I really don’t like to be up quite this early, my typical target time to rise is 8 am and here in my peaceful Baja marina and I can usually roll around ‘till then in overly padded bow bunk rest and relaxation. Unless of course, that one seagull that has roosted on one of the boats nearby decides to trumpet at the first light of day- as I say in my books, if they only tasted like chicken, we would all have many a free bird bar-be-que! How that one seagull seems to find me when I visit my boat in the states, I’ll never know… I digress, the reason I am listening to the 3930th consecutive Sunday pre-dawn broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is the renewed attack of the creature of the depths commonly known as “weekend fisherman guy”. This morning he employed a new means of torment in the waning dark of night to shock my senses from post-rem sleep, absolutely brilliant… dropping bags of ice right next to my bow on the cement dock. I assume this was a necessary pre-casoff ritual, but did they have to drop the bags from over their heads more that 20 times to get just the right ice consistency? Please don’t get me wrong; I realize the necessity of this primeval race in the food chain and many a little 2 inch fish in the marina would not survive as long into their golden gill years if some bored reverse hat wearing “dude” hadn’t pulled them onto their hook and returned them to the sea after a grin of supreme authority and prowess.Showing their parents that the wise investment in a new toy (a few hundred thousand dollar boat and a lot of fuel) can show a return (a few fish) is a noble endeavor, although by now that probably isn’t a valued priority in the parental offspring monitoring process. That spare room was now long ago left empty by that rebellious youth; and now has been converted into a room for such crafts as gluing colored gravel onto a framed palette to form an elongated cat to make something called a “mosaic”, or storing that 20 volume home improvement set of books where Johnny used to stack his Black Sabbath albums. A CD collection and a rack of fashionable gold Penn reels have now replaced the old album collection. Standing back with the crew and admiring the docked jewelry reminds one of Pee-Wee Herman admiring his growing scrap foil ball.
The ice bag wielding squad jumped in their boat and I don’t quite know how they did this, but they started the boat, put it in gear and left all in one motion, as of the boat was already adrift in the slip. A contrast to the boat that is warmed up for seemingly an hour and smokes heavy un-burnt diesel fuel into surrounding hatches. Occasionally one can manage to go back to sleep during the idling process only to be awakened by the cavitations of swirling props fighting to gain purchase on the ocean for forward and reverse motion. If this somewhat stealthy sound creeps into your dream you may think you are being sucked into a vortex or up a straw.
Later that day, upon completion of the day of fish kill blood lust, the returning troop that was a bit too preoccupied by emptying beer cans must now find a place to clean the newly captured booty. Yesterday, a neighbor who has just bought his first fish finding machine took over a half-hour cleaning one fish in surgeon-like precision, not wanting to waste a tasty bite. All the scrap was bagged and put in the trash, so absolutely no scavenging seagulls were attracted. Good show matey! He was then visited by a more seasoned “weekend fisherman guy” who proceeded to show him his patented speed fish cleaning process. How he didn’t cut off a finger or throw the scraps into the drink as a matter of habit, I don’t know. The practice of tossing fish skeletons into the marina waters is forbidden by marina rules, but is often violated by visiting polluting pirates. There is a Hoover bull seal that resides in the marina that cleans the carcasses as they are tossed, but unfortunately he can’t clean the gull guano that dries like cement on the surrounding boats and docks.
We marina residents that witness the arrival of all this pomp and color on Thursday thru Saturday are all rewarded for our patience by the exodus on Sunday and the restored peace on Monday. Anchoring out every weekend to escape the carnage is simply not an option. I keep telling the “weekend fisherman guy” about the fish market in Ensenada, but for some reason he is programmed to bypass the trip there and instead hit the bait dock to purchase little fishes designed to catch bigger fishes. What a concept!
If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
Doug Larson
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