Growing up, fishing was limited to drainage ponds and knee-deep streams. Basically, anything within walking distance I was fishing it. It was rare that I got an opportunity for a change of pace from the neighborhood largemouth and sunfish I spent my days wearing the lips off of.
So when my dad told me and my buddy Thomas had two weeks this summer with the fourteen-foot duck boat to chase stripers in Assawoman Bay I was ecstatic.
The problem here is Thomas hadn’t been bitten by the fish bug like I had. At least not yet. I was certain that by the end of the trip, I would have a new fishing buddy.
He was then and still is the open-minded type. Open to the proposition of trying something new. We had access to everything I had ever dreamed of, an old boat and a hot tip. Undoubtedly, this trip would turn him into the fish-chasing nut I already was at 17. As soon as we got to Ocean City we were off to a family friend’s home where the duck boat was waiting for us in the canal.
That 1985 mercury two-stroke fired right up first pull. We were off, snaking our way through the marsh to the honey hole. Once there, it only took a few casts for both our lines to pull tight and, we were on a consistent schoolie striper bite.
A few twenty-inch stripers were about as good as this trip gets. Not long after getting to the spot that old two-stroke decide it didn’t like idling all that much, and after the next restart, it decided it didn’t like to run at all.
We were adrift.
I wore the skin off my knuckles yanking on that pull cord but it was no use. We were dead in the water waiting for my dad and his friend to come around the bend and tow us back in.
When they finally made it out there and tied us up they decided they wanted a few casts of their own. I shouldn’t have told them we were on such a good bite.
About that time things went from bad to worse. My father reaches back and whips the half oz rattle trap towards the shoreline. Only to discover the line had wrapped around the rod tip and sent the lure straight down towards the front of the boat catching poor Thomas right on the crown of the head.
Two shiny stainless steel treble hooks sat perfectly centered in his cowlick just under the surface, leaving my new Bill Lewis rattle trap dangling from his scalp like a Christmas ornament.
I had never seen anyone hooked before, my horrified father who has been fishing for forty-plus years hadn’t seen it either. In 24 years I still have never seen my old man so embarrassed. It is one of the few times I can look back and can remember he too is human.
We rushed back to the house, and while my dad and his friend fiddled with the old mercury that I had thoroughly flooded, Thomas and I ran inside for some help.
After some deliberation on whether the hydrogen peroxide would bleach his hair, a nurse took control of a set of needle noses and popped the two trebles out. I watched in horror while Thomas gritted his teeth and tried his best to keep the rubbing alcohol we decided on out of his eyes. An immense feeling of guilt sat in my stomach. I put my poor buddy through maybe the worst day on the water I had ever seen, he had no idea the cluster he was getting himself into.
“Let’s go to the beach,” I said, gesturing towards the truck. He was visibly relieved to hear we weren’t dragging him back out there.
All things considered, he took it like a champ. But that was the end of his fishing days.
Understandably so, a shitty mercury two-stroke leaving you adrift in the channel, and a pair of holes in the head is enough for anyone to consider their life choices.