Roscoe’s Fishing Guide: Teenagers

My thirteen-year-old nephew Desmond begins every sentence in one of three ways: “Wouldn’t it be crazy if…”, “It would be so awesome if…” and “Wouldn’t it totally suck if…” His imagination is always busy at work concocting theoretical scenarios that are either crazy, awesome or totally sucky.

Desmond and I were sitting at the stern of a little fishing boat bobbing in the warm, blue-green water of the Sea of Cortez, when he asked, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I caught like fifty fish and you didn’t catch any?” Like most teens, Desmond has a preternatural ability to sense and exploit the weaknesses of adults. He knows that my ego is heavily linked to my successes and failures as a fisherman and was trying to razz me. “Yeah, that would be crazy,” I said. “But you know what would be even crazier? If I threw you overboard.”

Fishing with a smart-ass teenager can be very tricky, especially if you fancy yourself a seasoned fisherman like I do. Desmond fished with the same cool confidence (or “swag” as he liked to call it) with which he did everything else. He had already reeled in a large yellow snapper, while I, the supposed fishing expert, hadn’t caught a thing. Every few minutes he turned to me and in his best mock-sincere voice asked, “Have you caught anything yet?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I caught a whale shark a few minutes ago, but I threw it back because I know you’re scared of sharks.”

He laughed. “That would be awesome if you did catch a whale shark.” Then as if to himself, “Or anything for that matter.” I took a deep breath and reeled in my line to check my bait.

Inside the Tackle Box

A lot can be learned about a fisherman by examining the contents of his tackle box.  Occasionally a friend will ask: “Hey Coby, why do you keep a hypodermic needle in your tackle box? Do you have a secret addiction?”  “Yes,” I will answer, honestly, “I do.”

But my addiction is not to mainlining heroin or liquid crack cocaine or even 4 loco (although I do like 4 loco).  No, I am addicted to injecting earthworms with air. Why?  Well, it’s not because I enjoy torturing worms (I promise I don’t), but because I am obsessed with catching fish.  By pumping my bait full of air, I ensure that it floats up off the mucky lake bottom, in clear view of all the hungry fish nearby.  “But that’s cruel!  Evil!  Insane!” you say?  We all have to make sacrifices if we’re ever going to land the big one.  As the fisherman, I put myself at risk for severe neck sunburns, crippling hunger pangs (always pack a sandwich, kids) and feelings of inadequacy when nothing’s biting. I guess I expect the same self-sacrificial spirit from my worms.

Discussion questions: What is a worm? Do worms have feelings? Is torture ever okay?

Next week on Inside the Tackle Box: What is that bottle of George Dickel for?

For all you haters…

This goes out to all you haters out there who said I’d never amount to nothin’ and who suggested that Roscoe’s Fishing School was all talk and no sea bass.  Eat fish shit you scoundrels!

 

Fish of the Month: Crappie

This fish is called a crappie, pronounced like “crappy”, not because it sucks, but because some asshole thought crappie was a good name for a fish.  It’s only a coincidence that the crappie does, in fact, suck.  The crappie is a boney, slimy, scaly fish that lives under railroad trestles and eats bug larvae.  Don’t eat this fish unless you need to make an enormous amount of fish stew for a family reunion or something.

Crappie.  Fish of the month.

My first vitriolic comment!!!

Well well, look whose blog is inspiring caustic criticism around the ol’ blogosphere!  Apparently this guy John didn’t appreciate my witticisms regarding those American soldiers fishing with explosives in Afghanistan.  I practically had to wipe his saliva off my face:

Thank god we fight for our country and more importantly you Mr. editor! Waste of tax dollars? Go fuck yourself!! You really have no clue what its like to serve! Any chance these men can get some r&r all power to them. Fishing? Waste of time and money? Not fucking up anything and getting in trouble is a good thing. Taking your troubled mind off of things (people dying all around,family,heat,constant stress) is well waranted and deserved. So unless you wanna get your lib pussy ass out and join up? Shut the FUCK up!!!! Ohh if your to old and fat to join you can always be a civilian augmente?!?!? Point is shouldn’t be bashing the guys sacrificing their entire existence for you to get on you computer and bash them for fishing. Have a nice life

SWEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!  A complete stranger read my blog!  And furthermore, it turns out that my blog is super political and controversial.

But for the record, I wasn’t really bashing those soldiers for fishing.  I wouldn’t bash anyone for engaging in man’s most venerable hobby.  It’s just that they were using heavy explosives to blow the fish up, which I felt was a bit indelicate.  But that said, I’m open to other perspectives and techniques.  As a guy who once beat a mackerel to death with my bare fists, I know that fishing can be a tad bit violent at times.  So if you’re still out there, John, maybe we could see this whole thing as an opportunity for a little dialogue.  What do ya say?  Maybe we could get together sometime, take a day trip to Lake Chabot, talk politics, shoot guns into the water n’ stuff… I don’t know.

That’s how much fuck fish

The Queen of Nagas

A few years back I met up with the Miller family in Vietnam for Christmas.  While playing Scrabulous in an internet cafe, Teddy and I spotted this picture hanging on the wall.

My Vietnamese is a little rusty, but i believe the writing at the bottom says: BEWARE!

Teddy explained that the photo was taken during the Vietnam War when a group of American soldiers pulled a 30 ft. long serpent from the murk of the Mekong River Delta.  The locals cowered at the sight of the beast recognizing it immediately as the legendary Queen of Nagas, a supposedly cursed creature whose very glance could be deadly.  As the photo makes clear, the soldiers ignored the warnings of the villagers and had their way with the unfortunate animal.  Was it mere superstition?  Who knows.  But one thing is for certain: over the course of the following decade every single man in this photo died, some of exceptionally mysterious causes entirely unrelated to the war.

Whether it was a deadly curse or just a nasty case of fish AIDS that ultimately did these soldiers in, the photograph is a haunting reminder that fishing is a dangerous sport.  You never know what ancient can of worms you might open up each time you cast your line into the water.

So support our troops who risk their lives fishing overseas:

There’s even a pretty rainbow in the blast spray.  Where’s the Yosemite double rainbow guy when you need him:  Oh god!  Oh my god!  What does this giant waste of tax dollars mean?!

“What the fuck did y’all blow up?’

“I don’t know.  There’s dead fish everywhere.”

It’s hard not to be overwhelmed with pride.

Fish School Book Club

Now that the weather is turning shitty, it’s time for us anglers to hang up our fishing rods* and pick up our fishing books.

You can’t really call yourself a true blue fisherperson until you’ve read the granddaddy of all fishing tales, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, an epic story about a life or death struggle between man and beast, and the enduring blah blah blah… The point is, it will take twenty minutes to read and then you can say you’ve read Hemingway.

Just be careful not to confuse this book with My Old Man and the Sea, a memoir about a father and son who sail around the world and blah blah blah courage blah…

They’re both good reads and can be checked out any time from Roscoe’s Library of the Fishing Arts located in my closet.

If you’re interested in a really thought provoking read, look out for my upcoming post entitled “Your Old Man and the Sea”, an expose´ about your dad and his nude mollusk foraging expeditions to the Berkeley marina.  Yeah, that’s right. Your dad!

* Just kidding about hanging up the fishing rods. NEVER!!!

Oh heck nah!

Julian, Mark, Patrick, some quiet girl, and I took Julian’s boat out into the bay for a late night fishing expedition a few weeks ago.  We were hoping to catch some sea beasties, but instead Pat caught a fucking space alien.  The fishing team is back and nothing is safe!

No fish were harmed…

David proudly displays his brand new license to kill

“The fish are gettin’ smarter, man,” said the unseen fisherman from somewhere beyond the shrubbery and trees along the lake shore.  This was pretty upsetting news for David and I who had been banking on the fish being just as dumb as usual when we decided to try our luck at snagging a few trout at San Pablo Dam.  We’d been listening to the guy talk all morning to some other fisherman further down the shore, mostly about how much the IRS sucks. I tuned him out after a while, but when he got onto the topic of fish intelligence, I perked up.  Like us, he was fishing for trout, and like us he wasn’t having any luck.

“You gotta stay on top of your game with these suckers,” he said. “Smarter every year.”

The fish are getting smarter.  Damn.  The more I thought about it the more it made sense.  Supposedly, back in the old days, native americans used hooks carved from animal bone and fishing line made of reeds.  Nobody uses shit like that nowadays.  No doubt the modern fish mind is far too sophisticated for that quaint approach.

Unfortunately, David and I were using the same old equipment my dad and I had used when I was a kid.  If the fish were indeed getting more savvy we would probably need to upgrade our arsenal if we hoped to trick any of them into becoming lunch.  Our hooks claimed to be “chemically sharpened” whatever that means and our line promised to be nearly invisible to the naked fisheye.  It sounded good.  But sharp hooks and fancy fishing line don’t help when the fish won’t eat your bait. We were fishing with futuristic day-glow Powerbait, supposedly the optimum choice for trout fishing.  It’s basically stinky green playdough with glitter in it, nasty-looking shit, and despite the promises of “Hot Action!” on the jar, it had so far failed to turn on any fish in the vicinity.  It seemed to arouse David though, who kept secretly sniffing his fingers after handling it.

When I use Powerbait it kind of makes me nostalgic for the days of night crawlers, those fat and juicy worms that come in a styrofoam cup full of dirt.  That’s probably what the Native Americans used.  Then again, maybe those Native American fisherman didn’t have much luck either.  Just because archaeologists dug up some handmade fishhooks doesn’t mean that those ancient anglers necessarily caught anything.  Perhaps their fishing expeditions went a lot like mine.  Just some dudes sitting around by a lake, bullshitting, appreciating the ducks and trees and sky, wondering if the fish were getting smarter, or if their equipment was cutting edge, or whether there actually were any fuckin’ fish in the lake at all.