First of all, thank you to all who sent me birthday greetings. How humbling and fortunate I feel to have so many people wish me a good day! And it was better than a good day, it was a great day. We (my son Cole, his wife Pam, and I—Cowboy opted to stay home and keep an eye on Cody) fished off the shore of Key West. I caught the first fish, a Jack something and it remained the biggest for a time. My fish was about 30 inches long and made for a good dinner. If you like fish. I caught about 15 or 20 fish, all different kinds, Pam caught more, and then there was Cole. He caught a couple of fish bigger than my Jack Something. But things got better.
Meanwhile, the captain attached a line to the top of the boat and baited it with one of the larger fish, maybe two feet long, and cast it way out yonder. He said, “We’re gonna catch a BIG fish.” Well, it took a while, maybe 3 hours. I had my eyes peeled on that line and it just sat there, blowing in the wind, and suddenly it took off. Cole grabbed the reel and began winding it in, but the reel’s handle fell off, and the fish decided to go for broke and the 35-pound test line zipped from the reel, all the way to the end. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip. Cole was stuck with twirling the little gizmo that holds the handle, and pulled and pulled, and finally the captain put the handle back on the gizmo, and Cole started reeling. The fish finally realized it was being towed in and started to fight. Cole is a big guy, but this fish was bigger than he, and the fight was on.
The captain said, “It’s a shark, and it will weigh 200 pounds.” Oh my gosh. 30 minutes passed. 45 minutes, an hour, no sign of the fish, but it obviously was going for broke. Finally, the line was straight down from the boat, zig-zagging under the boat, so the captain shifted the boat from one direction to another. Cole kept at it, and suddenly Pam shouted, “There he is, right there,” and his dorsal fin rose out of the water, all 18 inches of it.
“What do you want to do?” the captain asked, put him in the boat or put him back in the water. We all sort of sighed, and said, “Water.” We let him go, and Cole sat down. “300,” the captain said, “that big boy weighed 300, maybe 350.”
Not exactly like Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” but a pretty good fish story for an old Montana woman and the shark lived on.
