Wednesday, September 27, 2006

What? You mean they don't just leap out of the water?

Today was a formative moment in our David's young life. As promised, we took him fishing - heading down to the docks in Edgartown after breakfast. Originally, he was pretty arrogant about the whole endeavor - telling us he'd catch a fish this big (stretching his arms as far apart as he could), and that we'd be eating it for twenty-one days.

Twenty-one is about the biggest number he really understands fully.

The first crack in the armor came when we walked down to the docks after eating (the Main Street Diner's changed owners in the five years since our last visit, and though it's not bad it's not as good as it was, either, and the prices went up). The Derby is happening right now, and we walked by the shed where they do the scoring, and we saw both the big prizes (a Nissan pickup truck and a fishing boat). This rattled him, and when I asked him if he was going to catch a fish big enough to win the truck, he demurred. And then, inside, he saw a pretty big striper - probably about a 25-pounder. That gave him pause as well.

But he soldiered on. And after I cast a few for both him and myself (I gave myself a crash course in casting last night - did OK at it), he just couldn't comprehend the idea that the fish just might not want to grab the hook, and that you might have to wait a while and might not even get one. Well, that just threw him for a loop.

We held on there about an hour - longer than I expected he'd make it. Then, we took off (with some frozen squid in tow) for the bridge at the Edgartown/Oak Bluffs line on State Beach, where we searched fruitlessly for stripers.

The rest of the day was mundane, yet fun. Instead of the twenty-one days' worth of striper meat, though, we went out for Mexican at Sharky's Cantina - where they accidentally made a second burrito for our table instead of the one I'd ordered, and gave it to us for free (it's in the fridge now, along with all the other leftovers).

I'm not even sure what we're doing the next few days...

No comments: