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Let’s face it. I’ve become a dinosaur.
Take it from me, it sneaks up on ya. I can tell in all sorts of ways, but what I’ve done versus what I have never done is really starting to show my age.
For one, I’ve never even seen a boat with a sky bridge, much less been up in one. I was on a boat with an omni sonar once, but the screen was black. This stumped everyone, so we put it in the “too hard” basket and looked for birds the old-fashioned way. After all, marlin are dinosaurs too.
Humans fish for a lot of reasons, and fun is a proven universal one. Pacific Islanders have been catching these fish for centuries with the technology of traditional knowledge, long before high-tech gadgets. So, for me, as both dinosaur and dinosaur-catcher, it makes me wonder if the new-fashioned way is as much fun as the old-fashioned way.
In Kona, the old-fashioned way is fun because of the characters you get to share landmarks with. I can still see Capt. Rusty Unger and Capt. David Beaudet up on the bridge, pointing at objects on the mountain, laughing and telling stories all day, waiting for a bite. Lining up an object high on the slope with another on the coast would delineate their fishing spot. Continuing even today, that technology of traditional knowledge fosters data exchange, generating oral history and a lot of fun.
One of my funniest fishing moments was down in Tahiti on a simple bonito boat. I was holding a rigged aku, laughing hysterically while getting pelted by more aku raining down on me, flung by the local crew from jack poles. The barbless pearl shell lures were the same as those that had been used for centuries.
Perhaps the most high-tech thing on board was my pair of Maui Jim sunglasses, invaluable for spotting a big dark shadow in the wash. If the school hid under the boat, the rigged aku would go over the side. That was a fun mix of traditional and modern technologies.
On the Great Barrier Reef, Capt. Brian Reeves embraced technology in his own way: He installed a Humminbird bass sounder on his bridge. It beeped when he was just about to run aground. While not running aground, he raised the largest black marlin any of us had ever seen, sporting a girth of 7 feet, 10 inches. Sharks ate it up to the pecs, or that could have been a new world record.
Would a 3D sounder have changed that outcome? Ask the sharks. Only they had fun that day.
When my dad was the dinosaur of the house, his gang would debate who has the most fun: Texans or Cajuns? In the end, they agreed that Cajuns had more fun on less money.
Maybe wondering who has the most fun is just something you do when you get to be a dinosaur. Maybe I am just an aging Cajun.
Or maybe us older guys realize that the important parts of this whole game are simple, so have fun.
