A Fish Story

A Fish Story

A FISH STORY

by Beth Finke

Four hundred to five hundred blind people
flinging fishing hooks and bait around? Sounded dangerous to me. But scary and
crazy as the Visually Impaired Persons' (V.I.P.) Fishing Tournament sounded,
I signed up anyway.
My husband Mike and I had just moved
here to the Outer Banks in August along with our son Gus and my Seeing Eye Dog
Dora. Little did we know that Nags Head was the site of North Carolina's annual
fishing tournament for the blind.
The yearly event is sponsored both by
businesses here on the Outer Banks and by the North Carolina Lions Clubs. Blind
and visually impaired people from all over the state are invited to attend,
free of cost. The tournament began in 1983, and ever since then it has grown
both in size and popularity. In other words, a whole bunch of blind folks accept
the invitation to come to the Outer Banks and fish. In 1997, I was one of them.
I hadn't been fishing since I'd lost my sight 12 years earlier in the summer
of 1985. Heck, I had never even fished when I could see! Never had any interest
in fishing or learning to fish at all. But with this tournament taking place
right in my backyard, I felt compelled to give it a try. Maybe I'd borrow Mike's
motorcycle helmet to prevent any injuries from flying fish hooks...
When fishing day came, in early October,
the weather was unseasonably warm. Could I wear sandals on a fishing boat, I
wondered? Would it be cold on the open seas? Should I wear pants? I finally
decided on sandals, shorts and a t-shirt. I packed sweat pants and a sweatshirt
to take along in case it got cold on the boat. I decided against bringing the
motorcycle helmet, it was just too hot out for that.
Smart move, for the helmet turned out
to be unnecessary. The tournament was well organized, and any hooks that were
flung were flung towards the sea and not towards each other. The whole event
was downright civilized, really. The 400-plus of us met in the morning for meetings
at the Outer Banks Worship Center on Nags Head's main highway. The worship center
is built in the shape of a boat, and everyone around here just calls it "The
Ark Church." Everyone knows where it is, too, so even though we were new
to town, Mike found the place with no trouble.
There were special seminars and exhibits
suited especially to the blind taking place at the church the morning of the
tournament. I didn't pay much attention to the seminars or exhibits--I just
wanted to fish!
At least, I thought I wanted to fish.
But as the time to leave the safety of the ark and go to the boat drew nearer,
I started getting nervous. The anxiety must have shown on my face, for when
Mike leaned over to kiss me goodbye he seemed concerned. "Are you going
to be okay?" he asked, pulling back suddenly right before the kiss.
"Yes!" I answered, trying
to sound like that was the silliest question I'd ever heard. Honestly, I didn't
know HOW I was going to be. How was I going to get from the Ark church to the
fishing boat, for example? How would I get onto the boat? Would the boat ride
be rough? What if I get sick? What if Dora, my Seeing Eye dog, gets sick? What
if the waters get rough? What if the boat capsizes? Will we all be wearing lifejackets
while we fish?
Why had I opted for the boat, anyway?
I could have been safe, on terra semi-firma, on a pier. When signing up for
the fish tournament, each blind participant is given the choice of fishing off
a pier or off a boat. Originally I'd chosen the pier, thinking that if I decided
I didn't like fishing, or if I got bored, I could just leave. On a boat you're
trapped. But then a friend recommended I go on the boat. "I'll take you
fishing off the pier if you ever want to do that," she said, "but
how often do you have an opportunity to fish off a boat in the ocean? Go for
it!"
I called the VIP officials and had them
change my preference. So here I was, "going for it", and Mike was
going away, leaving me there at the Ark. I tried to smile so he wouldn't worry
about me. He saw right through that smile, I know, but kissed me anyway and
said goodbye. I heard him walk away and hoped he wasn't looking back. I could
only hold that fake smile of confidence for so long, I'm afraid it left my face
seconds after Mike gave me that kiss.
It wasn't long, though, before an authentic
smile crossed my face. This smile came to me when someone touched my shoulder
and asked, "Are you Beth?" I said yes, and she invited me to join
her at another table. "The folks from Dare County are all over here,"
she explained, "take my elbow, I'll lead you there."
Blind people can be pretty resourceful
and independent, but there are a few things sighted people can do that we're
just no good at. One of them is finding people in a crowd.
A volunteer named Alice drove me and
a 12-year-old blind girl from Kill Devil Hills to the boat we'd be fishing from.
"From there you're on your own,"
Alice told me.
"You mean you're not going on the
boat with us?" I asked, panicking a bit.
"Oh, no," she said, "I'm
going on the boat. But I don't know a thing about fishing."
"I've been fishing before,"
the 12-year-old chimed in, "I'll help you."
The 12-year-old wasn't the only blind
person there who'd been fishing before. I was eavesdropping at the dock, and
it sounded to me like everyone there had fished before. All of them had been
to previous VIP Tournaments, and some of them had come to every tournament since
the thing started in 1983.
It occurred to me then that any other
blind person at the fishing tournament for the first time would have done the
sane thing and fished off the pier. The boat, it seemed, was for weathered Fish
Tournament veterans.
I would have sat there and worried about
the boat again, if my neighbors hadn't, thank goodness, interrupted my thoughts
by engaging in conversation with me. It was odd how I couldn't tell who was
blind and who was sighted, who were the participants in the tournament and who
were the volunteers. People would just come up, ask me where I was from, and
start talking about how many fish they hoped I'd catch that day. One person
noticed my anxiety and reminded me that the boats never go out to the ocean,
they stay on the sound for the safety of the participants. Knowing we wouldn't
be thrashing around in ocean waves made me feel better. Really, just sitting
around talking with all these people made me feel better. Blind or sighted,
they all were friendly, and everyone seemed happy to be there and excited to
get on the boat and start fishing.
The exuberance was contagious. When
we finally were told we could get on the boat, my Seeing Eye dog and I practically
flew to the steps, we were so eager to get started. "Hold on!" someone
yelled to me, "Watch your step!" It was probably the owner of the
boat who was doing the yelling, as he seemed very skeptical about what Dora
would do in guiding me up and down the steps to the boat. Everyone else there
had spent time with Blind people; they all knew how skillfully a guide dog can
maneuver even the most unusual paths, like the one that leads you onto a boat.
Dora had never been on a boat before, but she guided me beautifully and sat
quietly under my bench the entire time I fished.
And that time was l-o-n-g. By the time
we were done that afternoon, we'd been on the boat almost 5 hours. We didn't
go hungry, though. The tournament provided us with a sack lunch and soda, which
were handed to us almost immediately after we'd all found a seat on the boat.
"Good thing you brought these," I told the woman distributing the
food, "We would starve out here if we had to rely on what I catch today
for nourishment."
"Now, how do y'all know that?"
the woman questioned me. She was teasing me with her southern twang. "Y'all
haven't even stuck y'alls pole in the water and y'all think y'alls not going
to catch anything already. Y'all are no fisherman!"
"I know it," I admitted, feeling
for my sandwich in the bag she'd given me, "that's why I'm glad you gave
us these sandwiches. Do you know much about fishing?"
"No ma'am," she said, "I'm
just here to give out these bags of food." "That's good, 'cause that's
important," I said, taking a big bite out of the sandwich I'd finally uncovered.
I chewed a bit and then continued: "Mmmm, this sandwich is good, and like
I said, food is important. But do you know anyone on the boat who likes to fish?"
I asked. "I mean, besides the blind people fishing for the tournament?"
"Well, sure," she answered.
"Is there anyone on the boat who
likes to fish and likes to talk about it so much that he bores everyone to death
with fish stories?" I asked, "'cause that's the person I want to meet,
that's the person I need to have come and help me."
"Well, I'll see who I can find
for y'all," my sandwich friend told me, "but first I have to give
all these other folks their food."
I finished my sandwich as she left to
feed the others and find a fishing partner for me. I was thirsty, too, but went
easy on the soda, not sure if there was a toilet on the boat.
It wasn't long before my sandwich pal
returned and introduced me to Alan. I moved over and told Alan to sit down next
to me. Alan stayed with me the rest of the trip. He wasn't actually there on
the boat to help with we blind fishers; he had been "recruited" for
the event to run the ham radio. We chatted for a while before I found out he
was only 16 years old. He had received an excused absence from school that day
to fill his important ham radio position on the boat.
Alan loved to fish, and loved to talk
about it. He was born and raised on the Outer Banks; outside of a 3 year stint
he spent in Raleigh, he'd always lived on the ocean. He could answer every question
I had about high tides, low tides, inlets, surf fishing, pier fishing, you name
it. More importantly, he wasn't shy about showing me what he knew. Before I
knew it, Alan had set his ham radio aside and was helping me fish. He was amazingly
patient with me, teaching me how to bait my own hooks and then letting me do
it on my own. "Now here's the rod," he said, putting the bottom of
the pole into my right hand, "and here's the holder for it." He took
my left hand and let me feel the holder. Then he had me put the pole into it.
"Okay, good job!" he said,
"now we're set." He put my right hand on a crank and had me turn it
a few times. Then he took that same hand, had me extend my pointer finger and
showed me where a little release mechanism was. "That's what you release
when you want to let your line out," he explained. Taking that same extended
finger and putting it near the crank I'd used earlier, he showed me how to feel
the line going out, and how to know when it had extended as long as it needed
to.
Alan never once grabbed the pole from
me and said, "Here, let me do it." I told him I appreciated his letting
me do all this on my own, he answered, "Well, I figured if you're here
to learn to fish, you oughtta do it yourself." Ah, out of the mouths of
teenagers...
Once I cast my line, I had a hard time
feeling whether anything had bitten or not. Over and over again I pulled my
line up and over and over again all I could feel on the end was the very bait
I had put there myself. Alan watched me struggle with this and finally decided
I should forget about feeling for the line to tug near the cranking mechanism.
Just lean over to the end of the pole," Alan instructed, "and feel
the line there."
"How?" I asked, leaning over
the end of the boat. Amazing to think that a few hours earlier I had been worried
about getting seasick. Now I was leaning out of a boat over the open seas, without
a care in the world. Well, that's not exactly true, I DID have a care. I cared
about catching a fish!
"Just let the line drape over your
finger," Alan said, placing the line over my extended pointer finger, "this
way you'll really feel it when something bites."
It wasn't long before I did feel a tug.
And, of course, Alan was as excited as I was when I pulled that big ol' four
ounce pigfish from the water.
"It's a Croaker!" Alan said,
"touch it!"
I touched it and heard a distinct "oink!"
We both laughed and began a spirited debate about whether my catch was a Pigfish
or a Croaker. Whatever the case, I'd never known a fish could make that kind
of noise. I'd never known I could catch a fish, either.
That fish was the only thing I caught
that day. After catching my 4 ounce Pigfish, I didn't pay as much attention
to the rod and reel anymore. I talked to Alan instead, learning about all the
places he'd fished since he was a little kid, where he was going to high school
now, all the different addresses he'd had on the Outer Banks.
"Geez!" I said, "why
is it that you've lived so many places?"
"My mother has been married and
divorced 3 times," he answered, "so we've moved around a lot."
I wondered if maybe that's where Alan got that maturity of his, maybe it came
from all the changes he'd lived through, all the adjustments he'd made already
at age 16.
Alan was curious about some of the adjustments
I'd made in my life. He asked me how I'd become blind--a result of juvenile
diabetes--and how long I'd been blind--12 years. "What's it like not to
see anything?" he asked me, "did getting a Seeing Eye dog really help
a lot?" We talked and talked.
Before we knew it, it came time to say
goodbye and get off the boat. Alan and I gave each other a big hug. "Thank
you so much," I told Alan. "No," he said, "thank you."
Once we were off the boat, Alice, my
original volunteer, drove me and the 12-year-old girl home. The 12-year-old
was very excited, she had caught three fish that day. There were dinners and
fish fries to attend that night as part of the Visually Impaired Person's Fish
Tournament. They'd be giving out trophies and awards at the banquets, and this
12-year-old girl was sure to win at least one of them.
I was as exhausted as that 12-year-old
was excited. I decided to skip the banquets and stay home, especially seeing
as I already had my awards: I'd made a new friend in Alan, and I'd overcome
my fears and learned to fish. It is one thing for me to relearn to do things
I used to do when I could see; it's an entirely different thing to learn a new
skill, learn to do something I couldn't do even when I had sight.
And the trophy? My 4 ounce Pigfish (or
was it a Croaker?), of course.