Hello my dear friends at Steemit. Ocean Fishing - like it? While I was surfing through Steemit I came across 
Santa Cruz
Picture of is of the boat rental launch dock
I thought I would try to write a post or two while listening to it looped after I first heard the song. It may be difficult as I am so relaxed I cannot spell or concentrate.
Wharf Map
In Santa Cruz, California, USA there is a wharf and at the wharf where the fishermen bring their catch. There is a shop that rents boats to go fish in the Pacific Ocean with a five horse power motor. The boats are metal row boats with oars in case the motor breaks down and the boats are about 16 feet long.
The boats can only be rented during the day so that way if someone is missing a search can be started. The shop also rents sea fishing poles, bait, tackle, and accessories.
The first time I went fishing in the ocean, I fell in love with sea fishing. The boat was a family friend's, his son and I were 12 years old. Lester and Lester Junior was their names. There is a reef far off shore down about 110 feet and the reef is miles wide and miles across. The fishing is absolutely excellent and all sorts of fish are caught. That was the first time and after that I was hooked.
After my first ocean exploration not having a boat and arriving at dawn, I would rent a boat with poles from the shop with one or more of my brothers. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling's, "Captains Courageous" in school, I knew that courage was required to fish the sea. It was off from the pier dock we set course at first light, "Gun'ales Ho For'ard."
Leaving the shore breakers behind, the waves grew dependent on the off shore wind as we pressed past the lighthouse point nor'ward off the starboard stern and entered the open sea. Three or four miles out west until the sight of shore disappeared the motor chugged the boat up the swells and down once topped the crest.
At that point, we turned south for a mile or so parallel to the shore because we were in the north flowing, warm Japanese current and then shut the motor off to drift.
Baited with squid on a four hook set and reeled with hundred pound test we dropped our hooks and drifted over the reef nor'ward on the current. Up and down we sauntered away the day on the rise and fall of the waves pulling up fish every so often. Every once in a while we felt the weights strike the rocks below with a thump and when we hit sand it was time to start the motor again and head south to pass over the reef once more. It usually took a couple of hours to drift.
One time when we drifted north my youngest brother caught a fish and out of his hands, overboard went his pole right into the Pacific ocean. "Shoop" it hit the water end eye first and "Khwathoup" the rest of the rod followed at an angle pointed downward.
I wanted to throw him in after the pole as it was $200 to replace a lost rented pole. The boat with the poles rental cost $21 forty years ago. But I did not throw him in and even threatening to he still gives me flack to this day.
So, pissed as hell we all sat there in disgust with only the two of us left fishing. We began to relax again as we drifted. Because we could now see the shore off to the east, I knew we had drifted at least a mile without catching a thing.
Our plan? To catch enough fish to pay for the pole before we headed back. But it was unbelievable and from that point on we caught nothing. It was about time to head back south for another run when I had a huge fish bite my hook. The fish had to be at least five or ten pounds.
I began to reel it in and it is surprising how hard that can be with an ocean fish only down a hundred feet or maybe a hundred and ten. I reeled and pulled, worked the pole and the fish.
Some minutes passed and I could see the phosphorescent glow of the fish somewhere in the deep below maybe five fathoms down. A blue of ten pounds, I pulled it up another fathom and I saw that my brother's rented fishing pole was hooked to one of the hooks on the hook line.
"We can't lose this one. We can't lose this one. I can see your pole! Get the net!" I screamed because that brother has an attention problem but not this time. He grabbed the net and we waited while I brought up the fish and most importantly the rented fishing pole. The pole was two hooks higher than the fish. I had caught the fish and the lost fishing pole.
My second brother grabbed the pole when it broke the water, while the third brother netted the fish. He unhooked the pole from the hook, "There is still a fish on it?" He said and the pole jerked wildly.
"Looks like," someone said and he reeled it in. t was a three to five pound red fish with a pole that was impossibly back in his hands after what must have been an hour. We did not lose the pole or any pole ever again after that.
Lighthouse Point is behind the wharf beyond the palm tree:
We still talk about that fishing trip to this day.
Image Source:
http://2nbtoy3u3qzf34dru617v1vs.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Santa-Cruz-Wharf-Pier-Bryce15-2-1000x523
californiasbestbeaches.com
panoramic.com
Hope you enjoyed this story steemians and please upvote and resteem me.