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Friday, August 24, 2018

Broken Line

Matt was just somewhat better prepared than last night. He double and triple checked his knots. I helped him with nothing but the first cast...which resulted in the rig he created breaking off before the forward arc reached high point. Now he knows he must make sure to know if the line on the spool of the reel is not tangled and knotted. I could have thought of it myself, since I reeled in the slack last night, but I'm an old man now. He has to pick up on his own.

Which he says he will begin doing tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. When Tradewinds Tackle opens. Strike three or score tomorrow night. If the surf is doable. It was beautiful again tonight.

Earlier in the day, I had noticed he had one circle hook left. I could have told him so. Last night, the problem was essentially the same as what unfolded again tonight. He needed another rig. But the less I tell him what to do, so much the better. The only way to learn, when you really get down to it, is not by sitting in classrooms and getting spoon fed information; it's by getting confronted with the denial, not of a parent or anyone else just saying no, but that of existence itself. Boy, was he ever frustrated tonight.

Actually, last night, as I reeled in that slack, I felt the stirring of a rejection of the reel he chose to use. Old as I am, I forgot all about it a second later, but I remembered tonight. It's his reel. That's OK. I got the idea in the first place of mounting it on my slightly longer rod, because he didn't want to use my reel with the broken anti-reverse. But the spool is larger, mine is. So now that he screwed up again, I told him about my reel compared to his. I had us compare the exact specs. His reel--280 yards/12-pound test. Mine--440 yards/12-pound test. That's a critical difference when fishing sharks.

We switched out the reels. He will hold the rod in hand. What's more, he discovered while sorting out the tangle of his spool--successfully--that I had tied a braid blood knot (not the same as with mono). Forty-pound test. That's OK for little striped bass in the surf, but I felt uneasy right away in our situation.

That Penn he owns I bought at a fishing flea market very shortly after I began writing for The Fisherman again, I guess about 12 years ago. Brand new. Half price. Beautiful. And I told him after we got back here tonight that I remember as I reached for the reel I had already made up my mind to buy for him, I told myself I want this reel to last him into his college years.

So here we are. We haven't fished the surf together in years with the heavy tackle, but have a look at this tangled situation we're in now, and it involves a curious twist of fate. Had I been reasonable and seen right away that he's better off with more line and my reel, his own reel would have got no use on this trip, shortly before he returns to Boston University as a Sophomore physics major. It's all a learning curve for him. And more than that. What is 12 years? On some level, it must have some sort of equivalence to one second's duration. What I saw as I reached for that reel included these two nights. I bet it did factually. But not as an ordinary linear sequence.

I got into how a fish on a long run not only builds torque on the spool as it empties, thus increasing chance of breakage, but the line in the water takes on weight. "It's physics," I said, "I can't explain it in an equation, but maybe you should tell me."

"Oh, yeah," he said, airily. "I see what you mean."

"When you can apply your physics to practice, then I will think its smart," I said.


http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2015/08/avon-pier-with-driven-wind-no-hope-for.html


  

4 comments:

  1. Wisdom vs book learning. Ah yes, grasshopper! Knowledge in practice - basically what engineering is all about. Applied physics is somewhere in the middle

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  2. I talked about Dali on the beach today with Matt. Don't know what you mean by grasshopper, unless you mean that sort of leaping mind, but Dali painted the famous Grasshopper Child. It might seem out-of-character for me to say you're smart if you can apply physics to fishing line, since I've always seemed to have been the head-in-the-clouds theoretical kind, but fishing has taken me back to roots in very practical measures, and my job requirement to beat the odds on very slim profit margins sure as hell has....

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  3. I have found that this site is very informative, interesting and very well written. keep up the nice high quality writing. Fish Mount Combo

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