If I Had a Boat

I'd go out on the ocean. And if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat. Then we could all together go out on the ocean, me upon my pony on my boat. -Lyle Lovett

Yesterday I did have a boat, and I did go out on the ocean. There were no ponies involved though.

A bunch of us went fishing yesterday out on the Med. Some guys from the local Air Force base had organized this trip and invited us to tag along. Crack, Papa V, two of the V boys, and myself took them up on the offer. All day Friday it had rained and sure enough, Saturday morning was nasty too. Rain, lightning, wind, it was awful. But we went anyway and by the time we got to the coast, it had sort of cleared up. But on the way, I noticed three things that tipped me off to the fact that we may not be in for a great day of fishing. The first thing is that we were going out on a flat bottom boat that I affectionately named, "The Party Barge." It's not a fishing boat by any stretch of the imagination. There were tables set up all over the bottom area, a grill on the back, and a large upstairs for laying out in the sun. The second thing that tipped me off was the fact that one of the guys that seemed to be heading the trip up was wearing a fishing vest with pliers attached and a fishing hat complete with fishing pins attached to it. I'm not saying that the guy didn't know what he was doing. I could tell that he had been a time or two. But it's pretty obvious that he was not expert. The true experts don't have to dress like that for people to believe they know what they're doing.
The third thing that tipped me off was that the expert kept telling people how good the fish that we were going to catch were. They have almost no bones and you can just skin them out easy, etc etc. Then he mentioned that some of the big ones could get up to 8 inches long. Great.


My fears were realized soon after we got on the boat. The first nail in the coffin for me was seeing that the hooks we were using were smaller than most bream hooks I used back in SC. Obviously, we weren't expecting to hook anything large. The second nail in the coffin was seeing us park the boat within an easy casting distance of shore. Again, it seemed that we weren't really expecting to catch anything large. The final nail in the coffin for me personally was seeing that not only were these fish so small that they could steal your bait without you knowing, but that they had bird beaks that could cut your line before you knew what happened. I had a ton of bait stolen, but when I had all three of my hooks stolen, it was time to hang it up. I had caught a few, but they had to be measured in centimeters, not kilos. It was embarrassing.

So the fishing stunk, and so did the weather, but everything else was a blast. The boys had a great time and it was fun just to watch them catching fish. Crack, Papa V, and I had some great conversations and a lot of laughs. The guys from the base were all real nice and personable. They were gracious hosts too, and brought us lunch. I'll just go ahead and say that lunch was my favorite part of the whole day. They brought Oscar Meyer hot dogs (something I have not tasted in almost 9 months now) and French's mustard (the mustard here is no where near the same). It was amazing. I had three and if there had been more, I could've eaten three more of them. It was awesome. I like hot dogs, but I don't know that I've ever been as excited about a hot dog as I was yesterday.

It was really a great day, but I must end with some words from Hank Williams.

"The horse is against the automobile. The bus is against the train
The train is against the jumbo jet, and I’m against fishing in the rain."