For 2 years now, I've been telling Dennis, my friend at work, that I wanted to go fishing with him. I don't know what the mix up was, but my perception was that he didn't want to take me fishing, and he doesn't remember me ever indicating any interest. In any case, Dennis chartered an overnight expedition for 20 Petco employees, and I signed up right away.

The group was to meet at the landing at 9PM and wait for the boat to come in. Dennis and I were there early, and we got to see the rest of the group arrive in ones and twos, all of them excited about the adventure. The more of us there were, the more the excitement built. When the boat arrived we watched while the crew prepared it for our group. The passengers from the previous trip left, and the crew unloaded all the fish that they had caught. We could see the yellow tail of a Dorado sticking out of a gunny sack, and that got a lot of us even more keyed up. When we were finally allowed to board, everyone scampered on and claimed a bunk and a spot for their fishing gear. I wondered if I would be longing for solid ground again before long.

As the boat moved out toward the ocean, it was dark out, and the city was beautiful. We stopped at the bait docks to load up the boat with sardines and anchovies. There were pelicans and sea lions loitering at the docks, looking for handouts. The captain gathered our group at the bow and gave us a quick lecture on fishing. Then pretty much everyone went to bed. The bunks are below the deck, in a tiny space. They're narrow and stacked three high (I'll get a picture of the bunks on the next trip) and run the length of the deck down a narrow hallway. Apparently there is a sharp turn, and then another hallway with more bunks. I didn't dare go that deep in to the belly of the beast. I could stretch out comfortably on the narrow bunk, but I think I was the exception. The engine was loud down there, and the boat was tossing and everyone was getting jostled around. The pitch of the engine somehow sounded like it was floored the whole time. I was grinning and giggling in the dark. I couldn't believe I was out there.

I had asked Dennis to wake me up when he got up, knowing that it would be 3 or 4 AM. I wanted to be on deck in the darkness and watch the dawn come up. When Dennis woke me at 4 AM, it was still pitch black out and cold. I was reminded of how I felt on Christmas mornings when Phil or Carla would wake me. I was on my feet almost immediately. Later Dennis said he was shocked that I was so eager to get out of my warm bunk. We struggled to put our shoes on as the boat was tossing from side to side. We were still going full bore, and the sea was what I would describe as "rough", but the real sea dogs in the group said "this is nothing". I couldn't walk on deck at all, so I sat down and stayed in one place.

One by one the other passengers came up to the deck, sleepy but with anticipation in their groggy stares. We were all bundled up against the cold. As people came onto the deck, they braced themselves against a wall or a rail, because the engines were still running full speed ahead. We were watching the horizon looking for the first light of dawn, and waiting for the boat to stop so that we could begin fishing.

At some point the boat finally quit moving, and everyone baited his/her hook and got to it. Baiting the hook means catching the four inch sardine or anchovy in a little trough with your hands, and sticking a hook through its nose or gill plate. It sounds barbaric in retrospect, but in the moment it's no big deal. You just want to do it and get your line in the water. I was fishing with a lure instead. Partly because I didn't want to mess with baiting the sardines, and partly because it's a lot quicker to throw the lure out, than to re-bait with live fish. And lastly because I wanted to see if the lure would do just as well as live bait.

The first person to hook something was me with my lure! I didn't even know I was supposed to yell "hookup!!!". It happened when just about everyone had a line in the water, and we were waiting for a bite. We were watching this big lazy looking sunfish floating around. It was about 3 feet long and yellow, and it was hanging around the boat. I threw my lure out there NOT near the sunfish, and the thing grabbed the lure. I didn't know what to do so I yelled "Dennis! Dennis! Dennis!" I'm not sure where Dennis was just then, but he wasn't around. Then in the commotion, I heard him say "Is that Lisa with the first hookup?" He was in the middle of something, and a deck hand helped me out. The sunfish was pulling me all over the boat. I had to run along the side and ask people to get out of my way. After a few minutes, the sunfish disappeared under the boat, and the deck hand took my rod for me. He said I wouldn't want a sunfish anyhow (I guess we don't eat them) so he cut the line and let it go. I put another lure on my line, and went back to fishing.

The routine was that throughout the day, we would troll for a while until we caught a fish. The skipper actually has a fish meter to show him when there are fish in the vicinity. When he saw fish on the fish meter, he would have the deck hands "chum". Chumming is throwing some of the sardines and anchovies back into the water. I like that, because it means some of them have another chance at survival. Of course, they are being thrown to a school of albacore, so it's really not much of a chance.

Anyhow, the deck hands and Dennis would have trolling rods baited with lures dragging behind the boat. When one of those "got bit" someone would yell "hookup!" and pandemonium started. The person who is watching the trolling rod starts to bring in the fish, and the other people with trolling rods reel them in as quickly as possible to get them out of the way. Meanwhile, all the other anglers are baiting their hooks and throwing out their lines, presumably because where there is one albacore, there are others. But often, we would have our lines out for just about 5 minutes, and the skipper would say "OK. Reel 'em in". Then we'd troll again until we "got bit". That was how the day went.

The waves were around 6 feet all day, and in the middle of all this starting and stopping we would turn the boat in a small circle to round up the albacore, I guess. What it would do is cause a huge wake that was crisscrossing itself, and the boat would toss all over. There were a few times when the side dipped so low that the railing was at my knee level and I was looking at a huge gray wave. Once when we were in a wake like that, I bumped into Kevin (my boss) and he lost his balance and grabbed onto the rail for dear life.