Tidelines – August 9, 2012
If you’re looking for a new way to celebrate your birthday, then I have a few suggestions.
Meet up with a handful of friends in the parking lot behind Redix (on Wrightsville Beach) at about 6:30 am. The dress should be casual (t-shirt, shorts, and a fish rag hanging out of your pocket). Small coolers should be filled with water, Gatorade, and beef jerky, but no beer—beer will be for sale later.
Five-gallon buckets should be stocked with cigar minnows and/or Boston mackerel (cheaper and works the same). You can go to the trouble to catch and bring live pinfish with you in a bubble bucket, or you can stick with the frozen bait and be just as productive.
Your birthday party crew should then walk its way over to Motts Channel Seafood’s parking lot where Capt. Dave Gardner will take your money and hand you a ticket for a full day bottom fishing trip on the head boat Vonda Kay, now located in Wrightsville Beach. Before you board, the mates will make sure you don’t have braid and you’re not carrying any bananas or portable GPSs, and then you’re on the boat and putting your rods in the rod holders to mark your spot.
Some will go to the back of the boat, and some will try and line up with the transducer, but ultimately Dave will have the entire boat over good bottom so it won’t matter where on the boat you’re located.
The next step of this birthday celebration is to get comfortable because the Vonda Kay isn’t a very fast boat. You’ll have plenty of time on the way out to try a breakfast sandwich hot from the galley’s grill (I continue to be a fan of bacon, egg, and cheese). I also suggest you hint to everyone in your party that they should buy you sandwiches and drinks from the galley all day long in honor of your birthday, as free food and drink always tastes better.
Donnie, one of the mates, will make sure you have the rigs and weights you need. Mary, the other mate, will keep you supplied with plenty of squid chunks, and she’ll also butterfly a few baits for you. Dave, the captain, will almost always be the first to the gaff when any angler starts struggling with a (potential) grouper.
Chances are you’ll have your first beer by 7:30 am just as you’re leaving sight of the Masonboro Inlet jetties (and remember, encourage your friends to start a tab). You’ll have your first fish in the boat around 10:30, and from there the day will fly by.
The “oogah” horn will sound telling you it’s time to drop, and then that same “oogah” horn will also announce that it’s time to wind up and head for the next stop.
You’ll turn in a grouper and get a big fish number, and then you’ll turn in your assorted grunts, beeliners, and black sea bass to get a separate stringer number. Of course you’ll buy into the $5 or $10 big fish pot on the way out, but that pot will most likely go to one of the long-time regulars camped out on the stern with an electric reel.
Even though you are clearly the best angler in your group, some of your friends will catch more fish than you (lucky Sean), some will catch bigger fish (even luckier Max), and some (like Tony Del and Joshua Alexander) will catch both smaller and fewer fish than you.
And it’s cliché but true—the fishing won’t really matter that much. You’re offshore for a day, out of cell phone range and away from everything and everyone.
You might make jokes about confusing Adderall and Viagra after one of your buddies almost leaves his bait in the parking lot. You might have a friend that can’t keep from calling beeliners “redfish” and pogies “hoagies”. Another will insist all day long that he had a grouper bite but lost it, and he will also insist that he was sure it was a big grouper even though no one else but him is even sure it was a fish (and the “bite” lasted less than one second).
And the one guy that happened to put a bait in front of a grouper will somehow confuse chance with proof of his abilities (yet he never feels the opposite—when he doesn’t catch fish on a trip, it’s never proof of his lack of abilities but rather it’s chance).
At the end of the day Dave will bring you back to the Motts Channel Seafood docks, and you can decide then whether or not to pay to have your fish cleaned (always a good idea). You have your group photo with the captain, make plans for the next trip on the Vonda Kay, and head home both tired and satisfied.
And those are my suggestions for how to celebrate your birthday.
