Fog, Fog and More Fog
by Captain Perry Wrinkle
(This story originally appeared in 2004)
I know that this summer has to be the coldest and most foggy summer ever on record. I have fished so many days in the fog that the one day it cleared I had a job to find any of my traps.
Fishing in the fog is like “white line fever”, after a few days you become mesmerized by it. You start seeing things that just are not there. An island seems to loom up ahead of you, or a ghost like shoreline seems to appear. You look on the radar screen and there is nothing within half a mile of you and yet suddenly you are rocking from the wake of an unseen boat. You stare into the fog but there is nothing to be seen. It looks like white water breaking on a ledge where there is none. You hear the lonesome, wistful blast of a foghorn but the direction is lost to you. I expect that anytime I will see a pirate ship go slipping by with a British man-o-war in chase.
It’s been so bad that even my lobster boots are getting soggy inside from the dampness. I have worn the lenses out on my glasses from wiping them so many times. The old woman has worn the clothes dryer out because nothing will dry on the clothesline. My stern man says he is going to quit me and become a fortune teller or something so he can keep in touch with himself. He may have a good idea.
The Harbor Master told me he is going to take his oars out of the punt and put one over his shoulder and walk straight north until someone asks what that is. He said he will then pound the oar into the ground and build himself a house there. Sounded like another good idea.
During the summer the shores are alive with bathing beauties laying around on the rocks. Of course I really never noticed, but some of the young guys haul the same traps three or four times a day. This summer if there are any around they are wearing oil clothes or a snowmobile suit.
Even the seagulls are having it bad. I saw one trying to fly with a plastic bag on and half its feathers are gone where they keep flying into each other. The weather station taped the weather report back in March and they have never changed the tape. The bad part is that they are always right.
I haven’t heard from the global warming people. I think someone may have shoved their global warming report where the sun never shines.
An old friend of mine used to cash in on foggy days. He took fishing parties out and would run around an island just outside the harbor for half an hour, then drop anchor and tell them they were way offshore. It worked pretty well for two or three times until one day the wind came northwest and they could look right in at their cars parked in the parking lot. He didn’t get paid for that trip.
They say it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good will. The clothing stores are doing a landslide business selling oil skins. I wish them well. Maybe this will be a bad dream when September comes in with a northwest flow. Let’s all hope so.