Anecdote - Whining Cousin

FISHING FLASHBACK #106

Frank and his cousin and myself had successfully completed a couple of runs in my little 8 foot six inch pram to put us at the mouth of the lower Gibsons Creek on the Egg Harbor River.

We scattered ourselves and our gear around and it was a banner day for fishing. But we would not run out of bait, beer or cigs. A couple of hours passed and I was picking up a big perch about every five minutes.

The whining started from the cousin. First of all he hadn’t caught a fish yet. The second complaint was that we should have brought some food. It told him to drink more beer so that it would fill him up, sit down, shut up and fish.

I caught a couple of keeper stripers and at the last of the outgoing tide the big perch blitzed, so I got way too busy to hear the whining. The tide began to flood as the cousin started pacing the bank, almost in tears, crying about his hunger, and lack of fish.

I got up and told him we had plenty of food stashed. Frank was scratching his head as I led the cousin over to the big bag containing our back up bait. I reached inside of the brown bag to a second bag of bloodworms and pulled a ten incher out by the head so it couldn’t bite, opened my mouth so the tail touched my tongue, and slowly slipped the worm through my lips and swallowed it.

I backed up as the cousin started turning funny shades of green. I put him in the boat and dropped him off at Betsy’s Lading and told him to hitch hike back if he was still hungry, because Frank and I were going to stay and fish until the beer and bait were gone.