Not to jeopardize my retirement funds anymore, I decided to shell out two hundred dollars for a net. With each cast, I can catch ten to a few hundred greenbacks. The dollar per fish goes down exponentially with this method, but really does nothing with the unquantifiable aggravation factor.
****
The guy that's been fishing ten feet from me for the past two hours shouts, "Hey, are those greenbacks?" He hasn't said so much as a hello to me the past two hours, but I knew our paths would cross the moment my net drops.
He hurries over to my spot as I'm emptying my bait into my cooler.
"You got greenbacks?" he inquires again.
"Yeah, some."
"Hey, can I buy some from you? My buddy and I are running low. We just can't seem to keep them alive."
He stores his greenbacks in a bait well with no aerators. I had noticed this when I first arrived. Even with aerators, his fish won't live for more than a few hours, so it came as no surprise that his bait are all dead. I wonder what the guy's bait to fish caught ratio is.
"You can have some on my next drop."
My first cast yielded me about seventy small greenbacks with a few big ones mixed in. I'm here for another five hours, and unlike other fishermen, I don't bother to keep my bait alive. I ice it to avoid the body from disintegrating.
"You sure, you want a coke or a bottled water or something, we have lots of drinks."
"No thanks, I'm good," I tell him.
I came up with a better yield on the second drop, about a hundred sixty small greenbacks and ten nice large ones. By the way, I don't have Rainman like math skills in anything other than fishing. And for those (and when I say those, I mean my whole two followers), it could have been thirty fish total, but you know this is a fishing story so I'm trying to keep with the theme.
"Help yourself."
"This guy better not take all the big ones," I am thinking as I'm putting away my net.
"Your pole fell over," his friend coolly mutters.
The guy runs back to his spot. I look inside my cooler to find all the nice sized bait gone.
"What a dick," I mumble.
"That was my brand new pole!" the man who took all my large greenbacks and left me with nothing but small ones shouts at his friend.
While he was picking through my cooler, a fish took his bait, dragged his pole over the pier and into the Gulf of Mexico. And for the next thirty minutes, the man couldn't say anything other than
"Mother f---king big fish. That was one mother f---king big fish."
And ten feet from him, someone flashes a "Mother f---king karma" smile.
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