Kitty Hawk #2

Today is Thursday, and it has been and interesting couple days. Tuesday morning, I picked up my dad to go fishing on the Avalon Pier. We loaded the stuff in the Tahoe, and off we went. We checked in at the pier, and paid our fee ($10.00 for 24 hrs) to an old Jewish guy that looked like he came with the pier. The pier itself was a trip back in time. The entrance building was crammed with a mixture of old fortune telling and strength testing machines, right beside the latest video console stuff. On the entrance was a sign "If you didn’t buy it here you can’t drink it here" but to my observation, it wasn’t exactly enforced. Murray (that’s what I decided to call him) stamped our hands with a red Tuesday, we bought a nice box of frozen calamari (or squid as fishermen call it), and headed out onto the pier. We decided to "rig up" our poles at the table shortly down the pier, to stay out of everyone else’s way. My dad opened a tackle box, that probably rode in our 56 Chevy, and we put on the customary pier bottom fishing rigs. It was at this time the fun started. Somewhere between his car and the pier, the tip grommet had fallen off dad’s pole. Well this wasn’t a tragedy, it still seemed like it would work. So we found a spot, baited up our hooks and "started fishing". It was at this point, I discovered the brand new pole and reel I had brought were totally unsuited to the task at hand. I couldn’t cast it six inches without the line turning into this horrible bird’s nest on the reel. Meanwhile, folks all around us are pulling in little Croakers two at a time. Oh yea, and dad’s pole with the missing grommet, wouldn’t reel up correctly. This is when the old Master Card commercial came into my head. "Pier fishing $10.00, squid $4.50, fishing with dad on the pier, priceless. For everything else there’s MasterCard". (or in my case American Express) I said the heck with this, and we made a 30-minute round trip to Kitty Hawk’s finest Wally Mart for some new poles. Trus t old Sam to think of the fishermen at the Beach. There was a fine assortment of complete fishing outfits for under $20.00. We picked out matching Shakespeare Tiger poles (one red and one black), and headed back to the pier. Things went smoothly from there, with the exception of the fish quit biting and now all we could catch were Skates (small stingrays). I caught eight and dad caught two. They are very heavy and difficult to get off the hook. Interspersed with those, we caught a couple little Croakers. However, something about sitting on the pier and watching the beach world go by grabbed me and didn’t let go. We had fun, and then left to come back later. In the evening, we came back and tried our luck. Again it was wonderful sitting on the pier fishing and watching the sun go down. We caught numerous little croakers, and finally called it a night about 11:30. Turns out, you can show up any time after 11:00 and get on the pier for free till 05:00 when Murray shows up and starts c ollecting the money again. More later.

Wes