Last week I spent a couple of days on the coast. Wednesday afternoon I drove over to Oak Island and walked out on the pier. There must have been 75 lines in the water. Not a soul was catching fish.
When you go out on a pier it's like walking the evolutionary ladder. First you see kids fishing the shallows with rod/reel combos their parents bought cheap in case the kids drop them over the side. Then a few guys with double-hook rigs and tiny livewells with motors that buzz like cicadas. One or two sophisticates cast artificial lures downwind. These guys usually wear long sleeves and try to look like Hemingway.
Then you get to the end of the pier where the serious fishermen live.
June is king mackerel season on Oak Island and all the spots at the end of the pier are rigged for kings. The rig of choice requires two rods, one long, one short.
You take the long rod and cast a weight far off the end of the pier. That rod goes upright into a holder. The short rod holds the bait – a live menhaden, about the size of a crappie. You clasp that line to the anchor line and slide it down toward the water so the menhaden can swim just under the surface. The short rod sticks out over the water, held in place by a clamp.
Each rod holder is numbered so it's easy to holler when someone gets a strike: “Hey, 23! Fish on!”
At the moment this is just theoretical.
The only fish are the menhaden squiggling at the end of the lines. On good days they catch 15-pound kings out here, along with bluefish and cobia and tarpon and, every so often, a shark.
This is not a good day.
At least not a good day for catching.
A shelter covers part of the end of the pier, and underneath it the fishermen have built a shantytown of camp chairs and coolers. Somebody opens a case of Miller Lite and passes cans around. A woman from the hot dog stand in the parking lot takes orders.
“Regular mustard or spicy?”
“Surprise me.”
It's a hot day, but not so much out here because the breeze comes off the ocean and cools your sweat. Pelicans glide low to the water like stealth bombers, and a surfer paddles out to the break, and way off in the distance a shrimp boat chugs by, trailed by sea gulls.
Some people can understand why you fish when the fish are biting, but they can't understand why you come home smiling when you were out there all day and never got a strike.
I'm on the pier for an hour and the closest anyone comes is when a bluefish pokes a menhaden for a few seconds before swimming off.
No one seems to mind.
It is the beginning of summer and the guys on the pier are following the long and honorable tradition of figuring out elaborate ways to do nothing.
After a while two of them get up to check their bait. Bait's fine. They lean on the railing.
“Honestly,” one of them says, “if they had a bathroom down here I'd never leave.”
ttomlinson@charlotteobserver.com;
704-358-5227; Tommy's Table blog http://ttomlinson.blogspot.com
@Nyx.CommentBody@