Catatonic

Most people think of summer as June and July with August beginning to see a cooling down, a tapering off toward fall. Not so, here on the far south, third coast. August and September are the hottest of all, hellishly hot months, with all of the fury of the earlier summer unleashed at once. Sidewalks can melt flipflops if you stand in one place too long, and even SPF 600 sunscreen isn’t enough as the sun sits relentlessly in the sky baking skin and bone, metal, paint and fiberglass, concrete and asphalt into a searing vision of what a small piece of hell might be like. The Gulf of Mexico continues to be a flat expansive desert, the monotony only broken by the occasional lazy jump of a shell-shocked mullet, or a sea turtle cautiously sticking its head above water to gulp a steaming breath of air before diving back down to the cool of the depths far below the surface.

Yesterday, I went offshore fishing with my friend Don O. and two other guys. Don owns the Catatonic, a 34 foot Baha Cruiser that he takes divers and fishermen out on. He’s traded the sky for the sea and seems to love it, and like a kid with a new toy is always enthusiastic about learning new and vital information about this new home of his.

We fueled up around eight AM and headed offshore, towards a spot out on the continental shelf some sixty miles away called the BFR. Our plan was to get out almost to the area, troll around the shrimp boats laying on anchor and then bottom fish the BFR (Big Fucking Rock) for Big Fucking Snapper and Amberjack. Seas were running only about a foot or two, and the Gulf, even that far out was like a big lake. No birds were in the sky, and only a few puffy clouds dotted the horizon, leaving the sun to chastise us for being so brain damaged as to be out on the open sea this time of year. A few flying fish vaulted into the low air just above the ripples skimming along like scaled kamikazes before splashing down again and disappearing into the indigo depths.

We put out the baits and trolled, cruising along about five or six knots as the white deck heated up to way past unbearable, making it difficult to even walk across without shoes, shiny chrome rails beaconed mockingly, waiting to burn hands if grasped for stability against the occasional groundswell passing lugubriously beneath. Spying a lone shrimper we made several passes, a ring around the rosy, but with no luck. Don set the autopilot to BFR and we continued to haul the baits behind us, until finally one of the other guys, Ike who has a lot of experience trolling out there suggested that we kick up the speed to about twelve knots or so, and soon the lures were skipping over the water at a speed tempting big fish like marlin and wahoo to take a big bite out of the wood and plastic baits .

Even at that speed the breeze generated by the boat was hot as a jen-aire range, and unlike our trip on the Soul Mate, no fish even bothered to look at the spread. Too damn hot. So we trolled past weed lines and other flotsam and jetsam without luck, heading for the BFR some fifteen more miles distant.

Near the BFR we cut bait and bring in the outriggers. It is now high noon, and the sun is brutal. We rig bottom rigs with several pounds of lead, multiple hooks, and drop them down with great anticipation through the crystal clear water. Not even a nibble down there at three hundred feet, and taking a bait-check is a major ordeal. Crank, and crank and crank, a good test for back and arm muscles, and my recently surgically repaired elbow. Several more passes, without success. Don decides it's time to move.

So, we try another spot, with the same non-results. Then another. Finally, about 1600 we decide to move to a spot closer in, and ran full throttle for almost an hour before finding it.

In the fighting chair, gazing back at the churning blue water, I listen to the hypnotic throb of the engines, occasionally staring off at the clouds on the horizon and the vista of nothingness before me. I am inward and introspective. Out here, for me it’s the opportunity to let my brain free spool, abstractly associating any event it wants to pick up on, from early fishing experiences as a child with my own dad, to my life as it stands today. Most importantly, it is my own time to connect with my creator in an environment uncluttered by the things of the land and people. I am in the presence of God, and I am small and unimportant in the great plan, yet as if in oxymoron, I am important enough to have this connection, and a place in the hierarchy of all things created by this inestimable power, important enough to be allowed a glimpse of understanding in this mystery, and the chance to be an eternal part of it. I am always in awe out here. Always reverent and listening, always at peace. Quiet and stilled for a seeming instant.

The engines slow, and we drift over Murphys Hole. Immediately, we all get vicious strikes in the one hundred foot depths. I haul up two big red snapper at a time, twisting and visible far below, white bellies flashing against the inky nothingness. Everyone else is catching fish, mostly keeper size, a few throwbacks. A huge shark lunges at a throwback struggling to head for the bottom, swallowing it in one eager gulp. The next drift over the hole, same results - more fish. The deck is slick with fish slime and blood. A school of cobia gather under the boat taunting us, as the air begins to lose an imperceptible amount of heat, barely a degree or two, but enough to give a sense that the day is waning away, the sun now at shoulder height in the west. Two more passes, and we have our collective limits of red snapper, just as a school of bottlenose and spotted dolphin invade, jumping and playing, chasing fish and managing to finally turn off the bite, as the sun starts to make its grand exit. Tiredly, we haul in the lines.

The run back in is long and rough as a groundswell begins to arrive from a recent tropical storm which lays dying on a distant shoreline far down in Mexico. The boat pounds and shakes, throwing plumes of frothing white water along the sides, and some up onto the back deck, washing the red slurry out of scuppers and back into the sea. About ten miles from town, from the island, the night descends in a sudden coma of pitch black blank, we cautiously reduce speed and creep in using the spotlight, radar, lighted buoys and markers to guide us back to the fingers and Dons boat stall across from where Menagerie sits.

Back inside the boathouse, I tiredly clean fish, thinking about this day and how it really doesn’t matter anymore if I catch anything or not. I thank Don as we leave, and he seems a bit nervous, as if relieved that he was able to finally put us on fish. He's a good Captain, and a true kind hearted human, always concerned with the other person. I assure him that it would’ve been OK either way. It’s fishing, not catching that makes the experience. I caught what I needed to, a moment of fleeting, elusive connection between eternity and existence.