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Tournament Dreams
Summer days during dolphin tournament season in Key Largo have everything to do with how hard you’ve worked at your day job and how well you have provided for your family; for if you have done these things well, you can feel good with yourself about running deep for the money-fish. Each day before, during, and after work you review and fulfill your tournament list: fill out your application and send in your entry fee to qualify for the early entry discount, rise early and run the Lucky Roller to the patch reefs and throw net ballyhoo, fill your freezer with twenty pound bags of ice, take the boat in to your mechanic to service the engine, re-spool all your spinners and conventional reels with tournament monofilament, rig and brine ballyhoo so they won’t go soft on the last day of fishing. On and on, there are new lures and teasers to purchase and everything from last year’s tournament season has rusted or frayed and is in need of repair or replacement. Each and every hook needs to be sharpened, new or old. All week long, through the tedium of work, out there on the horizon of your mind, schools of…
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Another Fish Story
“Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll make it.” I looked at my 11-year-old son, sitting beside me. “And if we don’t?” I asked. “We’ll make it, Dad.” We had a 40-minute drive from the Auburn Colony in South Harpswell, Maine, to Popham Beach. The car radio clock read 3:58 p.m. “Be back by the dinner bell,” my wife had said as we drove away. The dinner bell at the “Colony“ would be rung, as it had summer evenings for the last century, at 7 p.m. His buddies would all be at dinner on time, dressed by their mothers as if to head out for a day at the office. Some mothers tied their son’s bowties for them. Texan moms used string ties that their father’s had worn. Men bowed equally to Auburn Colony tradition, wearing blue blazers and white slacks; and conservative neckties. Ladies wore summer print dresses, and light cardigans for the walk back to their cottages in the Maine night air. The Auburn Colony in South Harpswell, Maine, had remained an eddy of gentility since my great-grandfather bought one of the ten cottages about the turn of the century. I recall summer evenings as a young man when we’d build…
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The Maestro – by Phillip Caputo
David Wilson could be described as a bulky leprechaun. At five-eleven and about 190 pounds, his frame is that of an ex-running back who could use a few laps around the field. His square face topped by curly, ginger-brown hair and set off by pale, merry eyes, makes you think of an Irish bartender telling an off-color joke. To say that he loves to fish would be like saying that Julia Child loves to cook. No niggling purist, he can, and will fish for anything that swims with anything that casts a line and hook, but his greatest joy is orchestrating angling weekends for his friends. He’s caught enough fish in his life, from half-pound brook trout to giant Bluefin tuna, that catching them doesn’t thrill him half as much as watching other people catch them. Last August, he phoned my wife and me in Connecticut from his office in Miami where he works as a financial planner. He said he was going to flee the stifling South Florida summer for Montauk, where his family maintains a cottage and where he intended to spend a weekend in early September fishing for blues and stripers. A confirmed bachelor at thirty-nine, Wilson…
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The Great Shot
He started out in the morning, early. Sounds glared out in the pre-dawn: spoon in the coffee mug, twang of the egg skillet, running water; and then those few minutes of silence while he stared into the coffee mug because it was blacker than the night outside the window. He put the coffee mug down and stood and picked his pack off the other chair. He took up his old 16-guage pump by the case handle and tucked it under his arm so he had a hand free to lock the door. He put on his cowboy hat and went outside. The rain muffled everything, even the closing of the car door. The car started with a cough and he backed her out and put her in forward. It was a twenty-mile drive to the new place and he drove slowly, thinking that the rain would keep the birds on their roosts. He found an old sweet song on the radio and let his mind wander. No other cars on the road. In the fringe of the headlights the desert began. The sun wasn’t rising. He flicked the radio off. You never can rely on the weather, he thought, not…
