We starve to spy that
early-morning eruption of a certain celebrated fin’s most fervorous form
slicing-open the saltwater’s surface. For
that tell-tail glimpse of the splendid Atlantic
Speedster’s inshore offensive charging aerially through a placid promise of
streaming tide. We stare and scan with
eyes piercing from the overlook of fall’s cool and dampened overnight sand
before the propitious renewal of blooming sun-light. Maybe
today, the Fat Albert will manifest from our few hours of fretful sleep in
which she provoked our dreams of longing, that by finned-fortune, we may
sight the seldom-seen Little Tunny within
distant, day-dreaming stares cast asea. That
we may profess upon the sandy alters that are our chosen beaches to inheriting
capture of the pelagic False Albacore
in celebrated and esteemed, surfcaster-to-surfcaster conversation. For the reeling revelation of having received
Euthynnus alletteratus.
We wait all-summer-long for her
arrival to our near-shore, salt-brined amphitheater. For the month of September, when the local
waters warmed temperate alchemize as those brief seasonal favors - open windows
of time and temperature valued most opportune - born of tropical circulations spun
off the Gulf Stream, those currents coddled and primed to her physiological
preference. For an ecosystem teeming
with Atlantic silverside and bay anchovy that she will forcefully ram-ingest
during darting feats of sunrise surface slashes, ones exhibiting her unrivaled predatory
speed and majestic leaping predation. For
a cast chance at intercepting her sudden, adrenaline-inciting, porpoise-like
breaches teasing at the surf-stranded of spirit much like a perspiring glass of
ice-cold water taunting at the imagination to the deliriously parched of thirst. So we cast mightily, ceaselessly, and far, as
far as possible, toward the promise of an oceanic-rising sun, to hopefully, if not eventually, encounter paths crossed with our rapidly-retrieved mold
of holographic metal anchovy imitation pulled fast and high behind flourocarbon
in the upper-water column for the jarring severity of her unmistakable strike arresting
any reel’s winding motion and crushing our rod like a ton of free-falling
bricks. Just, hold, on. For all that
locomotive muscle, for all of her rapidly-beating, fin-pulsating fighting-power
will electrify any drifting attention with the sudden shock of a nuclear
detonation setting-off deep within your chest, freezing a reflexive, white-knuckled-clenched-grip
onto the very intoxicated curve of carbon-fiber straining to subdue her
darting, high-speed escape. This entanglement of exception shall be
deemed a personal trial of judgment towards ascending esteemed eminence as a surfcaster. A most-rare
opportunity to proclaim uncommon triumph as a common sand-straddling
angler. As one having been fortunate enough
to reveal from beneath a hidden world of waves an exotic fish surging in giant
color and evolutionary greatness. Pound-for-pound,
she is a hook-up like no other surf-prowling gamefish we may pursue, running drag
harder and louder and stripping line faster than any of her seasonal
surf-sought competition dares. And for this,
she steals all passions piscatorial from the dying days of summer, reeling-in
these very fleeting desires pouring of our seeking hearts.
So we vow to never squander a water-borne
sunrise to chance encounter this smallest member of the family Scombridae, this mackerel masquerading as
a member of the true-tuna genus Thunnus,
however well-disguised in her flawlessly-verdant brilliance and ventral flashes
of pink, silky-smooth-to-the-touch, iridescent sheen. That hard-to-catch hard-tail painted of a signature
vermiculated pattern of upper-dorsal squiggles crowned by a row of free-swaying
finlets. Or that special fish stippled by those distinctive black pelvic dots of four or more over a football-shaped form sheathed by a seemingly scaleless ultra-hydrodynamic luster. The sea's seasonal bolt of green from the busting blue. Our opalescent obsession that are those colors revered, reputed,
and whole-heartedly understood between strangers of fishermen in sandy beach parking lots as the relishing, pelagic parlance of morning tailgate nomenclature. After all, it is
those of us with the surf’s sand to our feet, however fortunate or few, who
already know that there is nothing conceivably false of our transient, lunate-tailed visitor, for a fin by any other name would not fight
as sweet.
That, is no
falsehood.
