Roddy the Fisherman

         

Roddy the Fisherman

Roddy always woke up before sunrise, but it wasn't often that he left such a small gap between the lying down and the getting up again.
          His eyes were blurry and bloodshot from the night before - third day of fishing in a row and his wife was beginning to wonder if she had made a mistake in getting him that fishing rod for Christmas.
          The cat attached itself to his foot as he stumbled down the last of the stairs which were hard to see despite the room being partly lit by a few surviving strands of Christmas lights still attached to the handrail. Who paints stairs black anyway? - no good for fishermen like him who need to get up early like this. He cursed quietly but aggressively at the cat for getting under his feet and informed her in no uncertain terms what would happen if she did it again. He realised the partial futility of trying to keep quiet as Thomas, the butcher next door had already arrived for work and was yelling at his dog for not sitting down while he did something with the sheep who were about to become somebody's New Year's dinner.
          Roddy's friend, Sally, would be picking him up in a few minutes. She was the only other fisherman that Roddy knew in the area. Roddy reckoned that if you can't understand why two people would get up at such a time of morning to go fishing, then you've probably either never done it before, or you didn't do it right when you did.
          He gulped down his coffee - a drink that he hated, but it's what fishermen drink - and abused the cat for getting under his feet again before sitting in the dark and lighting a cigarette. He sat quietly for a moment, wondering if Sally should be called a fisherwoman or whether there was another word altogether to describe a fisherman of the opposite sex.
          It was so dark in the house when Sally arrived that the only trace of him being there at all was the glow of his cigarette which was suspended in mid-air just above where Sally knew the dining table to be. Roddy had prepared his gear the night before which hadn't taken him long as all he had was a short boat rod with a nearly un-castable reel on it, a small box with a couple of hooks and sinkers in it, and an old, leaking bread bag which contained his frozen bait.
          Sally was training to be a midwife and in the car, she told Roddy about how doctors put on sterile gloves. He wanted to ask questions about it but he let her talk instead. He was surprised how much conversation could be like fishing. Sometimes you pull up on the rod and hook into the mouth of a good yarn, and sometimes you just need to let it run for a bit before doing your part and reeling in a bit with a question or something. When there was a break in the instructions, Roddy turned the conversation around by asking if she ever wore those sterile gloves while fishing to avoid getting fishy hands? No, she didn't.
          "Suppose you wanted to, though? You know, to keep your hands clean?"
          "Could if you wanted to, I guess."
          It would be another ten minutes before they arrived at the pier and Roddy could see a few drops of rain landing on the windscreen of the car as they drove. This didn't bother him though - fishermen like him don't mind a bit of rain, and he had a feeling the fish wouldn't mind it either seeing as they were already wet.
          In the car park, Roddy had just about leapt out of the window of the car instead of using the door. He was so excited that his hands were shaking, but he tried to keep it calm because fishermen never over-state things, or make a big deal out of anything. It's all common ground to them. Instead, he kept it to a smile which he only permitted half of his mouth to wear and with their gear firmly in hand, Sally and Roddy made their way out to the pier.
          Roddy's first cast was a spectacular display of technique and power that had shot out at light-speed, but had travelled only about five metres in-front of him. He leaned his rod against the dimly lit railing, tightened his line a little and sat down as if everything had just gone according to plan.
          "Got to make that sinker hit the water with force, I reckon, if it's gonna hit the sand and stay planted there, ay."
          "Yeah - " Sally had replied, more focussed on setting up her rod which was a nice, two-piece surf-caster with a big spinning reel on it.
          Roddy watched her for a bit and couldn't help but quietly admire the experienced hands that were pulling the line through the guides, tying on the rig, baiting the hooks and choosing the sinker for the conditions. He sat and watched his rod against the sky which was slowly coming to life as the morning sun rose. Yeah - this is what fishermen like, he thought. Good conditions for fish, he thought.
          A couple of hours passed and nothing much had happened, but Roddy didn't mind. He had been able to get some practise baiting his own hooks and casting with that monstrous reel and short rod of his, and by the fifth time, he was actually getting pretty good. Enough to impress another fisherman who had been spying on him while he worked. Roddy had noticed, but hadn't made a big deal out it - fishermen don't make a big deal out of being good at something.
          It was just as Roddy had picked up his rod to re-bait it again that he had noticed his line slowly travelling towards him. Then stopping directly under him. Then turning and going straight past him. Then turning again and coming back. Roddy felt the sudden surge of excitement fishermen get when they know there's a fish on the line, only, he had never seen his line move like this before - so calm, so steady. He reeled his line in and once it became tight, his reel made a noise he had never before heard. It wasn't the noise he had heard on the fishing shows when a big fish hits, and it wasn't the noise he had thought he would hear. Rather it was the terrific clunk of an immovable line meeting a heavy fish. Roddy, who hadn't known anything about setting drag on his enormous reel was pulled hard to the rail of the pier, and he started to pull back. Hard.
          Resounding "oooo's" and "aaaah's" could be heard from the other fishermen around the area as he tried his best to look as though this was normal business to him. His rod which he had only ever seen as a straight stick until now was suddenly in a U shape and giving no signs of letting up any time soon. In a mixture of excitement, he moved back to the railing to see if he could see the fish that was causing all the commotion. And he did see it. Briefly.
          As he pulled up on the rod and reeled in as quickly as he could, an enormous circular shadow begun to surface and all at once Roddy knew what he had on the line. It was the biggest stingray that he had ever seen in his life. It had never occurred to him that it would be possible to hook one of these creatures - that they must eat the same thing as all the other fish in the sea. Now he had to deal with it.
          Needless to say, Roddy went home without the stingray that day and had learned more than one lesson about fishing - especially about handling a big fish. It had snapped the 80lb braid that he had on his line and he came to see that he never had a chance in a month of Sundays of pulling that behemoth of a stingray up the pier. One thing Roddy knew for sure though was that fishermen always need a story about a good fish that got away on them.
          He'd be coming back again tomorrow to see if he could get his hook back.
          Over the next few months, Roddy met other fishermen and fisherwomen (or whatever he was supposed to call them), and found out that there were other people out there just as crazy about fishing as he was. He fished in the sunshine, he fished in the rain, he fished in the wind, he fished all day and he fished all night. He fished until he had no more bait left out of a brand-new packet of prawns, and he fished until he couldn't cast anymore. It could be confidently said that if anybody ever got hooked on anything, it was Roddy on fishing.