Setting the Record Straight: Tio's alright with me

“No one has EVER caught a fish with him around,” chuckled my father from the background. I was on the phone with my mother, allowing her to live vicariously through my experiences, and she yelled to the other room to inform my dad in the other room, “..your son went deep sea fishing!” She often gets greater excitement out of my adventures than I do. Actually, that’s not true. I get excited. Sometimes. I just keep a really even keel, as they say. The act of being on a 33-foot fishing boot called the Reel Hooker, 15 miles off the coast of Lana’i , knifing through the very choppy Pacific Ocean waves on a sun splashed Sunday morning would do it for most people. I guess the prospect of catching a 500-pound fish took some of the bite out of the moment for me. I enjoyed it though. Honest! What’s not to like about such picturesque views. It is truly amazing how these land masses jut out of the deep blue sea, and how the thick, rich foam of the crashing waves explodes on the rocks. Clearly, just such a view must’ve been one of the things that the Lord threw in as an added bonus following my nightly prayer thanking Him, in advance, for waking me the next morning. There are certainly a whole lot worse things to look at.

I made it. That’s the important thing. Mr. Tio was a very gracious guide and host. He provided very useful insights and wonderful “fish” stories about voyages past, talked about some of the colorful characters that frequent “the ‘Goose” and even let me drive the boat! Yes, a 6’7”, baggy-short wearin’, Gucci shades havin’, freshly lined and faded beard sportin’ Captain Jack Sparrow; although my hat bore a Swoosh instead of a Jolly Roger. After awhile, I actually thought I knew what I was doing. I convinced myself that I could go “with the grain” of the waves for a smoother ride. (Give a brotha a rope, he thinks he’s a cowboy…)

Sensing how much pleasure I was deriving from being in charge of this voyage, I think Tio let me stay at the helm longer than he might have. After awhile, he hardly gave any instruction, unless I got too close to some scuba divers in shallow water (“Sorry…”). But the great stories continued all day. Although he kind of resembled a shorter, chubbier, poor-man’s Michael Douglas, the lore of days gone by made him sound a lot more like a modern day Huck Finn. As legend has it, at 17 he ditched his classmates on a senior trip in Santa Cruz to join a surfing competition, and never returned to his native Southern California. He’s surfed all over the place, although not much anymore, and has even held some Hawaiian state records for the largest fish caught. We didn’t catch anything but it made for a much more memorable Sunday morning than sitting in my boxers watching the NFL on Fox on a 19” hotel TV.