i keep a diary

June 19, 2005

Fishing with Pappi Part Four: Father's Day

For Father's Day weekend I headed out to the Jerz to spend some quality time with the fam. Then, on Sunday evening, my dad and I drove down to the Jersey Shore so that we could get up early the next morning and drive to the Mid-Atlantic Highlands to get a charter and go fishing for the day (which has turning into somewhat of a yearly tradition).

See also:
Fishing With Pappi: Part One (October 5, 2002)
Fishing with Pappi: Part Two (June 6, 2003)
Fishing with Pappi: Part Three (July 19, 2004)

Sunday, June 19th

Here's my dad on Father's Day, getting to enjoy his Father's Day Treat Breakfast. Haha. We pretty much just hung out all day, then in the evening we drove down south.

Monday, June 20th

The next morning, my dad woke me up early.
I'm not usually even asleep by this time in the morning, never mind awake for it. My hair was starting to get sorta "hippy long" and I didn't want the to blow it in my eyes and potentially distract me from hooking me some fish so I decided to throw on...
...a hat.
Hahaha. Yeah, much better. (Jeez, baseball hats look awesome on me! I wonder why I don't wear them more often? Or play baseball more for that matter!)
Ten minutes after rolling out of bed, we were hopping in the car and headed to catch a fishing boat. My only consolation was the special...
..."mobile breakfast" my dad had arranged for.
We got to the Mid-Atlantic Highlands pier just a bit past 6:30am. Now it was time to find our boat.
The Mi-Jo II! There she is!
Shortly after we were aboard, we headed out to see. I mostly hung out in the cabin; fucked up that box of doughnuts and tried to will myself away.
About 45 minutes later, we were out in the open sea and it was time to put our lines down into the water.
The guy standing next to me got the first fish.
Welcome aboard!
Just a few minutes later, my dad, who was standing immediately on my other side, got his first fish. Ready?
And puuuuuuuuuull!
Check out the size of the large-mouth bass this guy managed to snag.
Holy cramoly, that thing's big.
Look at his neat-o insides!
Look! You can see New York City in the background on the horizon!
Netting a blue.
In between catching bluefish (which is what the boat had set out to look for) my dad was (per his usual) catching all sorts of other stuff besides blues. Like this little skate. Look at its crazy mouth!
And its scary demon-eyes!
Awww, he sorta looks pretty cute from this angle, though.
Then for a while, my dad's hook kept getting bitten off of his line.
This little shark turned out to be one of the culprits.
He was a wriggly little fucker! The mate managed to throw him back in the water just before he lost his grip. And check out how his dorsal fin has been half-chewed off!
Later, my dad hooked another, much smaller dogfish.
One of the mates helping someone bring in a skate that will be unhooked and thrown back.
This guy though? Not so lucky!
Straight into the garbage can with your friends! Think that's bad? I guess that's mostly because you probably don't realize you're about to be...
...skinned alive!
This brings to mind what I recently heard Dimitri Martin say in his comedy special: "Why do they call it fishing? Why not call it what it really is: tricking and killing." Hahahahah.
After a few hours and a few different locations, the captain called "lines up" and it was time to head back to port.
As the mates cleaned all the fish, they throw all the guts and whatnot overboard into the water which resulted in this stream of gulls following our boat all the way back in.
I climbed up onto the boat's flying bridge to take some pics.
This guy was keeping pace with the boat and soaring in a fixed position with it for like 10 minutes. It was so neat to watch!
Boat wake and gulls.
Check out all the pilings poking up out of the water; all that's left of what must've been at one time a massive wooden pier.
We tipped out the mates, and headed back to the car. In this picture my dad is either showing that he managed to catch eight fish or he's joined some new gang that I don't know about.
Me? I caught zero fish! (But that's mostly because I didn't put any bait on my hook! Shhhhhh!)
We spent the rest of the day watching movies and lounging around my parent's tiny shore house enjoying the nice weather.

Tuesday, June 21st

Tuesday was another gorgeous day...
...we woke up early, had some breakfast...
...then I got suckered into helping my dad install a new pair of waterproof, outdoor speakers for the patio. Hahah.
Then we went and hit some golf balls at the driving range! Then later on, my dad drove me up north to Pt. Pleasant so I could hop on a train and head back to NYC.
Happy Father's Day, Pappi!