Hauling 'em in

My Sunday column from The Daily Citizen. I had a longer, more ambitious take on this in mind, but ran out of space and time. But this one holds up.
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I was on vacation.
My alarm was set for 6 a.m.
Normally those two things would never occur at the same time.
But this was no ordinary vacation day — I was going fishing. And not just your cane-pole-for-rock-bass-in-a-small-pond kind of fishing.
This was an official fishing trip — a deep sea excursion with five other males. In other words, it was macho time.
I showered quickly and went to the kitchen where my fishing buddies were supposed to gather. I was the first to arrive, thus proving my toughness.
The others trickled in slowly — effeminately, one might say.
There was my old pal Ritchie from Atlanta and his young son, Noah.
There was my old pal Tony and his soon to be young step-son, Michael.
There was me.
On the way to Captain Charlie’s — more about him later — we stopped and picked up Chris, a guy from Atlanta who I know through another old pal.
The six of us then went to Charlie’s Charter on the bay side of St George Island. Like Captain Ahab, Charlie wasted no time getting us moving. My guess is he sized up our fishing skills quickly and wanted to get the day over with as soon as possible.
But what a day it turned out to be.
I was the first fisherman on board to get a hook in the water and sure enough within minutes had landed our first catch.
This was going to be easy, I told myself.
A catchless hour later, I was singing myself a different tune.
While my boatmates were hauling ‘em in right and left, I was mired in an Andruw Jones-like drought. Nothing on my hook but air.
I’d set the bait on bottom, 80 feet down, and the local fish would immediately begin to torment me. They would poke at it and tap it and bump it a little with their noses but every time I executed my manly “setting of the hook,” I would reel in a big haul of nothing.
Once a wiseguy fish attached a little note to my hook. All it said was “Schmendrick!”
“Must have been a jewfish,” I told Capt. Charlie, who informed that the jewfish is now known by the more politically correct as the Goliath Grouper.
Oy vey!
I wondered if I was ever going to catch another fish. Maybe it was the desolate look on my face, but Capt. Charlie took pity on me and when he hooked a nice fish himself, he handed the rod off to me and let me haul it in.
I know he meant well, but at that point I wanted to dive overboard. Suddenly I was 5-years-old again and my older brother was “taking my last swing” in a neighborhood baseball game.
Ouch!
But instead of bursting into tears, I “endeavored to persevere,” as the old Indian said in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”
I kept hacking and soon got the hang of things again.
For the next few hours I owned the Gulf of Mexico, hauling in fish after fish until my body ached.
But don’t worry, I saved a few for you ... if you’re man enough to take ‘em.