People always seem surprised when they find out that I’ve retired down here. I mean, why wouldn’t you retire to a nice tropical island if you could? Maybe other people have grandkids or something keeping them in one place, but I don’t have that. Thought I met the right girl once, but it turned out that she didn’t like fishing, which meant she didn’t really like me. I don’t know. My younger brother used to make fun of me and tell me that I was too cheap to ever get a wife, and he may have been right. Then again, he’s been divorced a few times and he don’t have any kids to show for it, either. He lives in a run-down apartment not too far from where we grew up. I think he still might be paying alimony. I sent him pictures of my condo. Although I was tempted to write “Look what being cheap got me!” I thought better of it and wrote “Hope you can visit someday.” Though I’m certainly not paying for his plane ticket. I’ve got that cheap reputation to maintain and all.
I had a real nice day yesterday. Woke up, headed down to the water and dropped in my line a few times. Caught a decent sized ladyfish and then I caught a snook. The locals here don’t usually do much withsnook, but that’s because a lot of them don’t know how to cook them properly. You have to take that skin off, or you find out why they’re nicknamed soapfish. And yes, I know this from experience. Thanks to the internet and some good recipes I found, it’s not longer a trial-and-error effort to make them into something edible. Once it started to get warm, the fish got lazy and so did I, so I went back home again.
I dropped off the ladyfish with my neighbor, who loves them. Then I cleaned the snoot and prepped it for a nice dinner later on. Next it was time for some lunch. Then I took a nap, since I’m retired now and there’s nobody to stop me. And of course, because you must get up early to fish, the days are pretty long.I woke up later in the afternoon, took a nice walk down to the water and sat on the beach for a bit. It sure is nice here. Went back and made myself that snook. It really isn’t too bad! It’s a hard fish to get back home—in some places, it is illegal to buy or sell them so it’s nearly impossible to even try unless you catch one yourself. It might just be my imagination, but I’m pretty sure that adds a layer of delicious to it every time I catch and cook one.
By the time I got everything cleared up from my meal, it was about time to call it a night. As I said earlier, the fish are up early—that means I am, too.