We went fishing again today. This is because Joe wanted to maximize his friend Jim’s chances to fish, before Jim goes back to Idaho.
We left right before 7 AM. Joe rejected even the possibility of trolling for salmon. My impression is that Joe finds trolling boring, and his fishing dreams focus on catching great big halibuts, battling them with his fishing rod silhouetted against the horizon.
Arthur, on the other hand, seems to find fishing for halibut frustrating and boring. It’s mostly waiting around. There is much more to be done when trolling. The downriggers have to be deployed, depths monitored, and the whole thing takes place while in motion. So Arthur was visibly disconsolate when Joe declared his desire to focus on halibut, but, since Joe and Jim were guests, he hunkered down and decided to just mess with rigging up new hook assemblies for some future trolling excursion.
We motored straight out to Diamond Point and parked there, and fished for halibut. Joe’s instincts worked out, this time, and we caught quite a few. Importantly, Joe got to hook a 60 pound halibut, much bigger than the other small ones, and hauled it in. It was actually impressive.
Arthur actually rejected fishing at all, except a very brief stint at the end. Earlier, I took a third rod and fished instead. I even caught a halibut. I’d never caught one before. It was small. Mostly Jim and Joe did the catching. We did it all at Diamond Point, so from a navigational standpoint, the day was straightforward. The weather started quite calm but it was getting blowy by the time we decided to head in, around noon.
We caught a total of 10 halibut. Here they are, laid out on the deck, with Jim and Joe admiring them.
I have had another depressing insight about why communication with Arthur breaks down for me (and I mean for me, specifically) so frequently.
It goes like this. Arthur’s default belief is that I’m incompetent. This isn’t precisely that he thinks badly of me, but rather, in his mind I’m frozen, developmentally, at around age 11 or so – at least as far as I can figure out. So then when I ask Arthur something, or make a statement, and he misunderstands me (which is the most common result, these days, either because of his hearing loss or his cognitive processing issues), he always misunderstands me in the direction of assuming that my question or statement is coming from the position of incompetence. I am not a particularly thick-skinned person. So of course my feelings get hurt by this insinuation of incompetence, which is further offensive because it’s based on a failure to understand what I’ve said.
It might help to give an example. Arthur prefers to dump the fish carcasses from a big haul far away from the dock, off in the middle of the bay somewhere. This is an established procedure, in which I’ve participated many times. I went to ask Arthur about if he wanted me to take the scraps out in the boat and dump them in the middle of the bay right away, or if he wanted to supervise that undertaking. He didn’t fully hear me, and of course he doesn’t remember ever doing that with me before (I’m still 11 years old, right?), so he immediately gets upset, because he’d already said that the fish carcasses needed to be dumped in the middle of the bay, and he starts explaining, defensively, in excessive detail, why he believes this to be important. All the while, becoming increasingly agitated by what he clearly perceived to be an obvious question that he’d answered before. But remember – I wasn’t questioning the procedure, I was merely trying to take initiative and see if he simply wanted me to do it, or if he didn’t trust me to do it.
Anyway, I walked away. And I did it.
Here is a rather large boat that passed us while we fished.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 15
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 11
- Other: 3
- Too-small fish sent home to mama: 27
- Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1
can’t tell you how much we enjoy your fishing reports. I always read them to Dean. Arthur is a challenge. I can identify with you to a degree as my skin is not thick either. it’s not unusual for Dean to come across rather abrupt & I rather shy away – he immediately starts with “don’t take me so seriously”. he at least realizes that he can sound gruff & demanding but he doesn’t mean it that way. I also frequently ask for “clarification” – which is a good thing because I have completely misunderstood the directions given. I know it’s hard but try to take it in stride – know that Art loves & admires you very much. he has told me. he has no idea how he comes across & we are not going to change him. we have to love him for who he is and accept him for who he is. we are a result of our life experiences.
take care, we think about you often.