GET THE NET!

Adventure creaked and groaned against her mooring lines. The noise was distracting, and it made me feel uneasy. I checked the wind indicator: 8 to 15 knots. I opened the hatch and looked out at the wind barreling down the bay.

Nope. Too windy.

I had promised Kathy the day before that we’d go fishing, and before I knew it, today had arrived. Secretly, I’d been hoping for a legitimate excuse to get out of it, and the weather seemed to have delivered. Relieved, I started thinking about a nap as I climbed back inside the boat.

Kathy was absorbed on her phone, which I took as another encouraging sign that I had successfully dodged the bullet. Then she looked up.

“Are you ready to go FISHING?”

“Umm… isn’t it too windy?”

Unbeknownst to me, Kathy had already prepared for this line of retreat. “It’s calming,” she said, unconcerned. “Besides, it’s Cinco de Mayo. I want fish tacos.”

She threw off her blanket, and I noticed she already had her shoes on — a very bad sign.
I looked her in the eyes and immediately understood that her mind was made up. My shoulders slumped.

I tied the dinghy off the stern so we could lower the 9.9 horsepower two-stroke Mercury onto it. I suggested we leave the electric trolling motor behind, but Kathy insisted we needed it.

“Besides,” she added, “we should see if the transom can handle both motors.”

I grumbled as I shifted the trolling motor over and barely managed to squeeze the outboard into place.I grumbled as I shifted the trolling motor aside and barely managed to squeeze the outboard into place. In my head, I calculated the added weight: thirty pounds for the motor, another twenty for the battery.

Our trusty 9.9 could get us out of almost any predicament, but now we were heading out into a windy pass with an extra fifty pounds hanging off the stern of our small inflatable.Kathy then insisted we install the fish finder.

It needed its own battery. I mounted the transducer over the stern while my hands cramped in the freezing water. I dropped one washer into the sea, then another, while the dinghy bounced in the chop. When I finally looked up, I saw thick electrical cables snaking around the gasoline tank. I sighed.

Meanwhile, Kathy assembled the rest of the gear: rods, tackle box, net, bucket, life jackets, snacks, water, and the VHF radio. One by one, she handed everything down for me to pack into the dinghy.

She climbed aboard carrying an extra cushion in hand to sit on. I stared in disbelief at what little room remained.

I looked back toward the bay and made one final attempt.
“You know it’s going to be a lot windier once we leave the harbor.” Kathy didn’t even turn around. She merely motioned forward with one hand.

I tried turning the outboard, but the trolling motor limited the range of motion. A quick test of full power drove the stern deep into the water. We weren’t getting on a plane.

As we exited the harbor, whitecaps stretched across the water. I slowed briefly, hoping Kathy would reconsider. Instead, she pointed toward Spieden Island, a mile and a half away across the strait.

“There!”

I looked at the chop ahead of us and swallowed hard.

The dinghy slammed through the waves while I imagined every possible mechanical failure that could leave us stranded and drifting towards oblivion.

“This is madness,” I muttered, confident the drone of the outboard would mask my words.

Kathy turned around. “What?“

“Nothing.”

We reached the lee side of Spieden Island safely and mostly dry. Kathy was already eager to start fishing.

I was ordered to switch over to the trolling motor. As I struggled to find footing among the wires and batteries while raising one motor and lowering the other, Kathy already had her line in the water.

“How deep are we?” she barked.

I stopped what I was doing and looked over to the depth monitor. “One hundred feet.”

“Closer to shore!” I looked longingly at my own fishing rod, then back at the motor. “Closer!”

I nudged us toward shore. Just as I was about to pick up my rod, Kathy’s pole bent violently over. “I’ve got something! It’s big!”

I froze.

Kathy looked at me while struggling against the fish. “Get the net!”

I frantically searched the dinghy. My eyes darted left and right. “Where’s the net?”

“It’s in the bag!” she yelled. “GET THE NET!”

I found it, and without thinking or regard for my safety, dove into action.

Once removed from the bag, I noticed it was folded shut. I had never seen this net before and had no idea how it worked. I wrestled with it uselessly while Kathy’s rod bowed toward the water and the dinghy headed sideways against the current. The monster was dragging us.

For one horrifying moment, I imagined what might happen if we actually got the creature into the boat. “GET. THE. NET!” Kathy screamed.

Panicked, I tried to open the net again, but it closed back on itself. “I’m trying!”

“Just pull it open!”

“That’s what I’m doing! You do it!” I snapped back, instinctively reaching toward her rod.

Her head turned unnaturally, 180 degrees toward me. Her eyes and face flushed red. Her voice turned low and raspy. “DON’T… YOU… TOUCH… MY… POLE.”

I withdrew my hand immediately.

Motivated now entirely by fear, caring not if it broke, I yanked the net open. But before I could celebrate my success, the fish escaped.

Kathy screamed in frustration and turned toward me with pure wrath in her eyes. “You! YOU!…”

I slowly backed away.

Then she threw her head toward the sky and yelled in rage. A flock of birds flushed from the trees on shore. Without another word, she dropped her line back into the water.

I cautiously reached for my own fishing rod.

“How deep are we?” she demanded. She was ready for another round. “Closer to shore!”

I quietly set my rod back down and resumed steering the trolling motor.

Moments later, Kathy snagged the bottom. “My line’s stuck!” The implication, somehow, was this was my fault. I could still see the glow of anger in her eyes as I carefully throttled down.

For the next several minutes we tried every technique imaginable to free the lure. None worked. Finally, Kathy cut the line but, unwilling to sacrifice her favorite jig entirely, assigned me the task. I tied the line off and used the dinghy’s outboard to break it loose. The lure broke, but the weights remained somewhere beneath us.

While Kathy watched a knot-tying tutorial on her phone, I decided to help by reeling in the loose line by hand. It kept coming and coming and I found myself counting to pass the time. Soon I had an enormous pile of fishing line stacked beside me on the pontoon. Then I noticed part of it trailing behind the dinghy.

My blood ran cold. I had accidentally left the trolling motor running, and the line had wrapped around the prop. Terrified, I glanced toward Kathy. She was still watching her video.

I quickly lifted the motor from the water and began unwinding the line as fast as I could. Every few seconds I checked to see if she had noticed. She hadn’t.

After several frantic minutes, I finally cleared the propeller. Unfortunately, the line itself had transformed into a catastrophic rat’s nest.

At that exact moment, Kathy looked up. “Okay, I’ve successfully tied the two lines together now. Where’s the end?”

I grimaced and handed her the end. As she pulled, the tangled mass slithered toward her lap.

“What’s this?!”

Tears began to well up in my eyes.

“It got caught in the propeller.”

The angry eyes returned.

She looked at me with deep disappointment.

“We should probably just throw this line away,” I suggested cautiously.

“JUST GIVE IT TO ME!”

She snatched the tangled mess from my hands and muttered dark things under her breath. Fortunately, I couldn’t hear most of it because I had forgotten my hearing aids.

Deciding silence was safest, I picked up my own rod and started fishing.

Once my line hit the water, I made the tactical mistake of asking where the snacks were. Kathy’s hands were buried deep inside the knot of tangled fishing line. “Really? REALLY?!”

I decided the snacks could wait.

Eventually, Kathy untangled everything and tied on a fresh jig. She lowered it into the water and immediately snagged the rocks again. I tried to gently explain how she was doing it wrong and saw teeth bared. I stopped talking.

Using my now highly refined recovery technique, I powered forward and broke the line free once more and Kathy was able to recover the line.I tried to highlight the success… from my perspective. “I didn’t tangle the line this time.” Kathy remained unimpressed.

Then something miraculous happened. I caught a fish. “I got one!” I yelled triumphantly.

Kathy did not look happy but grabbed the net and scooped it aboard. The fish was tiny — maybe eight inches long — and far too small to keep.

“You need to unhook it,” I told her.

“It’s your fish.”

The fish had sharp spines along its back, and I was deeply reluctant to touch it. I protested. Kathy held firm. After putting on gloves and fumbling twice, I finally managed to hold it still. Kathy, reluctantly, removed the hook with pliers, more to save the fish’s life than to assist me.

After that, very little was said. The ride home was quiet except for the sound of chop slapping against the pontoons.

I attempted conversation once.

“I’M NOT READY TO TALK ABOUT IT!” Kathy snapped.

We returned to Adventure and unloaded everything in silence.

As I secured the dinghy for the night, I glanced over at Kathy. She sat wrapped in her blanket, staring silently ahead in the saloon. Then, without looking at me, she said quietly: “We’re going back! I’m going to catch a fish.”

My shoulders slumped.