The Weekly Fare . . . January 16, 2003

It Doesn't Take Much

I can't believe it, but at some point a man has to be honest with himself...

I am a "fish-head."

A "fish-head," as defined by my friends in High School, was an individual so taken with the pursuit of fishing that he thinks of nothing else. He / she will sacrifice just about anything to be on the water, rod in hand, quarry at one's feet...

Well, just about anything...

These days, family responsibilities keep my fishing forays to a minimum, but I do manage to get in two trips a year to Cape Hatteras for some of the finest surfcasting in the world. Surfcasting, for those unfamiliar with it, is "lazy man's fishing."(i.e. it's my kind of fishing.)

The real misnomer here is in the word "casting," which seems to imply the repetitiveness of fly-fishing. But all you really need to do while "surfcasting" is bait-up, heave the "rig" out to sea, place the pole in a sand spike (holder) and find your beach chair. That's pretty much it. What happens next is almost entirely up to you. Things you can do while surfcasting:

Smoke cigars, crack peanuts, drink beer, eat chili, study sand pipers, read books, clean your fingernails, build sand castles, play bocce, throw frisbee, hunt sea shells, play baseball, swim, talk politics, drink beer and thank God the French are all the way over there...

One can also take a nap.

This year's fall trip to the Outer Banks was glorious as always. The highlight of our trip coming on the final night as we ventured out to "the Point" that is the very tip of the hook of Cape Hatteras. The Point has to be one of the most magical places on the planet - right up there with rain-forest waterfalls and mile-high Swiss mountain peaks. If you catch it at just the right time of day and month you will witness one of the most glorious sunsets / moon-rises anywhere.

As the sun slowly slides beneath the western sky, its gentle rays reflect off miles of striated pink-peach clouds which cast an ethereal glow that envelopes everything in its warm embrace. The sand begins to radiate under one's feet and even the emerald green November water seems more inviting... No more than fifteen minutes pass and as the last remnant of color fades from the sky, a shy moon appears in the east - faint and golden yellow at first, peeking just above the waves, and then moments later glowing bold and brilliant as it pushes into the darkening sky.

One can't help but feel it. God writes some of his best poetry here...

To get out on the Point takes a reasonably hearty SUV, as well as the equipment required to land thirty pound Red Drum. Neither come cheaply. But this is no obstacle for "fish-heads," some of whom seem to be more interested in style points for their chrome rod racks and suitcase-sized tackle boxes than they are in learning the nuances of what may make them a better fisherman.

I have seen full-blown $45,000.00 SUVs with enough gear bolted fore and aft to put them well into the 50's. One night several years ago while walking the point, my friend Mark and I discovered a "fisherman" watching satellite TV on a bed in his van. He was talking on a cell phone, while his wife cooked dinner on a portable grill outside. Several feet away his unattended rods bent and swayed to the pull of the tide.

I suppose these are the guys that make the French glad we're over here... But I doubt they have their own version of "The Drum King."

We met "Ed" right as we pulled up in our own relatively large and gleaming SUV. He was standing next to his beat up old Subaru wagon that had such a conflagration of buckets and towels and gear in the back that it had long since become a "one-seater." Ed was perhaps 24 years old - thin and wiry with a wispy beard that said "earth-boy." I couldn't read the stickers on the back of his rusting little car but I imagined they had something to do with the inappropriateness of nuclear power and or the divinity of Jerry Garcia. Ed didn't look like he had a job. If he did, it wasn't paying much.

"Howdy," he offered as we were passing by with our gear.

Brother Jim knew a "local' with potentially good information when he saw one. "Hey there," he responded... "Anything hitting tonight?"

"Just got here," Ed replied. "But I heard there were acres of Drum beneath the boats a couple of miles out today... that means they'll be hanging out on the third reef just off the Point tonight..."

"Uh... OK...," one of us replied. We must have had the expressions of a pair of Holsteins. Ed knew a couple of "visit-Hatteras-twice-a-year-southwest-Virginia-greenhorns" when he saw them.

"What you need to do...," he offered with just a hint of a smile, "is take a piece of cut mullet like this (he showed us his bait bucket with about five pounds of perfectly cubed bait), go as far out as you feel safe in your waders and heave it as hard as you possibly can straight off the point - I mean straight out, due Southeast... and when I say heave... I mean heave... the third reef is about seventy yards away..."

Jim and I took in the advise. We had the proper bait and even the rods to get the job done, but if anyone was going to be getting way out in the water it was going to have to be Jim. I had left my waders back at the hotel. We thanked Ed for his advise and then returned to our vehicle to rig up.

Several minutes later we were "on the Point" standing just inside the breakers that relentlessly pound and move the sand in all directions. On either side of us were perhaps another twenty fisherman that were standing attentively with their lines glistening in the brilliant November moonlight. Nothing was biting.

And then along came Ed striding purposely toward the shore. He sat down his bait bucket without stopping and proceeding past all of the fisherman, ventured into the waves as he had instructed Jim and me to do. Without so much as a glance over his shoulder he stretched his huge homemade rod behind him as far as he could and in one Herculean motion whipped the rig out over the water.

I have never seen a cast like it in my life. The eight ounce weight with bait and tackle trailing behind must have easily traveled the seventy plus yards he described. Ed returned to within five feet of the other fisherman. Anyone who had seen the cast was watching to see what would come of it. It didn't take long. The twenty-two poles around him probably had a collective time in the water of eighteen hours. "The Drum King" had a fish on within two minutes.

And it was a big one.

Ed expertly worked the huge Drum, giving line when necessary and working it in methodically when the fish allowed. Within ten minutes he brought his first three-footer in and lifted it carefully from the surf. It sparkled and shone like a creature from another world as all of the fisherman on the far tip of the point admired it. But Ed didn't let it linger. He deftly unhooked the rig and then mumbling something to the effect of "sweet little fish... not big enough..." turned and carefully released it into the remnant of a large wave.

Several chrome-rod-racked, large SUV owners holding $300.00 rods stood speechless, mouth agape. You could hear the words repeated incredulously in their heads... "He's going to let THAT fish go??" Some of them had likely tried a lifetime to catch such a fish - only dreaming of doing so on such a glorious night.

Over the next hour or so, Ed caught three more.

No one else caught so much as a cold.

There are rare moments in life when you get to behold the work of a master at whatever he or she does... And when such moments come with the quiet reminder that it doesn't take money and it doesn't take style - that ultimately it doesn't take much more than good honest effort and genuine passion for the task at hand - then those moments are all the more inspiring and all the more sweeter for the Spirit's presence within them.

Ed provided us with just such a moment, and wherever he is with his old rusty car and homemade pole and leaky bucket full of mullet, I hope he is planning on fishing tonight... beneath a moon full of Hatteras magic... where the creation is so much at peace... where simple and good things still happen.

And it doesn't take much.