I arrived back in the Bay Area from Argentina in pretty bad shape. I slowly recovered to a point where I regained some mobility. I could walk a short distance again and function in public without constant overwhelming depression. I started to fish a lot around the Bay and along the Pacific coast as far as to the Farallon Islands. I bought a small boat and started to fish a few times a week to try to break my way out of the depressive slump my chronic pain was causing. It helped a lot to keep as busy as I could.
I love to fish around the San Francisco area. There is great halibut fishing in and out of the Bay. There is salmon fishing that used to be awesome but is rapidly declining. The rockfish and Ling cod are always around during their season. My favorite of them all is when the albacore come close enough to fish for. I have had some seriously epic days on the water for albacore. I fished with Kurt on the New Salmon Queen one day and I caught 22 albacore from 25 to 40 pounds in under three hours. I was landing one every eight minutes on average. I even fished with a bare hook and still hooked up immediately that day. My arms were like jelly for days after all the mad reeling for the hard fighting albacore. I gave almost all of the tuna away to senior centers and my poor neighbors but anybody I knew that liked to eat tuna got plenty of it. None of it went to waste, that is for sure.
I had some great halibut days also. One day I caught a 42 pounder, a 36 pounder and a 29 pounder all in one short span of four hours. I fished in a halibut tournament with some of my friends on my boat and we took four of the five places including first, second, fourth, and fifth place. I fished frequently for halibut because it was a less demanding physical type of fishing and it really helped to distract me from my pain issues. I took lots of other people out fishing. I loved to take out new inexperienced people and kids and get them hooked on fishing. Fishing is a better past time than gang banging on the streets which is what some of the kids I took out were into. Some of my friends thought I was crazy to take out hardcore kids but I enjoyed doing it. One of the fishing clubs I was in regularly took a group of hardcore teens out fishing. The group that organized it and worked with the kids was called FLY. Look them up and donate some money to them if you can, they are a very good organization that really does help the kids it works with. We normally took about fourteen kids out at a time. I enjoyed watching them transform from the tough gangbanger looking punks into smiling giggling kids again when they caught some fish. Our society is doing these kids a real disservice by not allowing kids to be kids. They have to act tough and grown up at too early of an age now. They are kept in large groups of same age peers and there is so much pressure on them to be cool they can't just enjoy life and grow up peacefully like we all need to.
Owning a boat was a lot of fun and it helped me catch a lot of fish but it was just too expensive for me to keep it. I ended up selling it when fuel hit $6.50 a gallon at the marina. I returned to fishing with other boat owners or shore and pier fishing. Around the Fourth of July there are a lot of batrays in the bay and I enjoyed fishing for them. They can be over a hundred pounds. I would take kids down to the Berkeley pier to fish for them. I brought large heavy duty rods and reels with heavy duty line like 60 pound test. Using squid for bait I could get a batray on the hook usually in less than ten minutes. I had one kid that thought he was really a tough guy that I took down and set him up for big batrays. He mouthed off about how he could catch a five hundred pounder because he was such a good fisherman. He was lipping off big time. About three minutes after I threw out the squid the line started to slowly move out. I told him to set the hook and he arrogantly picked up the rod and walked back from the railing of the pier and yanked the rod tip way back. Instantly the big ass ray took off and he went flying back to the rail and the rod was pinned against the rail with line peeling out and the clicker screaming. He turned to me and yelled for help. I tried not to laugh but I just could not keep a straight face seeing his helpless expression three minutes after his bravado display about his toughness. I loosened up the drag and let the fish run until the 800 yards of line was almost gone. Then I tightened it up a bit and made him work the big batray back to the pier. There was a big crowd watching him by now and he was doing pretty good getting the line back until his arms started to cramp up about 45 minutes into the fight. I helped him so that he could rest his arms for a while. Then when it got closer I gave it back to him to bring it up so that he could see the size of it. We looked at it over the rail as about 30 to 40 people crowded to the rail for a look. Then I just cut the line so the ray could swim away. The kid was exhausted but elated. I think I got him hooked that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment