My kingdom for a fish
by Marli Guzzetta • Independent Writer
No matter what is going wrong in your life at the time, fishing, like baseball, can suddenly become a metaphor for its remedy. If you catch a fish, it means the gods and maybe the ghost of Ernest Hemmingway are smiling down from behind the scales of silver clouds, and all will be well.

Or at least, that's how I saw it a few weekends ago when our very own fishing columnist, Andrew Spencer, took me out on his boat for my first, proper, inshore bluefishing venture along with his dad, George. The outing came at the tail end of a bad two weeks - really, unbelievably bad, like the story arc for one of those movies in which Bill Murray gets knocked around for two hours. So I was grateful for the opportunity to hang a "Gone Fishin'" sign on my brain to accompany the two men to Madaket Marine, bringing nothing in the way of equipment but a hat, a pair of sunglasses and two sneakers, which I, following Andrew's lead, kicked off as we shoved out of the slip and into Hither Creek.

I can't imagine a better guide than Andrew, who, in addition to working in marketing and writing for our paper and N Magazine, also works at Bill Fisher Tackle. As we made our way out through the buoys, Andrew pointed out charter boats belonging to Captain Tom Mleczko and explained just about everything that needed explaining.

PHOTO BY JILL SANDOLE For Marli, maybe it was just beginner's luck.

We hit a good clip over some light chop on our way out to Great Point.

"Do you get seasick?" Andrew called out from behind the wheel, and I shook my head no. Though my proudly Italian family doesn't often acknowledge it, my paternal grandmother's grandfather (my greatgreat) was Swedish and supposedly a fishing captain out of Blekinge. In addition to imagining Ernest Hemmingway between those silver clouds, I saw my great-great grandfather and didn't want to disappoint him. No, I didn't get seasick. Saltwater runs through my family tree.

After a good motor around the island - during which Andrew pointed out landmarks where motorists and pedestrians were undoubtedly engaged in a battle of social wills (how sweet to escape it for a day) - Andrew killed the engine.

"I smell them," he told his dad, who'd first brought Andrew fishing around the island when Andrew was a boy.

BY George Spencer, Andrew Spencer and Marli with their catch following a hard day's work.

With the water still frothy around the side of the boat, Andrew grabbed a pole out of its little scabbard. Standing at the stern, he cast into the waves, reeling back in at a good clip.

It wasn't 30 seconds before the pole bent with the struggle of a hooked fish. Not wanting to touch any of the three other poles until given explicit permission (and minor instruction), I watched from the starboard.

A generous host, who, I think, was most worried that I wouldn't catch a fish of my own (especially since he knew I was writing this story), Andrew called me back to the stern to reel it in, and I learned my first lesson about bluefishing: they fight. They swim around the boat, and under the transom and back around again. I think of myself as a pretty strong girl with some meat on her bones, so I was happy to give the bluefish on the line a run if he wanted one.

And that's when I learned a second very important lesson about bluefishing: I hadn't noticed, but Andrew had opened the livewell, a little holding compartment in the floor of the ship's stern, in anticipation of the hooked fish. As I had my entire focus on getting the fish into the boat, my right foot slipped into the well, tearing a large chunk of skin off my second toe and also half of the nail on my middle toe. Just like Bill Murray, I fell on my hams. Most disappointingly, the line snapped on the fish.

I sat for a moment, applying pressure to my numb and bleeding toes - realizing I'd been a bit flippant to think I should be running around the boat barefoot just because Andrew (stronger and more experienced) was doing it. My Great-Great Fishing Captain Grandfather in the Sky was tsk-ing me from behind his hoary beard, I imagined. Both of the Spencer men were quiet as I sat there - the kind of quiet a parent gets in that shocked split-second between the time a child hits his head and then begins to cry. But I wasn't going to cry. I have a high pain threshold and I'm not much of a crier anyway.

Mostly, I was hoping it wasn't a bad omen - especially when I'd been hoping for a big catch to be a good one.

I refused to be dismayed. As soon as the feeling returned to my toes, I got up, cleaned off my feet and put on my shoes and socks. I decided I would catch a fish with the pole Andrew had re-rigged for me, and with patience and a good, stoic attitude - I think that also might come from the Swedish side.

Andrew motored to a new spot where he said he could again smell the fish. (I thought that was just remarkable.) After casting, he hooked again and offered to let me reel in his fish a few times, but what I really wanted was to hook and reel in my own. Using my old softball-throwing arm, I cast out maybe once or twice - getting progressively more adept at the finger work with the bail and at making that long, beautiful arc in the air with the line.

By the second or third cast, I'd hooked my own fish. Andrew came to stand next to me while I fought with the bluefish, which I let get too far under the transom. It snapped the line. With two more rigged poles in the boat, I grabbed another one and began casting out again, as did Andrew and George, who, it seemed, were catching fish left and right - keeping only two dinner-sized fish and then releasing the rest into the water.

I hooked two more fish and, twice in a row, snapped the line. About 45 minutes into the trip, Andrew and George had caught three fish, and I'd snapped lines on three poles. Brilliant. I suspected that Andrew was being gracious at the expense of being truthful when he told me not to worry, that lines snap all the time, which is why Bill Fisher doesn't go out of business.

We relocated the boat a few more times, as other boats started crowding the water around ours or as the fish moved. I'm not sure how many times we'd moved exactly, but I was standing on the starboard near the bow, George was portside and Andrew was at the stern when I snagged another fish.

I know now that bluefish are notorious fighters, which is in part why fishing for them is so much fun. But I feel a little bit justified in thinking this particular fish was a real scrapper, because by the time I reeled it in to the side of the boat - a process that seemed to take almost 10 minutes as Andrew talked me through, telling me to walk with it around the transom as it swam beneath the boat - we could see that it was a pretty decent size.

About 33 inches and almost 10 pounds, Andrew estimated after he'd grabbed the line for me and brought the fish into the boat. My first fish. Big sigh. Big fish. I'd hoped I'd made my grandfather proud.

The pressure off, I caught about four more that day, releasing all of them into the water, because none of them were bigger than the first.

When we finally decided to head back to Hither Creek - where Andrew's girlfriend and photographer, Jill Sandole, waited to take a picture of us with whatever we'd caught - it was official that I'd caught the biggest fish of the day. This completely negated knowing two of my toes were wrecked and my abdomen was polkadotted with bruises after having fought with so many fish. Maybe my luck was finally changing. I was entirely proud and pretty giddy, but at no point did I doubt that a large portion of the credit went to Andrew - not only for putting the boat right in the middle of the fish and then talking me through my catches, but also, later, for standing out in the hot sun and filleting my fish for me while Jill and I had cold beers in the Spencers' living room.

Tight lines for sure. I