A FISH STORY

by Beth Finke

Four hundred to five hundred blind people flinging fishing hooks and bait around? Sounded dangerous to me. But scary and crazy as the Visually Impaired Persons' (V.I.P.) Fishing Tournament sounded, I signed up anyway.

My husband Mike and I had just moved here to the Outer Banks in August along with our son Gus and my Seeing Eye Dog Dora. Little did we know that Nags Head was the site of North Carolina's annual fishing tournament for the blind.

The yearly event is sponsored both by businesses here on the Outer Banks and by the North Carolina Lions Clubs. Blind and visually impaired people from all over the state are invited to attend, free of cost. The tournament began in 1983, and ever since then it has grown both in size and popularity. In other words, a whole bunch of blind folks accept the invitation to come to the Outer Banks and fish. In 1997, I was one of them. I hadn't been fishing since I'd lost my sight 12 years earlier in the summer of 1985. Heck, I had never even fished when I could see! Never had any interest in fishing or learning to fish at all. But with this tournament taking place right in my backyard, I felt compelled to give it a try. Maybe I'd borrow Mike's motorcycle helmet to prevent any injuries from flying fish hooks...

When fishing day came, in early October, the weather was unseasonably warm. Could I wear sandals on a fishing boat, I wondered? Would it be cold on the open seas? Should I wear pants? I finally decided on sandals, shorts and a t-shirt. I packed sweat pants and a sweatshirt to take along in case it got cold on the boat. I decided against bringing the motorcycle helmet, it was just too hot out for that.

Smart move, for the helmet turned out to be unnecessary. The tournament was well organized, and any hooks that were flung were flung towards the sea and not towards each other. The whole event was downright civilized, really. The 400-plus of us met in the morning for meetings at the Outer Banks Worship Center on Nags Head's main highway. The worship center is built in the shape of a boat, and everyone around here just calls it "The Ark Church." Everyone knows where it is, too, so even though we were new to town, Mike found the place with no trouble.

There were special seminars and exhibits suited especially to the blind taking place at the church the morning of the tournament. I didn't pay much attention to the seminars or exhibits--I just wanted to fish!

At least, I thought I wanted to fish. But as the time to leave the safety of the ark and go to the boat drew nearer, I started getting nervous. The anxiety must have shown on my face, for when Mike leaned over to kiss me goodbye he seemed concerned. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, pulling back suddenly right before the kiss.

"Yes!" I answered, trying to sound like that was the silliest question I'd ever heard. Honestly, I didn't know HOW I was going to be. How was I going to get from the Ark church to the fishing boat, for example? How would I get onto the boat? Would the boat ride be rough? What if I get sick? What if Dora, my Seeing Eye dog, gets sick? What if the waters get rough? What if the boat capsizes? Will we all be wearing lifejackets while we fish?

Why had I opted for the boat, anyway? I could have been safe, on terra semi-firma, on a pier. When signing up for the fish tournament, each blind participant is given the choice of fishing off a pier or off a boat. Originally I'd chosen the pier, thinking that if I decided I didn't like fishing, or if I got bored, I could just leave. On a boat you're trapped. But then a friend recommended I go on the boat. "I'll take you fishing off the pier if you ever want to do that," she said, "but how often do you have an opportunity to fish off a boat in the ocean? Go for it!"

I called the VIP officials and had them change my preference. So here I was, "going for it", and Mike was going away, leaving me there at the Ark. I tried to smile so he wouldn't worry about me. He saw right through that smile, I know, but kissed me anyway and said goodbye. I heard him walk away and hoped he wasn't looking back. I could only hold that fake smile of confidence for so long, I'm afraid it left my face seconds after Mike gave me that kiss.

It wasn't long, though, before an authentic smile crossed my face. This smile came to me when someone touched my shoulder and asked, "Are you Beth?" I said yes, and she invited me to join her at another table. "The folks from Dare County are all over here," she explained, "take my elbow, I'll lead you there."

Blind people can be pretty resourceful and independent, but there are a few things sighted people can do that we're just no good at. One of them is finding people in a crowd.

A volunteer named Alice drove me and a 12-year-old blind girl from Kill Devil Hills to the boat we'd be fishing from.

"From there you're on your own," Alice told me.

"You mean you're not going on the boat with us?" I asked, panicking a bit.

"Oh, no," she said, "I'm going on the boat. But I don't know a thing about fishing."

"I've been fishing before," the 12-year-old chimed in, "I'll help you."

The 12-year-old wasn't the only blind person there who'd been fishing before. I was eavesdropping at the dock, and it sounded to me like everyone there had fished before. All of them had been to previous VIP Tournaments, and some of them had come to every tournament since the thing started in 1983.

It occurred to me then that any other blind person at the fishing tournament for the first time would have done the sane thing and fished off the pier. The boat, it seemed, was for weathered Fish Tournament veterans.

I would have sat there and worried about the boat again, if my neighbors hadn't, thank goodness, interrupted my thoughts by engaging in conversation with me. It was odd how I couldn't tell who was blind and who was sighted, who were the participants in the tournament and who were the volunteers. People would just come up, ask me where I was from, and start talking about how many fish they hoped I'd catch that day. One person noticed my anxiety and reminded me that the boats never go out to the ocean, they stay on the sound for the safety of the participants. Knowing we wouldn't be thrashing around in ocean waves made me feel better. Really, just sitting around talking with all these people made me feel better. Blind or sighted, they all were friendly, and everyone seemed happy to be there and excited to get on the boat and start fishing.

The exuberance was contagious. When we finally were told we could get on the boat, my Seeing Eye dog and I practically flew to the steps, we were so eager to get started. "Hold on!" someone yelled to me, "Watch your step!" It was probably the owner of the boat who was doing the yelling, as he seemed very skeptical about what Dora would do in guiding me up and down the steps to the boat. Everyone else there had spent time with Blind people; they all knew how skillfully a guide dog can maneuver even the most unusual paths, like the one that leads you onto a boat. Dora had never been on a boat before, but she guided me beautifully and sat quietly under my bench the entire time I fished.

And that time was l-o-n-g. By the time we were done that afternoon, we'd been on the boat almost 5 hours. We didn't go hungry, though. The tournament provided us with a sack lunch and soda, which were handed to us almost immediately after we'd all found a seat on the boat. "Good thing you brought these," I told the woman distributing the food, "We would starve out here if we had to rely on what I catch today for nourishment."

"Now, how do y'all know that?" the woman questioned me. She was teasing me with her southern twang. "Y'all haven't even stuck y'alls pole in the water and y'all think y'alls not going to catch anything already. Y'all are no fisherman!"

"I know it," I admitted, feeling for my sandwich in the bag she'd given me, "that's why I'm glad you gave us these sandwiches. Do you know much about fishing?"

"No ma'am," she said, "I'm just here to give out these bags of food." "That's good, 'cause that's important," I said, taking a big bite out of the sandwich I'd finally uncovered. I chewed a bit and then continued: "Mmmm, this sandwich is good, and like I said, food is important. But do you know anyone on the boat who likes to fish?" I asked. "I mean, besides the blind people fishing for the tournament?"

"Well, sure," she answered.

"Is there anyone on the boat who likes to fish and likes to talk about it so much that he bores everyone to death with fish stories?" I asked, "'cause that's the person I want to meet, that's the person I need to have come and help me."

"Well, I'll see who I can find for y'all," my sandwich friend told me, "but first I have to give all these other folks their food."

I finished my sandwich as she left to feed the others and find a fishing partner for me. I was thirsty, too, but went easy on the soda, not sure if there was a toilet on the boat.

It wasn't long before my sandwich pal returned and introduced me to Alan. I moved over and told Alan to sit down next to me. Alan stayed with me the rest of the trip. He wasn't actually there on the boat to help with we blind fishers; he had been "recruited" for the event to run the ham radio. We chatted for a while before I found out he was only 16 years old. He had received an excused absence from school that day to fill his important ham radio position on the boat.

Alan loved to fish, and loved to talk about it. He was born and raised on the Outer Banks; outside of a 3 year stint he spent in Raleigh, he'd always lived on the ocean. He could answer every question I had about high tides, low tides, inlets, surf fishing, pier fishing, you name it. More importantly, he wasn't shy about showing me what he knew. Before I knew it, Alan had set his ham radio aside and was helping me fish. He was amazingly patient with me, teaching me how to bait my own hooks and then letting me do it on my own. "Now here's the rod," he said, putting the bottom of the pole into my right hand, "and here's the holder for it." He took my left hand and let me feel the holder. Then he had me put the pole into it.

"Okay, good job!" he said, "now we're set." He put my right hand on a crank and had me turn it a few times. Then he took that same hand, had me extend my pointer finger and showed me where a little release mechanism was. "That's what you release when you want to let your line out," he explained. Taking that same extended finger and putting it near the crank I'd used earlier, he showed me how to feel the line going out, and how to know when it had extended as long as it needed to.

Alan never once grabbed the pole from me and said, "Here, let me do it." I told him I appreciated his letting me do all this on my own, he answered, "Well, I figured if you're here to learn to fish, you oughtta do it yourself." Ah, out of the mouths of teenagers...

Once I cast my line, I had a hard time feeling whether anything had bitten or not. Over and over again I pulled my line up and over and over again all I could feel on the end was the very bait I had put there myself. Alan watched me struggle with this and finally decided I should forget about feeling for the line to tug near the cranking mechanism. Just lean over to the end of the pole," Alan instructed, "and feel the line there."

"How?" I asked, leaning over the end of the boat. Amazing to think that a few hours earlier I had been worried about getting seasick. Now I was leaning out of a boat over the open seas, without a care in the world. Well, that's not exactly true, I DID have a care. I cared about catching a fish!

"Just let the line drape over your finger," Alan said, placing the line over my extended pointer finger, "this way you'll really feel it when something bites."

It wasn't long before I did feel a tug. And, of course, Alan was as excited as I was when I pulled that big ol' four ounce pigfish from the water.

"It's a Croaker!" Alan said, "touch it!"

I touched it and heard a distinct "oink!" We both laughed and began a spirited debate about whether my catch was a Pigfish or a Croaker. Whatever the case, I'd never known a fish could make that kind of noise. I'd never known I could catch a fish, either.

That fish was the only thing I caught that day. After catching my 4 ounce Pigfish, I didn't pay as much attention to the rod and reel anymore. I talked to Alan instead, learning about all the places he'd fished since he was a little kid, where he was going to high school now, all the different addresses he'd had on the Outer Banks.

"Geez!" I said, "why is it that you've lived so many places?"

"My mother has been married and divorced 3 times," he answered, "so we've moved around a lot." I wondered if maybe that's where Alan got that maturity of his, maybe it came from all the changes he'd lived through, all the adjustments he'd made already at age 16.

Alan was curious about some of the adjustments I'd made in my life. He asked me how I'd become blind--a result of juvenile diabetes--and how long I'd been blind--12 years. "What's it like not to see anything?" he asked me, "did getting a Seeing Eye dog really help a lot?" We talked and talked.

Before we knew it, it came time to say goodbye and get off the boat. Alan and I gave each other a big hug. "Thank you so much," I told Alan. "No," he said, "thank you."

Once we were off the boat, Alice, my original volunteer, drove me and the 12-year-old girl home. The 12-year-old was very excited, she had caught three fish that day. There were dinners and fish fries to attend that night as part of the Visually Impaired Person's Fish Tournament. They'd be giving out trophies and awards at the banquets, and this 12-year-old girl was sure to win at least one of them.

I was as exhausted as that 12-year-old was excited. I decided to skip the banquets and stay home, especially seeing as I already had my awards: I'd made a new friend in Alan, and I'd overcome my fears and learned to fish. It is one thing for me to relearn to do things I used to do when I could see; it's an entirely different thing to learn a new skill, learn to do something I couldn't do even when I had sight.

And the trophy? My 4 ounce Pigfish (or was it a Croaker?), of course.