Tidelines – September 29, 2011
I’ve often considered myself a very lucky man, and that luck I’ve enjoyed has come over the years in many ways. There’s the random luck, such as winning big or often at tournament raffles. Then there’s the luck that really is attributable to hard work (the “luck” of the success of Fisherman’s Post) or preparation (the “luck” of fishing in the right place at the right time with the right equipment).
And I also enjoy a more traditional and sentimental luck, the luck of marrying the woman of my dreams and raising two happy and healthy boys.
In spite of this belief that I am a very lucky person, though, is the reality that I do not carry that luck with me when it comes to good weather for Fisherman’s Post tournaments. Or perhaps I should clarify even more—I don’t have good luck with weather forecasts for Fisherman’s Post events.
Two weekends in a row we had fishing tournaments scheduled. Two weekends in a row we faced horrible weekend weather and sea forecasts on Thursday and Friday, the days that people decide whether or not to fish these events. And two weekends in a row the reality of the weather on Saturday and Sunday was much better than was predicted on Thursday and Friday.
However, as with any group that faces adversity together, our participants that still elected to participate in the NC Flatfish Championship and the NewBridge Bank Wild King Classic ended each weekend with the shared sense of community, a bond with the others that also had to overcome obstacles to bring fish to the weigh-in.
Our tournament participants for both events seemed pretty satisfied at their respective Awards as we all shared food, drink, and stories. At the NewBridge WKC, I enjoyed hearing about a guy in a 17’ single wide jon boat wearing a trash bag for a raincoat and trolling a menhaden on a surf rod off the coast of OakIslandwhere he landed a 30+ lb. king in the middle of a bunch of KMT anglers.
At the NC Flatfish, a lot of the talk was about the top two boats bringing in the same two-fish weight total and first prize being awarded on time. Add to that the story of the first place boat catching both of their two citation fish in less than one minute. And then to that story add that the second place boat had landed an 11-pounder just a couple of days before the tournament.
My favorite conversation of both weekends, however, was easily the time I spent on a bay boat docked at Inlet Watch Marina listening toSouthport’s Ricky Bishop talk about anything that crossed his mind. He talked about his recipe for grouper salad (perhaps the best I’ve ever tried), where you start by boiling water for 20 minutes (and watching it boil) before you add any fish.
Then he shared some stories of taking “river shrimpers” offshore to go commercial grouper fishing with him, a 10-day trip where they had nine boxes after the first 24 hours, but then it took them nine more days plagued by high winds and seas to fill up the tenth box. The guys had spent at least three days down below, not coming up to eat, drink, or even go to the bathroom. To be fair, Ricky had warned them before starting, “We aren’t coming back.”
He told me he liked the recipes that Ty Conti wrote for our paper. I tried to correct him and tell him that he had us mistaken with NC Sportsman. Ricky didn’t care. He just said he liked reading about fishing when he went to the bathroom in the morning.
Then he finished by asking me if I had ever seen a beeliner so big that it was orange, a color occurrence he had noted in beeliners that got to be about 4 lbs. I told him I hadn’t, and then he told me that he hadn’t really either because he was color blind.
Yes, I think Ricky had been drinking a little bit that day. And yes, I already want to spend more time with the guy, whether it’s commercial fishing (with a good weather forecast) or preparing another batch of grouper salad (he can even call me Ty).
