On August 7th, Jacy finally had a day off from work in Portland, Maine. She had been showing an itch to try fishing lately, so I shipped a brand new spinning combo to Portland. Today was our first opportunity to get out on the water together and put her new setup through its paces.
We made our way down toward our familiar pocket on the Maine State Pier. As we neared the end, unsavory characters loitering made her reasonably hesitant about walking out. Without a backup plan and driven by determination to wet a line no matter what, I convinced her to press forward. Once we set our tackle down and rigged up, the initial tension vanished—it was just standard dockside bustle with zero issues.
At the end of the pier was a fixture of the Portland waterfront: an older Russian gentleman who had a line in the water on every one of my visits to the pier so far. The man was a local legend who always out-fished everyone, but even he was grinding through an uncharacteristically dead bite today. We worked our sabiki rigs over the pilings and out into the current, but couldn't coax so much as a nibble from the harbor pollock that typically hug the pier.
Fortunately, Casco Bay supplied plenty of sideshow entertainment. A resident harbor seal repeatedly popped its head to keep tabs on us, while an erratic jet skier repeatedly buzzed right along the edge of our casting range, carving tight, aimless circles. While entertaining, it seemed everything about the day was preventing us from having a chance at catching a fish.
Then the harbor flipped a switch. A dense bait ball balled up tight against the pier before spraying across the surface. Mackerel marauded the fringes, slashing through the bait in a frenzied blitz. These windows of opportunity are short-lived, and on a slow day they must be taken advantage of to have any chance of success.
Jacy didn't hesitate. She fired her new rod into the boiling water, twitched the sabiki through the school, and connected before the blitz could dissipate—a strike executed with the timing and poise of a veteran angler. Watching her was a reminder of why she thrives at everything she does: she carries that rare combination of stubborn persistence and rapid adaptation. We hauled a few more thrashing mackerel over the rail before the midday heat forced a retreat, wrapping up a first-tackle milestone and beginning a tradition that will hopefully be long lived.