My descent into the water didn’t look nearly as cool.
It turns out that Jeff loves fishing. This is good news for me, since it means dinner on the table. It also means that I get our cozy cabin to myself for hours at a time while he contemplates the universe, hook dangling, leaning up against our backstay, rain or shine, sometimes pulling in an edible creature (if Neptune is feeling generous).
At Ensenada Grande on Isla Partida Jeff went snorkeling with our new friends Max and Brad from SV Into the Mystic while I put Serenity back to right, thinking that our boat was good and fixed and that everything would stay put and stay clean, gosh darnit! Jeff came back shivering cold, the majority of fingers on his left hand, all but his pinky, white as a ghost that had just seen a ghost. He regaled me with stories of fish, many fish, big fish, colorful fish, edible fish, inhabiting deep cracks and crevices that have been worn away by water, salt and fresh. Jeff described it as an apartment complex full of fish.
“I bet if I just dangled a hook in front of any one of them [the cracks and crevices] we’d have a fish in no time.” According to Jeff it was a gimme. For the fish it would essentially be akin to room service…with a lethal twist.
I’m not as enthused about fishing as Jeff is. What I remember about fishing as a child was that I got to eat as much candy as I wanted (ring pops on every finger ladies) and my uncles let me hold the rod during the most exciting parts. I also really liked gutting the fishes for some reason (I’m a very tactile person) and of course I liked eating the fresh Walleye and Northern Pike. There exists a picture somewhere of me in a nightgown that reads “Spoiled Rotten,” while gutting a fish. My brothers and I would fish for Crappie and Sun Fish when we were up North (Minnesota, in case you were wondering). The latter fishing adventures were more about torturing leeches (the live bait we caught by dangling our bare legs in the water) than they were about catching edible fish.
Though he couldn’t promise candy, I enjoy indulging in Jeff’s interests and we hatched a plan to do some nighttime fishing. Jeff readied the tackle box while I packed the goodies that would tide us over until dinner – cheese, crackers, apples, tequila. We packed the tackle, our poles and the smorgasbord of snacks into our new, tiny, dinghy, wishing we had assembled the more spacious port-a-bote.
Incredible shapes and colors.
A waxing moon, one or two days from fullness, illuminated the voluptuous cliffs. Jeff eyed a cave enshrouded in darkness, imagining it rife with anxious fish, but a pelican stood guard at its entrance and Jeff wasn’t in a particularly competitive mood. We found the next best spot and tied our rope off to a nub of a rock. Jeff had just picked up some new tackle that resembled squid, if squid were lime green and pink, and he was eager to see how the locals liked them (since they had turned their collective noses up at some of his more understated Pacific Northwester tackle). He rigged both of our poles while I fed him crackers with cheese.
“Just cast it into that crevice there, I bet that’s where all the fish are hanging out.” He instructed.
I opted to just drop the hook below us, not trusting my casting skills…especially since I couldn’t really see into the crevice. Within moments I felt a tug.
“Woah! I think I got a big one!” I tried reeling it in, but there was too much resistance. It wouldn’t budge. “Scratch that. It’s a rock. I think I caught a rock.”
For the next three minutes I wiggled and waggled my pole, up and down, left and right, letting out line and pulling it back up, finally freeing the plastic squid. While Jeff was affixing tackle to our other pole I proceeded to catch three rocks, groaning and cursing at my fortune. He couldn’t yet empathize with my frustration.
The tide rose rapidly, nudging our rope off of the rock it was tied to. We drifted, letting the tide take us wherever it pleased, catching rocks all along the way as the underwater topography rose and fell and rose again. Over the next two hours we caught approximately 11 rocks, 0 fish.
At one point we were yanking our rods, having found both of our lines snagged and we couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from country songs it’s that fishing isn’t usually about catching a fish. It’s as much about spending time with the ones you love in the quiet, the stillness, the beauty.
When we returned in the daylight with our snorkel gear I was able to see what had lured Jeff. So many fish. Incredible fish. When you swim with them, drift in the sway of the currents with them, see that they don’t actively fear you, understand that you inspire curiosity just as they do, it’s hard to imagine catching and killing and eating them.
