A fish tale

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Friday, September 23, 2005 11:55 PM PDT ∞

Psychologists say the human brain has a magnificent way of blacking out horrific experiences ---- the kind of memories that usually and much later resurface during sessions of hypnosis, or on the Maury Povich Show.

I know this psychological phenomenon to be true based on two experiences.

For one, your naturally dark-brunette columnist here succumbed to Billie Idol bleached-blonde hair during my college years. It was a frizzy, over-processed, questionably "stylish" 'do in the midst of a tragically confusing, blurry era that can be summed up with one simple expression: "Huh?"

Next up, my recent deep-sea fishing adventure.

It was my second trip out to sea. I had gone fishing over the Labor Day weekend of '04, so when my husband, Donkey Kong ---- who does not want his real name in my columns but insists on being seen with me in public ---- proposed another trip this year, my mind somehow formulated the conclusion that it was a dandy experience and gladly accepted.

Psychologically speaking, my brain worked as it should and failed to recall a thing or two.

Last year, Donkey Kong suggested that we try fishing. I had never been, but had visions in my head that I later realized came from the morning cartoons I watched when I was a kid, and those times I was running late for work.

We would be sitting in a little paddle boat on a calm lake. Sticking little worms on a hook and dipping the line into the water. Except for the worm part, which I assumed Donkey Kong would take care of, I thought it would be fun. Perhaps romantic.

I was as wrong about this as the time I thought that dark eyebrows and seemingly glow-in-the-dark yellow hair went well together.

It was not a private little boat, but a gigantic sports-fishing whatchamacallit with a kitchen and a very nice cook with no teeth, several booths with sticky dining tables and bathrooms that make the gas station restrooms look like those at the Ritz-Carlton. Being a holiday weekend, there were more than 50 guests crowded on board.

The bait? Not worms, Donkey Kong assured me as we boarded. Yippee, I thought at the time. (I hate worms. Yuck.) We use fish as bait, he said. Tiny little dead fish, I imagined. I could handle it.

Wrong!

For I later learned, after the ship made way for the high seas, that you have to grab live sardines the size of hot dogs, swimming around frantically in a tub. And while it is wigging in your grip and staring at you in the face (thinking, how could you?), you have to pierce the hook through its little nose and throw the little bugger in the water and wait for a bigger fish to bite it.

Desperate and terrified, as though the boat had just hit an iceberg, Donkey Kong said I would get used to this.

I don't know if you know this, but real fishermen are rather serious. They stand there with cigarettes hanging out of the side of their mouth, rubber boots and clothes torn and stained from their last trip two days ago.

So you can imagine where I, the only female fisherwoman diva on the boat, fit in to all of this.

Every time I had to grab a bait I screeched loudly. I was as in control of my rented fishing pole as a drunk driving a car, and just as dangerous it seemed with my sardine flipping and flopping on the deck, attached halfway to a hook that never made it to the water.

In the beginning, Donkey Kong got wide-eyed, questioning "you brought her?" looks. Had I been on the television show Survivor, I would have been a goner for sure.

But by the end of trip number two, on a much less populated boat, I had finally adjusted and made friends with those with one-syllabled names. They taught me how to better swing my line out into the sea without knocking people over. They told me how to grab good bait.

And for you avid fishermen reading this and who will likely turn to the sports page next to read the fishing report, we caught nothing on my first trip. The tuna down below had a meeting before that holiday weekend began, I suspect, based on my scientific observance of cartoons. They decided it would be rather stupid of them to stick around. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This year on our second trip, however, Donkey Kong and I caught three.

Not fancy yellowtail tuna, as we had hoped, but two L. halichoeres bialculateus e pluribusidu idunno and one L. vlamingii fidelis schoepf lemmethink, which are the Latin names of the species assigned to what the fishermen on the boat referred to as, simply, "put 'em in a frying pan and eat it." They assured us they would be tasty.

If it helps, one of the fish, I think, bared a striking resemblance to the Disney character Nemo.

Staff writer Louise Esola covers Oceanside schools. She can be reached at lesola@nctimes.com.