Chapter 18: The Impromptu Picnic

I fished off the pier. I didn't know shit about saltwater fishing but I knew enough to fish off the pier. I bought a hundred-buck spinner rig with twenty pound test line and very little flex to the rod along with a fistful of good sharp hooks on wire leaders. I figured that I'd get nothing but lies out of the guys sitting around the tackle shop--if they knew what they were doing they'd be out fishing, eh?

I bought a half pound of frozen chicken livers from the grocery store, packed a sandwich, a gallon of Arizona Iced Tea and a beach chair. I baited up and sat back, dangling that rig right next to a piling at the end of the dock.

Pretty soon I noticed the tide had turned and was flowing pretty good. I was about to stand up and piss off the dock and call it a day when the pole was damned near ripped out of my hand. I half-cleared the drag and set the hook. I kept reeling and pumping and the fish kept stripping line then coming back. My hands were sore. My ass was sore. My cheeks were sore from grinning. I didn't have a net or a gaff so I dragged that motherfucker all the way down the pier to the beach. There I whacked him with a rock and grabbed him through the gills.

It was my first twenty-plus-pound catch. I'd nailed a redfish.

I savaged that poor thing while I cleaned it ... with a pocket knife! I wrapped it in newspaper and put it in the refrigerator. I washed up and went down to the grocery store for 20 pounds of charcoal, and a fish basket to grill it in. I bought four cases of Sam Adams beer, a plastic garbage can and twenty pounds of ice. I stopped at a gas station on my way back and saw a bunch of Hawaiian locals parked around a tree with nothing to do, passing a beer around. I shrugged.

I yelled out "Hey! I just caught a twenty pound redfish and I'm going back to grill the bastard. Follow me for free fish and beer. Bring bread!"

That's how it started. I had the fish down in a pit fire cooking away.

An old fat guy in glasses came up to me and asked "What did you catch it on?"

"What we used to use, river fishing in Illinois: frozen chicken livers."

He peered at me over his glasses with his hand holding them to his face, then wandered away shaking his head in disbelief. A little later he stomped back over to me, looking belligerent.

"I gotta try dat!"

I pointed to the pier.

"Go forth and catch shit!"

Be damned if he didn't. He caught a little four pound striper then a big old twenty-eight pound hog.

Someone else had to try it, and caught another redfish, of about sixteen pounds, maybe? I shook my head. We'd need more beer, ice and charcoal.

I handed a guy a hundred bucks and said, "Beer. Ice. Charcoal. Paper Plates. Sam Adams. 60 pounds charcoal. Go. Come back."

He grinned and took off. He came back, too! By the time it was over we must have run through a dozen cases of beer, eighty pounds of fish and two hundred pounds of charcoal. Women had brought potato salad, more paper plates and plastic forks. Everybody brought appetites. I must have looked like a skinny Hemmingway with a sore tooth, roaring and swilling beer. Come morning I had to make a speed run to get garbage bags to clean all the shit up. Good times, good times.

Edited By TeNderLoin