Maine Outdoor Journal

Fluke can be flukey, I am told. Here yesterday, gone today, back in the middle of next week. The fluke might have been in Huntington Bay this past Saturday but you could not prove that by my experience. Everywhere we dropped baited hooks, the hooks were un-baited by phantoms, ghost fish, which may or may not have been fluke and may or may not have been crabs or eels or mermaids. Over the side and into the sea we dropped silversides hooked through the eyes, chunks of bunker, strips of squid; all were devoured without prejudice by the phantoms of the bay.

I was sailing second mate aboard my Centerport pal Chris “Manatee Boy” Johnson’s boat, with Chris and his friend Anthony, who were hoping to win the annual Huntington Bay fluke tournament. I say “boat,” but it was more of a 70-horsepower surfboard. I believe that giving a boy a boat is a fine thing for parents to do, but a case could be made for a nice little pulling boat to start with, something that would indulge the boy’s passion for fishing while strengthening his arms, back and character. To go from zero to seventy horsepower may be a power trip too far. I say this as a near-cripple whose spine was compressed to the length and consistency of a breakfast sausage each time the boat flew off a wave top, practically into orbit, and came down with the subtlety of a pallet of bricks dropped off a roof. After a dozen or so of these near-death experiences I mutinied and relieved Anthony of his first-mate’s cushioned seat beside the captain and banished him to the hard foredeck, where his young and supple back could more easily absorb the G-forces.

That Chris loves to fish is a given; the powered surfboard is equipped with no fewer than ten fishing rods. The proof that he knows how to fish was iced down in a large cooler in Doug and Karen Johnson’s garage: two 10-pound blues and a 20-pound striper, caught by Chris the day before. The fact that I have never caught a fish in my two expeditions with Chris doesn’t mean a thing except that maybe he should wait a while before applying for a guide’s license.

We traversed the bay under a the brutal beauty of a summer sun in a cloudless sky, we made long drifts through usually-productive spots, and as we came up empty in place after place visions of the tournament prize receded into the haze of the horizon. To be fair, Chris did pull in two fluke, with a combined length of maybe 20 inches, and returned them, flopping, to the sea. By midafternoon I quit. We were all severely sunburned by then. I would trade a sunburn for a few good fish, but all we came ashore with was the burn.

Next summer I’ll take Chris trout fishing, and he will sit in the bow seat of a motorless canoe and paddle, and he will have to cast with a flyrod, and he will perhaps go home a bit more humble and with a bit more muscle in his skinny arms.