First of all, I have been out of the blog scene for far too long. I plan to explain all that has been going on in my life in the next few (or dozen!) posts.
For now, I will limit this post to my adventure yesterday. Background information first. About 3 three years ago I received a birthday gift from my brother-in-law, Dave. It was a deep sea fishing excursion. I have never been fishing in my life. I spent the majority of my childhood watching and playing team sports so the idea of sitting on a boat in practical solitude waiting for some stupid fish to bite did not appeal to me as a kid or teenager. I think a lot of that perception had to do with the lack of exposure to fishing. Needless to say, when I got the gift, I was surprised and curious. I knew several people who enjoyed fishing, and Dave had been to Alaska and loved it.

The delay in cashing in on my gift was a complete scheduling issue. Things get busy, and you kind of forget about it. Well, Dave and I recently revisited the activity and settled on a day. Yesterday.

We got up at the most ridiculous hour! 4:30 a.m. was enough to make me think that I will probably never go fishing again. But I managed to pull myself out of bed and drive to Oxnard. The time in the car was nice despite the Fillmore Starbucks not opening for ten more minutes (We didn’t have 10, and they couldn’t give us to drip coffees?). We got to the harbor with about 5 minutes to spare, (Good thing we didn’t wait for coffee lady.) and checked in. We waited for a few people and then set off for the open sea.

I don’t get sea sick when I take the second graders whale watching but something was not right this morning. I had to sit down and lay my head on the table. I kept telling myself “Just breathe and don’t throw up”. I fell asleep. It took two hours to get where we were going. When we got there (Santa Rosa Islands, I think), the crew told us to get our gear ready to cast.

Dave and I were off to a great start. Neither one of us knew how to get our weight and hook on the line. So much for Alaska, eh? One of the crew helped us and gave us some advice, “Don’t throw your line out since this is your first time. Just move the lever toward you to drop the line down and push the lever away to reel it in. And hold your thumb on the spool thing when you drop so it doesn’t tangled up”. Well, it appeared that Dave missed that first part because immediately there he was with his line all tangled in the spool thing! Haha, right? Well, I was seemingly better off at the moment because I was not tangled. Unfortunately, that was only because I couldn’t get the line loose to drop. I had moved the lever toward me and back and back again. Nothing was happening! So there we were, looking like complete idiots! What amateur hour?!?

Finally, a crew member stopped catching his own fish and decided to help the rookies who actually paid to fish. How nice. First he got Dave’s line untangled, and Dave was free to conquer the Bass. Then I shared with him my little issue, and he just pulled the lever toward me harder. Apparently, you gotta put some muscle into this whole fishing thing.

So there we were casting our line, oops, no, dropping our lines twenty feet to the bottom. Yup. TWO ZERO. I’m thinking 1) no way this is called DEEP SEA and 2) why the heck did we ride two hours out to fish in twenty feet deep water? So far, not looking up.

Fish count: Matt – 0 Dave – 0

After a while, we were sailed over to another hot spot and dropped our lines. This time we tried casting a little. We both had decent weights on our lines and we kept hearing one of the crew members saying that we should have little to no weight. So we decided to listen to him since he was catching all these fish (great for him) and we were still struggling.

While I was trying to catch fish, one of the crew asked if I wanted to reel in a fish. He handed me the pole and walked me through reeling it in. I had to follow the side of the boat while I reeled it in, going over and under other fishermen. I lost the fish.

Fish count: Matt – 0 Dave – 0

Dave finally caught a Barracuda! Poor guy. I had my line in the water. There I was, checking out this cool fish unable to help or snap a pic. Meanwhile, he was starring at it and looking for a crew member to help. The only thing he got was some cranky old fisherman telling him that it was too small and he had to throw it back. It was about 2 feet long. A victory for anglers like us! Well, no one helped him. And off it went. FREEDOM.

Fish count: Matt – 0 Dave – 0

Now I had to catch something! So I buckled down and caught a 12 inch Bass (more like 10 inch, but I think they felt sorry for the losers).

Fish count: Matt – 1 Dave – 0

Catching a fish really got me excited and I wanted to catch more. The fish had other plans. I didn’t catch any more real fish. Just a couple of mini fish decided to eat off my line. Just when we were getting the hang of it, the crew let us know we were going to a few last spots and then heading back. Rock Fish is what we would be going after. These were the consolation prize, king of a guarantee that everyone will catch something. We changed weights, 10 oz. this time, and dropped our line 250-290 feet to the bottom. The different weight threw me off and I kept thinking I got a bite. Sometimes it was a bite and I lost the fish, but mostly it was the different weight and the current pulling on my line. Dave grabbed a rock fish that looked really cool. Good for him!

Fish Count: Matt – 1 Dave – 1

I opted to have the crew gill and gut my fish and Dave wanted his whole. It was interesting to watch the process of the crew gut and slicing up the fish. It was more interesting to watch Dave try to gut his fish at my house!

Despite having a foulmouthed and unhelpful crew, Dave and I really enjoyed our day. Because we are not so good with the fishing, we spent most of our efforts concentrating on catching fish and our conversations were best in the car. I would probably go again if I had the opportunity. I definitely will expose Jack to fishing when he is old enough to handle the type of massive fish that I caught. Until then, he will have to listen to Daddy’s stories of the high seas…and play in the bath.

Thanks Dave for a great day!