Welcome Back

Monday, August 4 This story is going to be unfairly short because I am short on time tonight. Ben and Kelly are my old friends from several years ago. They just returned from 2 ½ years in the Peace Corps in Honduras and they were swinging by for a couple days. Ben and I worked together in Boston and Cambridge in our former lives as environmental science consultants. Kelly also worked for the company out in Chicago. And somehow they met and got married and joined the Peace Corps. I was already married at the time but rather than do something as noble as moving to Honduras to build public drinking water systems, I continued on with consulting until I grew corns on my ass and ears and had to bail.

Today we started out planting hard clam seed on my farm and showed Ben and Kelly the whole oyster routine. After lunch (which was really breakfast) we decided to fish. Ben and I fished many times in the past while working in Boston. We used to head up to Emerson Rocks on Plum Island, the Cape, and even the Bahamas (all these trips usually included Joel M.). Ben hadn’t fished in 2 ½ years so we had to do something about that.

We started out down the bay and when I noticed some menhaden schooled up in front of us I decided to snag a few in case we’d live line. It was midday, sunny, and high tide; poor conditions for fishing. Live lining might be the best bet for Ben to hook into a larger bass. But he was first happy to hook into a live pogie which, at first, he thought was a clump of weeds. Yay, a pogie! First fish in ages. No teeth with gaping wound in its side. I’m kidding around, naturally.

We set up the pogie at a couple of rips and Ben was into this. He had several hits but the fish weren’t big enough to swallow the thing. Kelly and I casted out Sluggos and soon we had some explosions but no hookups. Ben also threw out Sluggos and had several follows and hits, but they all missed the hooks. Eventually I landed one at about 22” and that got the skunk off of the boat. The live lining continued to get our hopes up, but nothing too big was around this afternoon.

Then a squall came in and it rained. We were getting a little damp and cold when suddenly Kelly said, “Oh no, I am snagged on something.” I thought it was the lobster pot right next to the boat and I got ready to start the engine to get over to the buoy. She pulled and swatted the rod around like anyone would to release a tangle. But then we saw the flash: she had a fish on, momentarily, and she managed to untangle her Sluggo from the fish’s mouth! This was funny and we all bent over to laugh it out.

But a couple more drifts didn’t amount to much and the area started to get crowded with idiots. So we went in. Ben and Kelly had dinner plans in Boston and had to get moving. More will be written, perhaps not on this specific trip (there’s not much more to tell). But of other stories.