|
Dad wakes me before daylight, and I follow him out into the damp, quiet morning. I’m sleepy and my senses are dull. My first sensation is the feel of cool, wet grass slipping between my toes. Then the thudding sounds of the wharf boards under our heavy feet. I’m not excited, yet neither do I feel this excursion is optional. Even at a young age, there is something about the ritual that I inherently know has to be done. Done because I’m a boy and he’s my Dad and these are simply things a father and his son do.
I wait at the end of the wharf while Dad strips to his underwear and wades out to the piling to retrieve our Stauter boat. He had tied it there the previous evening when low tide and a southwest wind left the water too shallow and rough to get it into the boat lift. Now the Bay is heavy with high tide and the boat floats with a slack rope on water as calm as a lake.
I sit on the front seat and feel the breeze in my face and listen to the steady groan of the outboard trying to put me to sleep again. I watch the ends of the wharfs go by. A few of them have lights on. Occasionally I hear the whine of a boat lift that needs greasing. More fishermen we’ll see out somewhere today. All of them going after speckled trout. All of us keeping score and not admitting it.
Fishing in Mobile Bay is primarily about the trout. If someone says, “He is a good fisherman, ” you assume he is good at catching trout. Everything else, even redfish and flounder, are what you catch if you can’t catch trout. Byproduct. Consolation fish.
Dad slows the Stauter near the Grand Hotel. “Take the wheel, ” he tells me. I keep the motor at an idle while he works in the stern untangling the shrimp trawl. A moment later, he has the net and tickler chain out behind the boat. Then he positions the boards on either side of the boat and organizes the tow ropes at his feet. Finally he drops the boards over the gunnels one at a time, bracing and balancing himself against the ropes in a way I can’t imagine ever growing into. The lines feed out through the stern cleats and occasionally he holds them tight, and I feel the Stauter surge against the net. I’m worried that I’m doing something wrong. It all seems precarious and dangerous and surely catching something as small as a shrimp shouldn’t involve this much effort. But he’s not saying anything to me, lost in his private struggle.
I know the net is set when he lets go of the ropes and they pop tight against the cleats. The stern dips down, and the boat is pulled to a standstill. Dad turns and moves toward me, and I get up and let him take over again. He eases the throttle forward until the motor is groaning heavily, and the Stauter eases through the water, straining against its work.
Dad has told me how the net operates. I visualize the mouth of it being dragged behind us, the top lip held open with a line of corks and the bottom weighted with lead. The boards, a little forward of the net, spread the mouth into what I imagine looks like a whale shark. And between the boards drags the tickler, a loose length of galvanized chain designed to scrape against the muddy bottom and alarm the shrimp into jumping up into the mouth.
There is nothing more monotonous than pulling the trawl. But if we don’t have shrimp, we might as well go home. We’ve caught trout on artificial lures, but nothing compares to live shrimp. A trout fisherman feels an immediate loss of hope without them.
There are two more boats now, trawling quietly on either side of us. We can only see their navigation lights and the silhouette of their hulls, but we know who they are. They are good friends of Dad’s, and, even though within speaking distance, we might as well be separated by a mile. Everyone goes quietly, sleepily, competitively about his work. But I know we’ve already won a few points and a small amount of respect for being out there first.
After 15 minutes, Dad starts a wide turn near the Slatons’ wharf, and the trawl ropes angle and drip with tension. The sky is getting a pink glow to it over the tops of the pines in the east, and my stomach is growling. To distract myself from hunger, I try to guess where we’re going fishing. I can sense Dad working out all the variables in his head: tide, wind, rumors. But I know it will be one of only a few regular spots. They’ve been productive for generations: the Grand Hotel, Zundel’s or Point Clear beacon.
Dad slows the boat. It’s time to pull the net. He goes to the stern, gathers both tow ropes, and begins pulling and coiling them in wet slaps at his feet. I stay seated, out of his way, but anticipation crawls over me.
He gets the boards in and starts drawing the net over the gunnels. There are a few small croakers and catfish clinging to the mesh, but the bulk of our catch will be down the throat of the net, in a bulbous sack at the end. And it’s not until this sack comes dripping out of the water that you really know how you’ve done.
“Get the washtub, ” he says.
I hurry over and drag it next to him. Now is my opportunity to peer over the side and watch the sack appear. I can tell by the strain on Dad’s arms that it’s full of something. Then I see it come from the water heavy, bulging and dripping with moon jellies. He hefts the sack over the gunnel and drops it into the washtub. Then, he unties a small rope at the base of the net, lifts it from the tub and our catch spills into a puddle. Shrimp, croakers, catfish, eels, hogchokers and one stingray all swimming in a gelatinous soup of moon jellies. I grab the bait net and begin scooping the shrimp and dumping them into the bait well while Dad deals with the stingray.
Neither of us says anything, but we know we’ve done it right, each in our own way. And no matter what we end up catching, we’re that much closer to being men.
text by Watt Key • photo by matthew wood
