both my birthday and my father’s birthday. Of course it was my father’s idea because, you know, I don’t like killing things. We stayed in a small motel with paper-thin walls that was within walking distance of everything in town. At dinner time we walked to a restaurant that overlooked the marina and the boats that called it home. After dinner my brother and I walked to the rocky ocean side to watch the sun set and the tide rise. We watched the scene in front of us for awhile then decided to walk back to the motel when it got too breezy for our lack of coats. We tried to go to sleep early because we had to wake up at 4:45 the next morning; that proved to be harder than it should have because our neighbor fell asleep with his TV volume all the way up.
The next morning we arose to cold fog and the feeling of not having a good night sleep. We packed our lunches, downed our Dramamine and coffee, and headed for the docks. The boat that we were going to be fishing on was captained by a guy named Robbie, who happened to be the deckhand of the first boat I fished off of three years ago. Part of me thinks we were on this boat because my father has this silly idea in his head that Robbie liked me three years ago and if we went on his boat something would happen between us… who knows. Anyways, we settled on the boat with my father’s friends and a few other people and set off for the great open sea. The guys got sauced up as the boat headed out to the open sea; I downed some more coffee and watched the waves pass us by.
We traveled for about an hour to the first fishing spot, picked our places on the boat to fish, and let down the lines. Not long after the yells of “fish on” could be heard every so often, the deckhand Alex was running around checking to see how everyone was doing and pulling fish up when they were caught. When he had nothing to do he chatted with people and untangled my line because I didn’t pay enough attention to what I was doing. My father was one of the first people to catch a keepable fish and not soon after I hooked one. It was pretty big and when Robbie got in on the boat for me he said “why don’t you act a little more excited?” I looked down at the fish flopping around on the deck and said in a somewhat somber voice, “Well the thing is, I don’t like killing things.” He looked a bit unimpressed and then said “Well, you’ll want to turn around for this then.” He picked up a little mallet and swung it at the fish’s head. I turned around and when he was finished he asked me what number I was. I threw the peace sign up in the air “Two?” “Yeah, I’m number two.”
Not long passed before I caught another fish, this time around it was a wild one; those have to be released back into the ocean because their population is dwindling. Alex helped me with this one, he looked at it and said it was wild and then just cut the line. “Wait, you’re just going to leave the hook in its lip?” “It’s better to let the hook rust out than for us to pull it out.” “Really? Poor guy.” I got another unenthused look sent my way. I took a break from fishing and spaced out at the front of the boat with my line still in the water. I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures of what was going on around me when the guy to the right of me said “Did you hear that?” “What?” “It sounded like a whale coming up for a breath.” I immediately pointed my camera towards the foggy ocean in front of me hoping the whale would come back up to breathe. Robbie walked by and jokingly said “Whale watching will cost you twenty dollars.” Lucky enough for me the whale came back up for a brief second and I got a snap shot of the hump on its back. Minutes later my brother said “Erika, pay attention to your line, you have a bite.” I pulled up my line and sure enough I had one hooked. Robbie came up asking if I had another one, “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure it’s wild, they have the extra fin on the back right?” “You know you’re in a wild area when the people on the boat can tell what’s wild.” I had to be a smarty pants and say “That and I took environmental science. Well, I’m pretty sure its wild, I could be wrong though.” He looked down in the water and saw the second fin “You’re right, it is wild.” He pulled up my line and instead of just cutting the line and leaving the hook stuck in its lip he popped the hook out and dropped the fish back in the water. For some reason that made me feel less bad about fishing.
To shorten the story, because I’ve been rambling a bit, the boat got filled with the amount of fish it could catch, a few people got sea sick, my dad and his friends continued to sauce it up, and I’m pretty sure this old dude smoked a bowl in the bathroom. Pulling into the marina we passed by a sign that said “PLEASE TIP YOUR DECKHAND” and Robbie said something about how hard Alex worked. We finally docked around 1pm, the fog had lifted and the sun was shining. The salmon got gutted and cleaned by Alex and divvied out by him and Robbie. We said our thank yous and our goodbyes; I set off to walk around and snap a few pictures while my dad and brother got the fish filleted at the local seafood market. When they were finished we headed for home and I was left feeling happier about this trip than the first.
