Tidelines – May 10, 2012
So far this year I’ve enjoyed having a fish photo of myself in every issue to run along with my Tidelines column. My thought is that if I have my own fish photo, then I am properly reaping the rewards of the job (though others may charge that it’s simply a need to feed my ego).
For this early May issue I got out on the water a couple of times to try and find a photo-worthy fish, but that fish was never found. Mason’s Inlet was quiet, as were the Masonboro rock jetties, an area creek, and the lower Cape Fear River. Others found fish in the same or similar areas (as evidenced in our pages), but such was not the case for me.
Part of the problem with me not catching fish is that it makes writing this column a lot harder. Catch a redfish with Koraly, or a blackfin with Croson, or an Atlantic bonito with Jarvis, and the Tidelines column writes itself. Hook small bluefish, oyster toads, sea bass, and barely legal flounder, though, and the column requires much more creativity and reflection.
And it was during this period of forced creativity and reflection that I realized I was missing the larger picture. My perspective was off. Even if there had been a fish photo, the true significance of any of those trips these past two weeks was that I was even able to get on the water.
My wife Leslie and I had our third boy, Ethan Alexander Hurley, about a week ago, and somehow I was able to get permission to leave her with a brand new baby, as well as a five and six-year-old, to go on a couple of fishing trips. I even went fishing on the same day that we would later be driving to the hospital to give birth.
Yes, by virtue of Fisherman’s Post I can call it “business.” However, if I’m being honest (and I think I can be honest here because she doesn’t typically read my writing), at least two of those three trips had nothing to do with business.
Sure I can make the argument, as I did with her, that it’s necessary to go out and do a product review on my new Minn Kota trolling motor. You know, the i-Pilot model with GPS so you can press an anchor button on the remote and the trolling motor will hold you in place.
Or I can make the argument that a certain amount of on-the-water practice with the fly rod is necessary to keep my skills sharp enough to continue the Cape Fear on the Fly series.
So what if I didn’t catch a Tidelines fish? So what if I didn’t catch a fish that wouldn’t look big no matter how far in front of me I held it out? In actuality, I hadn’t been fishing Mason’s or Masonboro. I had been going where few men have gone before me—I had been approved for fishing with a brand new infant in diapers at home.
Moving forward, now I need a good argument for why it’s necessary for me to travel to the Outer Banks. I need a good reason for me to leave town for a couple of nights, stay in a hotel room, and fish a day or two out of Hatteras. Do you think she’ll buy the trolling motor argument again?
