The Boy and the Bluefish
A classic Sabatelli family story.
*The following was written during the first day of classes with the group of high school writing students I’ll be teaching this year. We gave them the prompt (which teachers wrote along with them): “Take it from me, you don’t get what you expect when you have children,” which brought me to a memory of fishing with my eldest son—a story he likes to recall when telling people why he doesn’t particularly like to fish.
His father would convince him to go fishing. In Long Island Sound. In a tandem Kayak. For bluefish.
The boy did not want to go fishing in Long Island Sound in a kayak—and especially not for bluefish. On several occasions, his father had made a point of showing him the rows of perfectly triangular, razor-sharp teeth of the smaller ones he caught and brought home to cook on the grill, told him how when they take hold of their prey their jaws lock in place, steadily tightening till they bite through flesh, bone. He has told him that unlike other fish, they can see as well out of water as within it, how relentlessly they attack, schooling baitfish into big, tight silver-spinning balls before blitzing into them, teeth flashing, grabbing at anything that moves. At this time of year, they hunt juvenile bunker, rain bait they call them here because there are often so many of them dimpling the surface, it seems as if it is raining.
“What if a blue jumps into the kayak?” the boy asks, and his father reassures him. He’s caught untold blues from his kayak with his fly rod and a big, gaudy popping fly, and never has one jumped into the kayak with him.
Soon they are on the water, paddling through the early morning haze of New Haven harbor, an otherworldly tanker easing shoreward in the mist, gulls and terns flitting about looking water-ward for the tell-tall eruptions of blues smashing bait. The father has his fly rod at the ready, the boy his spinning rod resting against a knee. Tied to the end of its line are 10 inches of heavy steel leader since they can easily bite through standard fishing line, no matter what test weight. An enormous lure, nothing more than a white cylinder bespeckled with flashes of silver, rows of treble hooks, has one hook wedged into a lower eyelet, the line taut.
The boy has been instructed to yank as he reels to get his lure to making as much of a commotion as possible, which he is doing when a big, frothy explosion occurs just behind it, and his father yells, “keep it moving, faster, don’t slow up,” and when the blue grabs hold, his rod is suddenly bent and surging in his hands, the drag screaming, line peeling off it at a furious pace.
And, of course, as the blue gets closer, nearly 8 pounds and 2 feet of green-blue back, white belly twisting, that big eye sizing him up, it makes a last, tremendous leap and lands, jaws snapping, at the boy’s feet….
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Great prompt, fabulous response. Keep going, though!
I can add more!