The Future of Sportfishing

The coast of Ireland wasn't the same as when Rory was a boy. He was eighty now, and he could remember all the way back to when they used to haul in five fish a day. Now people were lucky to get one in a month of sportfishing, and that too little to keep.

This was an observation that escaped most of the fishermen these days. They were ecstatic whenever they did get a fish. That's what ignorance did to you. Lowered expectations had brought the joy back into being a sportsman. It had also kept the objective situation from improving. This was the way it was! One fish a month. The young things out there on their foils, sixteen, eighteen, twenty years old, that's what they'd grown up with. Plus, there were other things out there, unnatural things in the water that didn't belong there. Stuff that was taken for granted now.

Rory didn't use a hydrofoil. They were ungodly noisy. If you want to catch fish, you need to be quiet. Rory still used an old wooden rowboat, with carbon muffler oars. He and Willis went out every Sunday morning to catch fish. Willis was also eighty, or thereabouts.

"Bad weather today," said Willis that morning.

Rory nodded.

They pushed the boat into the water and rowed out on the pewter bay. The sun hadn't come up yet and what light there was seemed to come from nowhere, no source, but there was enough for them to find their way all the same. They got out far enough into the bay that the little boat began to rock slightly. Willis unscrewed his thermos of coffee.

Rory looked out at the ocean. "Let's head out a ways."

"Storms, they said."

"When?"

"In the morning."

"It's not stormy now."

Willis shrugged.

"We want to catch fish, we've got to get out of this bay. The only thing we're going to catch in this bay is plastic."

Willis took his time drinking half the thermos of coffee, screwed the top back on and picked up the oars again, and they rowed out into the sea. By the time they got there the water already had more chop on it. The little boat bobbed up and down. The sun had risen but couldn't be seen; the sky was all cloud, from north to south.

Rory set his pole up and slid his fingers into the bag of bait. The squid was still cold, half-frozen, squid from Japan, shipped in just for crazy sportsmen like them who just had to keep fishing, damn the drain on their bank accounts. He pierced the squid with the hook and dropped his line in the water. Willis put on a lure.

"What are you doing that for?" Willis was stupid with lures. Anything Willis thought was pretty, he figured the fish would too. He figured the fish thought like he did. Rory didn't give either of them that much credit.

Willis shrugged. "I bought it, might as well use it."

"You've never caught anything here with a lure. Here, use my bait."

"I have too. There's plenty of stuff in here'll go after a lure."

"Have it your way." Rory leaned back in the boat and looked up at the sky. The storm was coming up, sure enough. The breeze that hit his face was wet, and stronger than when they'd set out. He sat there while Willis jerked his line about, reeled it in, cast it again. He looked like a fool.

When the chop got high enough to rock him back and forth in the boat, Rory wedged himself in and gripped the gunwales. He figured the sun was high by now, but the day was no lighter. Willis had given up jiggling the lure around and had wedged himself in the bow with his coffee. Fishing was being out on the water as much as it was catching a fish, but even the prettiest storm, wild and real like a black and white photograph brought to life, could leave you feeling a little green. When the rain started Willis looked about ready to head in.

"Not yet," said Rory. "Wife'll be after me about why didn't I stop in at the store if I come home early."

After twenty minutes the storm was starting to come into its own, blowing cold rain in their faces from all directions, so of course it was then that one of them finally got a bite on the line.

"I'll be damned, Willis," said Rory. "There IS something that'll go after those lures."

Willis was already cranking on the reel. The pole was bent nearly double. Rory grabbed the oars.

The big fish began pulling them out to sea, hauling the boat through the heavy chop, and Rory didn't dare slow them down too much for fear of snapping Willis's line. He knew Willis wouldn't let it go. The old fool had too many years of experience in him to mishandle a big catch like this. The fish zigged and zagged, but kept them on a course away from land, which Rory noted. Still, even if they wasted hours rowing back through the wind and chop, it'd be worth it for their first catch in weeks.

"This is a good one," shouted Willis over the wind, his old fingers working like lightning to let out slack then crank on the reel again.

"You bastard," said Rory.

It was ten or fifteen minutes until their catch slowed at all. Its course became more meandering, at times drifting back toward shallow water. Rory was glad. The cold and wet was seeping in, and the row in would be wearisome. The wind made it hard to keep his hood up.

As Willis reeled in the final yards of line it was apparent that the fish would outrank most of the rare beauties they'd caught so far. His pole was still doubled, even though the struggle had stopped. Rory got the net ready. The boat was bucking on the waves as Willis's catch came up in the soupy water high enough for Rory to see its pale bulk. It was huge.

"Get it over the side! Don't pull us both in now!"

But as Willis reeled in the last of the line, he stopped, scowling. Then he reached for his knife.

Rory tried to stand up high enough to see, gripping the gunwales in the howling wind. Willis cut the line and Rory saw through the murk the pale outline, the seeping blood where the hooks of the shiny lure had pierced flesh, before it sank down again unseen. He collapsed back down into the back of the boat in disgust, glancing at the shoreline that now lay darkly distant through the worsening storm. That was it.

"Bloody mermaids," said Rory.