I took this pic of a pic in Museum of Natural History NYC
This is my post for #freewriters 2606 prompt king of the bar hosted by @mariannewest.
My sister and Masher are the couple in the middle
Many years ago my husband and I took my sister and her husband fishing, it was one of the most eventful days we had while fishing. It must have been in the Spring because we were catching "spot net" fish, Spot net fish is what I called the fish in the net that we caught spots in the river with, it had a 2 and 7/8-inch mess. We do not have one net that catches everything, it catches by the size of the mess and fish size. But this day we were what I called play fishing, we were using rod and reels. We were catching bluefish, mackerel, and weakfish, pulling them as fast as we could get a bait down to them.
not the shark from that day
Masher, who is my sister's husband. His name was Tim but everyone called him Masher, he worked in construction, RIP Masher. Anyway, he hooked a bluefish and when he got it near the top, we could see a huge bull shark after it. Masher was reeling as fast as he could and yelling "you are not getting my fish", It was not far from the boat when Masher said "I won"
fish not from that day
and just then the shark opened its mouth and took the fish and all Masher got was the head, and we saw the shark had its mouth open and was still coming at the boat. When it turned, we could have reached out and touched it. Masher did not fish for a long while, he later said he shook for 30 minutes.
Now we are back in the river and I had said something to Masher about how he was sitting on the boat, he wanted to sit on the gunnle, the top edge of the boat. WELL, we hit another boat's wake, and overboard Masher went. If an inexperienced captain was driving, the prop would have hit him. But he had my husband driving and he knew when he saw Masher fall, which way to turn the motor so he did not get hit. When someone falls off the port, left side, you want your boat to go to the left, which swings the engine out of the way from the person who fell overboard.
Here is a tip on how to remember which is port and which is starboard, left and port are the short words and right and starboard are the longer words.
Judah's Bar stretches from here to within 100 yards of shore, on low water you can only get around the west end of it.
The last thing that happened that day was we were headed to the fish house and were going to go around Judah's Island sandbar when my husband saw it. A dolphin had beached itself halfway out from the end of the sandbar. Looking back on it he looked as if he was the king of the bar, it was laying there looking around, not trying to move. It must have been tired out from struggling to get off. There was no telling how long it had been there. Not many people went around the sandbar on low water.
As we got closer we saw it start struggling to get itself off the sandbar so my husband pulled the boat far enough away as to not scare it and he and Masher went to help it. As they walked up to it, it started screaming, it was a loud shrill sound, but as soon as it figured out they were there to help it calmed down.
I will try to explain it, but I know my words will not come close to what I saw. There before me was my husband, a commercial fisherman who, every day, cursed dolphins when they took his fish. He was now helping one that had become stranded. As I said it was now screaming from fright, it got louder as they approached it, and when they tried to lift it, it stopped screaming like it knew they were there to help. But they could not even begin to budge it and I was thinking we were going to have to tie a rope onto it and drag it off with the boat, but it was maybe the 3rd or 4th time they tried to lift it, the dolphin figured out how he could help them.
It was beautiful to see them working together. As soon as the dolphin felt them start to lift, it would kick its tail, which lifted its body, and my husband and Masher would shove it forward. With all three working together and doing this over and over again, the dolphin was finally in deep enough water to swim away.
Of course, this was before cell phones, and even carrying a camera was only for special occasions, this was just going to be another day going fishing.
photos are mine