Fishing in Bali

Feb. 19, 2020: Passengers began to disembark the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship under quarantine in Japan. [Wikipedia]

On this day in Bali, I was going to go fishing with Odin. I started writing a story about the experience. I’ll transcribe it here. 

I woke up to my alarm at 5 AM. I brushed my teeth, put on a little sun block, and dressed in my longest sleeved shirt. I went to the kitchen in the dark. My feet patting the sidewalk were the only sounds in the heavy air.  I filled my water bottle with a trickle from the dispenser, happily there was enough. I didn’t see the two spiders from the day before. On the counter was a little guano. Perhaps a bat was nearby.

Upon leaving the courtyard of the hotel, I entered the the cloud of stench the sewage puddle across the street produced and the cow dung in the nibbled grass. I marched to the Main Street and met some early morning commuters  buzzing by on their motorbikes. Walking past the dive shop I turned right and saw the sign I’d memorized the day before. The narrow path between building opened to fences, dirt yards, and laundry hanging. 

A number of human shapes stirred in electric light spilling from doorways opened to the night air. I felt no breeze in the clammy dark. I turned right, then left, and the beach opened up around me. Moonlit breakers marked the almost black expanse of the sea. The waves crashed their rhythm and the sand crunched under my feet. The boat was in its place along the long line of boats, right where I had noted it the evening before. Odin was not there, I sat down on an outrigger and looked up. A hazy sliver of the moon greeted me and a lone planet beneath it mocked me. I would rather be in bed, maybe Odin wouldn’t show up and I could go back to sleep. Why did I want to go fishing and probably not catch anything. I looked to the south and searched for the Southern Cross. I hadn’t seen much of these stars in a long time and I probably hadn’t even looked for the Southern Cross since our days in Brisbane. The Cross was there, though, looking back at me like a description in a half remembered children’s book to fantastic be believed. 

I heard the crunching of feet and Odin appeared out of the shadows with his glowing cigarette casting dim light on dread locks spilling down his head. He said a quick good morning and set about stowing the two poles and shopping bag he carried. 

He told me to have a seat and he unwrapped the motor from a cocoon of tarps. I sat and watched, wondering if I should help. I had no idea what to do yet, so I remained on an outrigger. Odin seemed to have everything sorted out. The boat was about 10 meters/11 yards from the water. Odin called his brother on the phone to help us launch it. We waited and he began rigging the fishing poles. He had two lures the size of 1.5 fingers. He had been going on about rapalas when I met him the day before. Now, I finally understood that he meant because it was in front of my face, the fishing lure brand, Rapala. It seemed such a strange intersection of our lives, that I knew of these fishing lures from my long gone experiences fishing on lakes. Three of Odin’s relatives marched out of the dark and they quickly positioned themselves at the outriggers. With several heaves and me lending a token push, we got the boat to the water. They told me to get on before a final heave ho set us floating. Odin revved the motor and we barely missed being plowed back onto shore by an enormous breaker. We backed out and idled in the swells as Odin fitted a large white wooden tiller on the side of the boat. We were in a narrow, deep, five-meter-long boat that was styled like a dugout canoe. It had outriggers on each side attached to the boat by yokes at the bow and stern. Beautiful rope work fastened the yokes and the boat together tightly. A lip ran around the inside of the boat just below the rim. If I tried to stand, my hips came to the gunwales. But there was nowhere to sit. Odin passed me a Venetian blind at which I stared blankly until he told me it was a seat. I unrolled it to make a sort of bench. Odin started maneuvering the boat further out from the shore and he handed me a pole. 

I let it out and the lure rode the line like a water skier going back and forth. It rode near the surface and pulled so hard it seemed the line must break. It jerked and shivered 50 meters behind the boat’s puttering motor acting like a wounded fish. Predators like Barracuda, Marlin, and Wahoo are always on the lookout for strange movements. Before the light of day a jerking plastic fish looks like a wounded live fish. Odin said with his heavy accent and helpful body language that the fish would pull the pole down and I was to drag back on it with all my might. 

So, I sat for 45 minutes with my fingers tense and my arms straining against the rapala twisting back and forth tugging the line, bending the pole, pulling my fingers, and straining my arms. Every moment I imagined some monster from the deep prying the pole from my hands and losing it with a plop.  

It was early, the sky was slowly brightening and I was mostly alone with these sleepy fantasies. When a fish finally struck, the pole turned the violence into just another tug to add onto the pull of the lure. The anticlimax was quickly replaced by my excitement at having a fish!

The fish tugged and I tugged back. The pole was set to hold in the left hand. The fish was strong, stronger than my left arm. This meant I needed both arms to tug back. In the lull I grabbed the reel for a turn-and-a-half before the fish pulled the pole back down. The boat was moving fast and the fish tired quickly and I brought it in. It was a 30-inch Wahoo. The fish remained at the bottom the boat while I through the line back in the water. A few minutes later I received another tug on the pole and the process was repeated for a slightly bigger Wahoo. I through my line back in the water and we proceeded to putter back and forth with no bites for an hour. 

Odin brought in the Rapala and decided it wasn’t working anymore, it was filling with water and not behaving correctly. A convenient fisherman’s excuse, I thought. Then he pulled out a spool of line from his bag. It had several hooks spaced apart and he fed it into the water by hand. We dragged it behind the boat for 5 or 10 minutes and when Odin brought it back in he had caught some hand sized fish for bait. I fished with the live bait for an hour but no more fish were interested in us. We turned back to shore at around 9 AM. 

Odin said the two fish I caught were 3 kilos. He thought if we sold them, they would get about one hundred fifty thousand Rupiah or a whopping $11. We went back to his family’s house where everyone was preparing for a ceremony (party) later. I don’t quite remember but it was a baby shower or an engagement party. Everyone was in a courtyard with a cooking fire. A few men were chopping peppers, vegetables, and meats. They began preparing our fish as well. For a strange breakfast, I was served some Bali coffee, grilled park kebabs, and rice. By this time the sun was bright and the cooking fire was making the little courtyard quite smoky. I also felt a little uncomfortable being at their family gathering alone, so, I gave Odin the 500,000 IDR/35 USD and thanked him for the experience. He was grateful but he was busy and we parted ways. 

That was the last time I saw Odin. I hope he’s OK. Indonesia is having a hard time with the pandemic these days.