Chapter 13 – Wesley
I help Chelsea gather some gear from the garage and then we walk over to the pier.
“Okay, what great fishing lessons do you have to share with me?” I ask her. I look down at our small stack of supplies. “I’m not sure we’re even going to be able to catch much, when this is all we have.”
“Well, for one thing,” Chelsea says, her cute dimple appearing in her cheek when she smiles, “When it comes to gear, you want to keep things really simple. All you need is a pole— it can be cane like these, or fiberglass or graphite. It’ll cost you a whole ten bucks at a bait shop or discount store. So don’t go trying to be some big spender.”
“The way you say graphite is so sexy,” I joke, but really, I’m turned on, and I want her to keep talking about how to fish.
Luckily, she does.
“You’ll also want to buy a small spool of monofilament fishing line.”
“Mono-fill-a-ment…”
“Yes. Monofilament. You want six or eight pound test for freshwater, or ten or twelve pound test for salt water. You’ll need a couple of plastic bobbers, some BB-sized split shot sinkers, and some hooks. They can be size two for small bait, or up to size 3/0 for bigger bait. A small tackle box with divided trays and a carrying handle, like this right here—” she says, patting the tackle box we’d brought along with us from the lake house— “will do just fine.”
“I see,” I say, in a way that begs her to tell me more.
I won’t remember any of these things. But I like to hear her talk about them.
“You need bait,” she continues, to my great delight. She seems to know that I enjoy hearing all the many details she knows about how to fish. “You can buy minnows, night crawlers, redworms and rickets at a bait shop. We’ve got some redworms right here. You can carry your bait in a small plastic bucket.”
She pats the one we brought.
“But it’s more fun to catch your own. You can get minnows out of any creek by using a dip net. You can look under stream rocks for crayfish. You can find redworms and crickets under logs and leaf litter.”
“That’s so hot,” I can’t help but tell her.
As if encouraged, she continues. “Other baits work, too. Saltwater fish love shrimp, whether they’re dead or alive. Trout will bite kernel corn and cheese. Catfish will eat pieces of ivory soap!”
“No kidding!” I say, and laugh.
“Yeah, I know,” she says. “Crazy. Okay, so here we are with our equipment and bait already, and we’re about to start fishing. To do that, you just cut off a length of line about a foot longer than the length of your fishing pole.”
She does that, and then I follow.
“Now you want to wrap an end around the tip of your pole and make sure to tie it tightly.”
I watch her exert her strength in doing so, making a mental note of how cute she looks, and then I follow suit.
“Now, you match your hook to your bait. In our case, it’s a size 3/0 for long worms. If you were hooking a small shrimp, then it would be size 1/0.”
“Oh I see,” I say, as if I have any idea what she’s talking about.
“Tie the hood to the opposite end of the line using a knot that won’t slip. This one is called the Palomar knot.”
She ties a fancy knot that I hope I can mimic.
“No, Silly,” she tells me, laughing at my feeble attempts. “You need to make sure to wet all knots before pulling tight. Bad knots lose good fish!”
“Bad knots lose good fish,” I repeat.
“Exactly. Good job,” she says, as I finally tie the knot correctly.
I feel like an unsuccessful boy scout, even though that’s never even been my thing. I’m only getting so into this fishing thing because she is, and it’s so much fun.
“Now we’re ready for the fishing hole,” she continues. “For us, it’s this lake, since there’s no ocean anywhere around. If we lived near the coast, we could of course catch all kinds of saltwater fish around piers and large rocks close to the shore. But if we were even more inland, a pond would be our best bet, since most are loaded with bluegills and bass.”
“Would be nice to live close to the ocean,” I interject, and she looks at me wistfully and then says, “I agree.”
“We can try bobber-fishing,” she says, after letting a few seconds pass. “After baiting your hook, you want to attach the bobber above your line. It can be two feet for starters, and longer if the bait needs to go deeper.”
We attach the bobber, and then she says, “Now just extend the pole over the water and lower it until the bobber floats on the water.”
She casts her pole, and I cast mine. But mine looks a lot clumsier than hers.
“Keep the pole horizontal, silly,” she says, laughing that contagious laugh that I can’t help but join in on. “Hold it steady.”
“Okay, okay, yes ma’am,” I say, and steady my pole.
We look at each other, and after a while, I say, “So now what?”
“Now we wait,” she says, with a self-satisfied grin on her face. “We wait for the fish to bite. Fishing takes patience.”
“Okay,” I tell her.
But patience has never been my fucking strong suit.
Take fishing, for example. I’m enjoying it. But I also can’t wait to jump Chelsea’s bones.