The Tail of the Fish

I finally went fishing. I decided to take a day off school, or at least a morning and see what the big deal was about fishing. Shaul and I rented a boat and two sixteen year old captains and off we went, or so we thought. Before we headed out to open seas though, we had to stop to catch our bait. Shaul and I were handed the fancy rods and lures and the captain, like David in the Bible story, used a piece of string to reel in the fish. Didn’t Shaul and I feel stupid when he reeled in about five fish in ten minutes with a piece of string and Shaul and I got nothing with our fancy rods!
When we got to open water we were handed the rods and the bait and told that the fishing was not that good at this time of year. Now he tells us, after we forked over the $200? After about two hours of nothing, followed by more nothing, my rod caught on fire and I reeled in a twenty-five pound Jack, a fish in the yellow tail variety. What you have to do I learned, is let the fish run until it gets tired, then lower the rod and start to reel him in. After one more hour of tedium, we were actually coming in rather slowly and trolling, just in case we might catch something else. Suddenly, the rod bent over like an old man bending in the wind and the fight began. We pulled in a seventy-five pound rooster, but had to throw it back, the captains said since it was an endangered species. I think I must have worked at it for at least an hour, or so it seemed. I was amazed at how huge this fish was, but even more amazed to see the reverence the two boys who were our captains, showed to this fish. After taking out as much of the hooks and paraphernalia as they could, they stoked it gently a few times and one even bent over and kissed the fish, and then gently lowered it back in the water and watched it swim away. I really don’t know why the law says we have to throw it back, since I am quite confident it will be dead shortly anyway, from the exhaustion of fighting me or the gear stuck in its’ mouth. And they call this “sports fishing”
I have done a few different things from the norm this week since Shaul is visiting. I have won some money at two different casinos, eaten out in quite fancy restaurants every night and watched a huge forest fire near my house with the flames licking down the mountain like lava spewing out of a volcano. Needless to say, I was quite impressed. Everything around here is brown dry since we do not get a drop of rain for six months.
Now I am heading off to the school to feed supper to the staff. Thank God we caught something!