Moriches fishing trip

Moriches Fishing Trip

Back in 1986, I was a different person then I am now. I still didn’t have any hair, and I still didn’t like to try change, and I was uncomfortable around people, and women. So maybe I haven’t changed so much then, but back in 1986, I had a video store called Sun Video. A customer named Fred comes in one day to get a membership. He’d just moved into a house down on Western Highway with his brother, and maybe someone else, I don’t remember. He’d just moved back from Florida. We got talking, and he somehow convinces me to go fishing with him somewhere on Long Island, at a place called Moriches. It was run by a guy named Gary. Unbeknown to me that place would become a very important place to me. So important that when I learned my daughters love to fish, that was the place I took them. That first day in 1986, Fred, and I caught, and kept 36 Fluke. Nothing close to that since, but it has always been a fun place. It was Nastia, Elena, and I for one trip a year, a two hour trip, 99 miles on I95, the LIE, and the Cross Island Expressway. To a little slice of Heaven. There were times I’d cancel the trip at the last moment because I thought it would rain, or maybe I was just nervous, I don’t know. This year I was told come Hell, or high water we were going, and Sean was coming along. We, Elena, and I got up like we were going to work. Picked Sean, and Nastia up at their place, and wer on the road by a little after seven. I kept ignoring Google Maps every time it changed direction from the route I’ve taken for the past forty years. Across the Tappen Zee Bridge, don’t take the Mario Cuomo, it’ll sink we]hen you cross it, to the Cross Westchester to I 95, th the Throggs Neck Bridge, to the Cross Island, and finally to the LIE,getting off at exit 69 for Moriches. Near the end of the trip there, I’d followed Google Maps, and it said to take exit 68, and I didn’t like the way it took me. I turn a right down Adelaide Ave. near the school, past the expensive houses. Nothing had changed, well, until I reached Silly Lilly’s. Gary had sold about seven years ago, and the new owner, or owners had made some mighty big changes. It was a little jarring the first time I arrived. There was a food truck, open on weekends, nice idea, the building where you rent the boat has been filled with Silly Lilly merchandise, again I can understand, it’s a business that needs to make a profit to stay in business. Up until this year none of the changes really altered my world. They eliminated all bait except frozen spearing, the reports of where the fish were hitting became vague, to nonexistent, The boats had seen better days, none of that took away from my day of enjoyment fishing. The day before I left I went around work telling people I had tomorrow off because I was going fishing. So I was psyched to go. The girls were even more. I park at the station, walk in, and tell the two kids. They really were kids, and that's not because I’m getting as old as dirt. Maybe they were college kids. I tell them I reserved a boat to go fishing. I only reserved the boat because I didn’t want to travel 99 miles in two hours, brave the LIE, I95, and all those other roads for nothing. It was a Thursday, how busy could they be? They have trouble finding my reservation. I say, “Not a big deal.”, but to them it seems to be. Finally after some throat clearing, and me telling them to just say it. They tell me they cancelled my reservation three weeks ago because I’m not a member of their new club club, something or other.

I surprisingly kept my temper. I asked, “ where does that leave us?” They’re going to call the boss. I tell them to tell hom I’ve been coming here since 1986. They come back and say the boss said to rent us a boat. What he doesn’t say is the boat is now $400.00, not the $260.00. I blow air out of my nose when I see the price, and ask them, THey confirm that is the price. I buy three bags of frozen Spearing, with tax, I’m now at $480.00. The boat has seen better days. The motor runs rough, the teak hasn’t been touched in forty years, and it has a lot of splinters where during the day the line will get caught. I really don’t want to ruin this day for everybody, but Nastia takes one look at my face when I come out, and she asks what’s wrong? I just shake my head and we go to load up the boat. We’re given a map, and some vague indication that the Fluke are in the elbow out near the inlet, because the water is still cold. We get out there, Nastia throws out her line, and while I’m stringing up the other poles, she says, I think I got something. She’s struggling with it, and to my amazement it’s a sand shark. We get it in the boat, but the hook is stuck in its mouth. So I cut the line and Elena tosses it back in.

Never have I ever caught a sand shark out there. It was the first of eight we caught. After Sean bought one into the boat that almost landed Nastia in the bay when she tried to get out of the way, we decided to just cut the hooks and set them free. Fishing was so poor around two, two-thirty we took our overpriced rental boat in early. We took all of our junk, and left the boat like we found it. It was a miserable day. I let the greed, and short sightedness of this owner, and his club regulars policies ruin my day. In the past I’d never felt abused or unimportant at Silly Lillys, that is until that day. I felt like my business was unwanted, I rented a boat mid week, that was costing the owner no money, He made a killing on me this year. Next year when I don’t rent that boat how much money will it make him.