BOATING
May 1998
I did my first real "Florida thing" since I moved here over a year ago. I went fishing. Sort of. Mostly I just sat around on a boat while two other guys went fishing.
Our sports photographer Bob Hansen belongs to a boat club in St. Petersburg. It’s not as snooty as it sounds. Bob found that being in the boat club he can go boating pretty much whenever he wants to with none of the hassles of actually owning a boat. He just calls and says, "I want to go out on such-and-such day," and then picks from a list of available boats. It ain’t cheap, though. A two-year membership costs $4,000. But Bob figures that ownership, upkeep and storage of a boat of his own would cost even more.
He was going out fishing Tuesday morning with a friend of his and invited me to go along. I had no real desire to go fishing; I don’t even like to eat fish. But lounging around on a boat in Tampa Bay for half a day seemed like a noble pursuit so I said, "Sure!"
I was scheduled to do a live shot from the Devil Rays baseball game in St. Pete for our six o’clock news Tuesday so if I’m in St. Pete boating I can just stay in St. Pete for the game and make a day of it. Boating in the morning, baseball in the evening, never even going into the station. What a gig.
Around 11:30 Monday night it finally dawns on me that if I’m going to get up at dawn to go boating and stay in St. Pete all day that I have to edit the story to run in my live shot tonight. I get that done by 1 a.m. and get home to sleep by 2. That gives me four full hours of rest before getting up for the 35 mile drive to Bob’s house.
The lack of sleep doesn’t haunt me until later.
The boating goes great. We just drive to the marina and the boat is waiting. It’s a 19-foot fiberglass fishing boat with a 120 horsepower Evinrude engine and five minutes after we get it those horses are pushing us along at what Bob says is about 30 miles an hour over water as smooth as the street.
We stop in a channel leading to where Tampa Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico. The water is less than ten feet deep and what looks at first glance like pollution on the surface is actually sea grass at the bottom. Except for that thing flapping it’s wings. That’s a real live ray. I’d seen the baseball team but I’d never seen its namesake until now (devil ray and manta ray are different names for the same fish). Cool.
With me still tied for the fish caught lead despite not touching a pole, we decide to move. The fishing is supposed to be good under the Skyway so we go there. The Sunshine Skyway bridge crosses Tampa Bay connecting south St. Petersburg to Manatee County.
The fishing is good here unless you’re trying to catch fish. There are fish here, we know. They keep eating the bait (live shrimp and old squid) without taking the hook. Bob catches something called a pin fish that he leaves on the hook hoping to use it as bait for something bigger.
We move again though it’s hard for me to tell where because there are no street signs. More land surrounds us and we’re near a small opening (between two islands probably) leading directly into the gulf. We have rivals vying with us for the fish here. Experts. Dolphins. A small pod, maybe three or four of them, loafing around.
It gets quite exciting at one point when Bob’s friend Chris catches what he knows is a good sized fish and hurries to reel it in before the dolphins steal the prize away from him. They could have just waited anyway. It’s a good sized fish, 21 inches long, very thin and narrow, white and gray with large round black eyes. None of us knows what kind it is but Chris says it’s not a good kind to eat and throws it back. It probably made a nice appetizer for a dolphin’s dinner.
What a day. The sun shines brightly in the blue sky and I even remembered to bring sunscreen so I can enjoy it. But it doesn’t last. There’s, er, work to do. I have to go to a baseball game. Slavery!
We take the boat back and let them clean the squid juice off. Then back to Bob’s for a quick shower before heading to the stadium. The live shot goes fine. The sports anchor, Chris Thomas, makes fun as he introduces me, explaining that in my only start as a high school pitcher I gave up a 720 foot home run, longest in state history. I go from that to introduce my story about a significantly better pitcher who won the game for the Devil Rays last night.
From there it’s nine innings of baseball with free Italian Ice in the press box. I told you this is work.
But then it really becomes work. I’m already exhausted from my long day and the Devil Rays and their opponents, the Cleveland Indians, decide to make it a long night too.
After nine innings the game is still tied at four. After 12 innings I learn that eating 12 innings worth of free Italian Ice has its price and I spend most of the 13th in the bathroom. Finally in the 15th, Cleveland scores to take the lead 5-4. Hallelujah!
But now that means I face the prospect of interviewing our team after they’ve played the equivalent of one game and two-thirds of another and still lost. No fun, that. Feeling sorry for me, the Rays’ Kevin Stocker slams a two run home run in the bottom of the 15th to win the game.
And if I make it home before I fall asleep, I’ll live to tell the tale. John
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©1997-2000 John McQuiston