of all the odd things i've done throughout the course of my lifetime, not once have i been in a professional fishing tournament. this sad and sorry fact is about to change, for i will be fishing in a professional tournament this very weekend (i'm not sure what 'professional' means in this context, but i threw it in there to sound all dramatic-like. oooooo!).
i wrote the following to commemorate this momentous occasion, but also in memoriam to the last time i went fishing. it appeared in a public forum not too long ago, so it's missing my trademark potty-mouth ("YouHandsomeDevil, where good taste comes to die!"), but it appears i'm still banging Semicolon's wife. i'm such a semicolon whore....
a lot of this is reference to inside jokes and shit, so just pretend like it's fucking hilarious.
i wrote the following to commemorate this momentous occasion, but also in memoriam to the last time i went fishing. it appeared in a public forum not too long ago, so it's missing my trademark potty-mouth ("YouHandsomeDevil, where good taste comes to die!"), but it appears i'm still banging Semicolon's wife. i'm such a semicolon whore....
a lot of this is reference to inside jokes and shit, so just pretend like it's fucking hilarious.
enjoy, bitches.
Most of what you are about to read is true – only time will reveal which parts are fact and which will become legend. the names have been (awkwardly) changed to protect the (laughably!) innocent.
Most of what you are about to read is true – only time will reveal which parts are fact and which will become legend. the names have been (awkwardly) changed to protect the (laughably!) innocent.
The Birth of the BassMaster Legend
The Bass is a feared and terrible creature, not to be trifled with on this earth…
We hunt him, rather we hunt each other, the Bass and I, and the Bass does not rest. Hence we do not rest. We start early, before sunrise, to catch him off guard.
Our crew is a gnarled, seasoned assortment. Waters has hunted Bass his entire life and patrolled these icy waters since his release from government service. We know better than to inquire about this last point; some things are better left unknown. Waters has lost three limbs to the Bass, and today his stoic countenance betrays the true depth of his vendetta… a vendetta that is neither drawn against enemy nor friend… simply ‘opponent.’
Colton carries with him a lifetime of open water experience. He cut his teeth training America’s Cup skippers in the warm Pacific waters while secretly organizing the single most successful rum smuggling racket in the Caribbean Sea since British colonial rule in the Americas. Colton’s strength is speed, pure speed, and in light of the scars our vessel has accrued over its war-hearty generation, his experience is invaluable.
And the madman, the hunter, I. I’ve spent countless nights surrounded by the most criminal of lunatics, and countless days unraveling their twisted thoughts and scribblings. Though the psychological effects of this obsession are beginning to wear away at my nerves, I’ve developed a nearly clairvoyant understanding of the irrational mind. Though armed with a razor-sharp intellect, to conquer the mad I must descend into madness. On this excursion, our only chance of success is to embrace this skill with absolute certainty.
The night before the expedition, it’s discovered that a number of stress fractures have developed in the hull of our craft that threaten to rip the engine from the boat. The damage is extensive, enough to make the most hardened Arctic crab fisherman turn tail and run, but Waters is unshaken. He snarls, eyeing the possible disaster, then laughs. He is Ahab. Nothing will stop him from excising these demons on this day. He lights a torch from a smoldering ember of the previous night’s cooking fire and daftly welds bracings to the engine and transom. “She’ll hold,” he says with satisfaction, nodding and contemplating his handiwork, “she’ll hold.”
I bid farewell to our long-toothed sea dog, and we shove off under the cover of fog in the morning twilight.
The water is deceptively quiet this morning; like glass. We, like the water, are tranquil and silent, contemplating the long day ahead as we cross into the horizon. Soon we will reach the international zone off the coast of Canada where the only law is piracy and the risks men take for glory are paid… often in flesh.
The boat coasts to a gentle rest, and the motor settles to a hum and stops. Without a word we gear up and cast our lines into the deep and continue on until the only sounds that break the stillness are the pointed whisks of fishpoles. Waters listens intently to the vibrations on his line; he senses something different about the rhythmic pulse of electrons as they dance in and out of phase, as if sensing the brainwave connection between fish and line and man…. Some creature in the deep stalks its prey…
Waters closes his eyes, tuning into the scene unfolding beneath the waves, as the monster edges closer to the bait, unable to resist its hypnotic twitching. With a flash, the monster snatches the twitching lure and turns to escape with its dinner, but Waters has anticipated the creature’s every intention and is ready with his own counterattack. He sets his teeth in a grisly smirk, wheels back, and throws his rod backward like a lightning bolt… or at least it seemes so when black thunderheads roll in and electricity shoots from the sky in tandem with the strike from the Bass.
Fish do not feel pain when hooked, but instinct drives them to run, and run he did. The Bass’s flight against Waters’ line drew the full weight of the boat along the shoreline, and every thrash the fish made drew lightning bolts out of the sky, as the driving wind hurled icy rain at our crew.
When it was over, the clouds broke open and sunshine poured over the triumphant captain. He held his adversary up to the light in glory with no malice in his heart. Both man and beast had fought well that day.
Waters whispered some ancient words to the Bass, patted him on the head and set him free. The fish looked back and seemed to pause in respect to his own opponent, a man who he had met before and was likely to meet again. Then he swam away.
But not before taking Waters’s thumb with him…
Waters laughed, he had lost limbs in such skirmishes, and a thumb seemed an easy price to pay for such an encounter. Colton did not agree. He dove in after the fish, caught him by the tail and hurled the beast back into the boat. The Bass knew Colton had broken the sacred trust between man and fish, but Colton’s intentions were clear to everyone, and the fish began to understand. Screaming at the Bass to return the stolen digit, Colton searched its gullet for the missing thumb.
The fish spat Waters’s thumb onto the deck, shook free and plunged back into the water, making no effort to acknowledge his captor this time. Colton, with eyes ablaze, stood at the bow waving the thumb to the sky, and with dark, menacing clouds gathering behind him boomed, “I am Colton, Bass! Remember my name for you shall hear it again! Do you hear me, Bass!? I am Colton! COOOOOOOOLTON!!”
No one said a word for many hours, but we all knew that on this day a new BassMaster had been born.
The Bass is a feared and terrible creature, not to be trifled with on this earth…
We hunt him, rather we hunt each other, the Bass and I, and the Bass does not rest. Hence we do not rest. We start early, before sunrise, to catch him off guard.
Our crew is a gnarled, seasoned assortment. Waters has hunted Bass his entire life and patrolled these icy waters since his release from government service. We know better than to inquire about this last point; some things are better left unknown. Waters has lost three limbs to the Bass, and today his stoic countenance betrays the true depth of his vendetta… a vendetta that is neither drawn against enemy nor friend… simply ‘opponent.’
Colton carries with him a lifetime of open water experience. He cut his teeth training America’s Cup skippers in the warm Pacific waters while secretly organizing the single most successful rum smuggling racket in the Caribbean Sea since British colonial rule in the Americas. Colton’s strength is speed, pure speed, and in light of the scars our vessel has accrued over its war-hearty generation, his experience is invaluable.
And the madman, the hunter, I. I’ve spent countless nights surrounded by the most criminal of lunatics, and countless days unraveling their twisted thoughts and scribblings. Though the psychological effects of this obsession are beginning to wear away at my nerves, I’ve developed a nearly clairvoyant understanding of the irrational mind. Though armed with a razor-sharp intellect, to conquer the mad I must descend into madness. On this excursion, our only chance of success is to embrace this skill with absolute certainty.
The night before the expedition, it’s discovered that a number of stress fractures have developed in the hull of our craft that threaten to rip the engine from the boat. The damage is extensive, enough to make the most hardened Arctic crab fisherman turn tail and run, but Waters is unshaken. He snarls, eyeing the possible disaster, then laughs. He is Ahab. Nothing will stop him from excising these demons on this day. He lights a torch from a smoldering ember of the previous night’s cooking fire and daftly welds bracings to the engine and transom. “She’ll hold,” he says with satisfaction, nodding and contemplating his handiwork, “she’ll hold.”
I bid farewell to our long-toothed sea dog, and we shove off under the cover of fog in the morning twilight.
The water is deceptively quiet this morning; like glass. We, like the water, are tranquil and silent, contemplating the long day ahead as we cross into the horizon. Soon we will reach the international zone off the coast of Canada where the only law is piracy and the risks men take for glory are paid… often in flesh.
The boat coasts to a gentle rest, and the motor settles to a hum and stops. Without a word we gear up and cast our lines into the deep and continue on until the only sounds that break the stillness are the pointed whisks of fishpoles. Waters listens intently to the vibrations on his line; he senses something different about the rhythmic pulse of electrons as they dance in and out of phase, as if sensing the brainwave connection between fish and line and man…. Some creature in the deep stalks its prey…
Waters closes his eyes, tuning into the scene unfolding beneath the waves, as the monster edges closer to the bait, unable to resist its hypnotic twitching. With a flash, the monster snatches the twitching lure and turns to escape with its dinner, but Waters has anticipated the creature’s every intention and is ready with his own counterattack. He sets his teeth in a grisly smirk, wheels back, and throws his rod backward like a lightning bolt… or at least it seemes so when black thunderheads roll in and electricity shoots from the sky in tandem with the strike from the Bass.
Fish do not feel pain when hooked, but instinct drives them to run, and run he did. The Bass’s flight against Waters’ line drew the full weight of the boat along the shoreline, and every thrash the fish made drew lightning bolts out of the sky, as the driving wind hurled icy rain at our crew.
When it was over, the clouds broke open and sunshine poured over the triumphant captain. He held his adversary up to the light in glory with no malice in his heart. Both man and beast had fought well that day.
Waters whispered some ancient words to the Bass, patted him on the head and set him free. The fish looked back and seemed to pause in respect to his own opponent, a man who he had met before and was likely to meet again. Then he swam away.
But not before taking Waters’s thumb with him…
Waters laughed, he had lost limbs in such skirmishes, and a thumb seemed an easy price to pay for such an encounter. Colton did not agree. He dove in after the fish, caught him by the tail and hurled the beast back into the boat. The Bass knew Colton had broken the sacred trust between man and fish, but Colton’s intentions were clear to everyone, and the fish began to understand. Screaming at the Bass to return the stolen digit, Colton searched its gullet for the missing thumb.
The fish spat Waters’s thumb onto the deck, shook free and plunged back into the water, making no effort to acknowledge his captor this time. Colton, with eyes ablaze, stood at the bow waving the thumb to the sky, and with dark, menacing clouds gathering behind him boomed, “I am Colton, Bass! Remember my name for you shall hear it again! Do you hear me, Bass!? I am Colton! COOOOOOOOLTON!!”
No one said a word for many hours, but we all knew that on this day a new BassMaster had been born.
-the end-
1 comment:
you know ryan, on a peaceful day, when the wind subsides, and the brooke ceases its babble....you can almost hear the fish laughing at you.
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