The Armchair Outfitter

The last thing I expected on a business trip to Chicago was to see anything related to big game hunting.  Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the dreaded Man-Eaters of Tsavo at the Field Museum of Natural History.  These are the lions immortalized in the 1907 novel of the same name by Lt. Col. J.H. Patterson and later depicted in the movie adaptation, The Ghost and the Darkness.  The 1996 film with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas is not the only film version of Patterson’s story.  Bwana Devil is considered the first American color feature shot in 3-D.  Starring Robert Stack and Barbara Britton, the 1952 movie promised:  “A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!”

The most striking difference between the real-life lions and the cinematic versions is their lack of manes.  Apparently due to the extreme heat in Tsavo, lions there are often maneless.  The hides were trimmed down for display as trophy rugs, so the live specimens were even larger than they are as displayed at the Field Museum.  Nonetheless, taxidermist Julius Friesser did an excellent job restoring the skins and patching bullet holes considering the quarter-century or so the lions spent as carpeting.  Patterson sold the hides and skulls to the museum in 1924 for the considerable sum of $5,000.

I am struggling with an issue, and I have exhausted my own personal wisdom in attempting to resolve it.  It took me about fifteen minutes.  And so, gentle readers, I appeal to you for a solution.  I am trying to plan some fishing trips with the Sporting Wife for the summer, and I keep running into the same problem.  When I am at a ten on a ten-scale dreaming of a fishing vacation, I always hear the same refrain from my partner,”I never catch anything.”

This is patently untrue, as she has caught fish on most of the trips we have taken when she has actually deigned to fish.  She is correct only in that when she comes with me as a spectator, does not buy a license, and does not hold a rod for the entire trip, she does not catch any fish.  I love fishing as much as anyone, but I imagine if I were forced to watch someone else catch fish while I remained idle, it would be about as much fun for me as a root canal.

Her usual tactic to avoid fishing is to impose a series of contradictory conditions during the planning phase:

“I don’t want to get up too early; I can’t stay out all night.”

“I can’t stay out in the heat all day; I don’t want to get out in bad weather.”

“It’s not worth dragging all that stuff out for a few hours; I don’t want to board the dog and cat.”

You get the idea.  The only day for fishing, apparently, is one between 70 and 74 degrees, with low to moderate humidity, and with willing fish biting during the late morning to early afternoon hours.  How many such days have you ever had on the water?  Yeah, me neither.  We went out in the midday heat to catch the one good redfish pictured in the last article just before dark, and it was pretty chilly by then.  Supper that night after filleting and a shower was at about 22:00. (10:00 P.M. for you twelve-hour types.)

What am I to do?  I’m already to the point that I dread asking her to go.  I know if the trip does not come off perfectly, it will be an “I told you so” moment, but if I never take her with me, her pronouncement about not catching anything is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  She won’t fish because she never catches anything, and she never catches anything because she won’t fish.  The chicken and the egg.

photo by Amy N.

Some of you may be wondering what has kept me away from the site for so long.  It’s called a job, and for the time being, I am happy to have one.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work makes Jack a jerk.  Nevertheless, I do find time to slip away on occasion.  The Sporting Wife’s family came down for a visit the weekend of March 19, 2011.  In lieu of the traditional family activity, or as the Sporting Wife calls it, “sitting around looking at each other funny,” Uncle Gary, Cousin Tim, and I decided to get in some fishing.

This was the first trip for me since the oil spill, and things at Gulf State Park pier in the afternoon were pretty bleak.  It was the only time fishing salt water I’ve ever changed a shrimp for a fresh one.  I think the little bugger just gave up hope.  I made an executive decision and we lit a shuck for one of my favorite spots, Alabama Point.  We piddled with some saltwater catfish, locally known as hardheads, until evening.  We were about ready to leave, but I said that if our hard work were to pay off at all, it would either be in the 45 minutes before sunset or the 45 minutes after dark.

This redfish made me really look like I knew what I was doing by hammering my shrimp shortly after I announced my prediction.   I applied as much pressure as the 17-pound Momoi Diamond Line would take and turned him away from a concrete bridge piling.  He quickly responded by crossing my line with Uncle Gary’s.  I thought he was gone by the time we had untangled.  Reeling up the slack, I felt a powerful surge, and he put the best bow in my 15-foot surf rod I have seen to date.  It was touch and go until I slid him up onto the wet sand.  Then when I tried to lip him, he bit down on the three fingers I had in his mouth.  The hook popped free at the crucial juncture, but I shovel-passed him about 5 yards onto the beach.  Gary couldn’t stop laughing.  He suggested that I slosh the fish around in the water to rinse off some of the sand that was sticking to him.  “Oh no,” I said.  “He’s not getting near water again until he’s stone dead.”

We called the family to meet us at the pier for pictures, and we went back to the cleaning station to get him ready for the table.  He weighed 8 1/4 pounds and was 30 inches long.  Filleting him under the pier lights, I noticed many small parasites attached to his skin.  These pennelid copepods can be a sign of stress in marine fish, but they can also be a cause of stress.  It’s a chicken-egg issue, so I can’t make any generalizations from their presence about the health of the Gulf.  They are unsightly, but I removed them with the skin, and the resulting fillets provided a late dinner for our fishing party.