Well, OK, more like walking down the dock of the Bay on the way to the boat.

Junior’s family invited us on a fishing trip in the San Francisco Bay they’d put together. We accepted and paid before this whole house this went through and besides, we really wanted to go. So we frantically got everything done during the week, booked a hotel so we didn’t have to get up at 2 AM again, and headed for the marina with his Dad.

 

  

It was supposed to be a shark fishing trip, but after a couple of hours with only one keeper, the crew switched us over to halibut rigs. I was having a good time with the sharks myself, even without catching a legal one. Even the two-foot variety is pretty challenging for a noodle-armed woman like me to reel in, and the one I did get was satisfyingly bitey, going for someone’s leg in revenge before he got tossed back in.

 

 

But the halibut fishing was fun too, and a lot more active. I plopped my line in while they were still rigging up other people and *bang*! Caught the first one. He was a half-inch too small, so back he went. Then I’d catch one every hour or so, but none of them were legal until the last. Junior limited out with three and Dad caught two, so we had a nice mess of fish to bring home and eat. Halibut is delicious grilled in foil packets, by the way.

 

 Junior ‘caught’ the strangge catch of the day, and I must be the most gullible person ever. Towards the end of the trip, someone on the other side of the boat had hooked his line. He fought with it for a little while, thinking it was hung up on the bottom. Eventually, up comes this light-colored plasticy-looking thing, and for the life of me, I couldn’t resolve what it was in my head. I thought it was some sort of kid’s toy, with a foot hanging off the end, until everyone quicker than me told me to look closer at it. It still took me a little bit to realize that it was a joke, that they’d put it on his line on the other side of the boat; I didn’t catch that until I heard someone talking about it. Hey, it is the San Francisco Bay, after all. Who knows what you’re going to get?