By Tony Deyal
I was five years old, and while my family were digging up the dry lands to create “rice fields” near the sugar cane areas where we lived, I tried to catch the little bitsy fishes, but they were much smarter than me. I needed help, but even my father was too busy ploughing to take me on.
Since then, one thing became clearer to me as I got older and was much more experienced in catching fish. It was the importance of always having at least one fishing companion.
Later, as I taught my young son and we started fishing together in the sea, we always had a knowledgeable boatman who knew the area well and who also helped us, especially when the fishes were too heavy for us to bring them up by ourselves, or the lines got so badly tangled we sat watching our colleagues bringing up the biggies and we were so upset that we felt like jumping off the boat.
Earlier this week, in Tobago, the country linked with Trinidad by a “&” my son took us to enjoy the country, but more importantly, to take me (and very much himself) to snag some fish. It was my 80th birthday, and it was our sense of togetherness on the sea again. More importantly, we got the best fisherman we’ve ever met. He knew exactly where to go and when to move to another area. He was Andre Green (aka Pata), but fortunately, he and we never got seasickness. We were ready to show off our slickness and pulling up, from the depths, food for thought and show off.
I had learnt a few things about myself in the process of fishing. First, you do not stop fishing because you get old, you get old because you stop fishing! Then, John Bushan, the Scottish novelist, put it brilliantly for people like me, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.” Another great, Jacques Cousteau, the French oceanographer, saw it the way I do, and my son seems to be heading, “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
There are others like Joseph Monniger, an American writer and professor, who put it very differently but with some truth: “I go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself.” Fortunately for us, my son Zubin and Green, the fishes, do the same, and they are the ones to lose themselves first. If you don’t believe me, wait until I go to sea again, and as Jack Leonard, the US comedian, believes, when you are on the river, ocean or in the woods, you are the closest to the truth you’ll ever get. The river and woods are no longer for me.
But the ocean is what causes some men to be photographed with their fish rather than with their wives. Worse, and in my case, when I had a boat, my biggest concern was that if I died before my wife, she would try to sell my fishing equipment for what I told her I paid for it. That would be free-ness for whoever bought it. Cheap for days and, from her, anger for years. To really put me in trouble was what Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, believed: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Fortunately, I stayed far from the river and made sure I was in the sea with my son and Green catching red fish. Zubin got the biggest fish in our group, and I ended the day with a “trio”- three red fish with one blow! For both of us, it would keep us boasting until the next time in the sea.
What I had learnt over time was that I was into fishing for leisure and fun. At one time, on my boat, my friend and I caught a few 300-pound fishes. Once, on a relatively small boat for seven men, my three fishermen caught one which was much more angry than we were happy. It wanted to eat up my men who were in the water and scared.
Fortunately, I had my handgun, and they demanded, “Tony, Tony, oh God, do something quick. Save we! Save we.” I did. It took three shots. Then we had to pull it onto the boat, which meant that all of us on the boat, with help from the guys in the sea, pulled and pushed it up. My friend, an English “plane-man” as we called him, seemed to be hated more by the fish than all the rest of us put together. It kept its last strength and life to take a bite at “plane-man” who flew in the sea while the fish took his place, but, fortunately for me, it just grinned and then lay still.
I learnt a few things from what I had gone through. I got rid of the boat, and I realised that selling the boat was even happier for me than when I bought it. While good things come for those who wait, the best things for us fishermen are those who BAIT! More, according to one fisherman, the way to a man’s heart is his fly. What took it to another level is that the jokes started with me saying, “Dating, my friends, is just like what we are doing here, as fishing. There are a lot of fish in the sea, but until you catch one, you just stuck here holding your rod. That is why I have long lines instead.”
One thing over the many years are the jokes that I carry with me, together with my fishing lines. What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fish. Why did the fish plush? Because it saw the ocean’s bottom! What did the fish say when it hit the wall? Dam. What swims in the sea, carries a machine gun, and makes you an offer you can’t refuse?
The Codfather. Then there was a fisherman who caught a mermaid. She appealed to him with a mellow voice, “If you let me go, I will give you three wishes for you only.”
The fisherman looked at her for a while and then said: “My lady, let’s see how best we can work this out. I only have one wish, but will you do it three times?”
*Tony Deyal remembered this one from a lady who said, “I think the only reason my husband likes to go fishing so much is that it’s the only time he hears someone telling him, ‘Wow, that’s a big one.’”
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