Photo courtesy of SportFishingLanzarote.com
By Patrick Sebile
As anglers, we all had a first encounter with fishing that drove us to pursue the sport. I started as a child fishing ponds near my mother’s house. But the day a neighbor invited me on a saltwater party boat pushed my love of the sport to another level.
Some like saltwater because there are larger fish that fight harder. But that isn’t what initially turned me on to fishing in the ocean. What I discovered on that first trip was the mystery. There were so many species to catch, and the open water left me with a feeling that anything was possible. The surprise of a rare, and maybe unknown fish, was possible each time I dropped a line. Some things you learn in childhood follow you forever.
I was 12 years old, but I remember that day on the party boat well. My neighbor and I were packed in with 20 other anglers. Everyone had rods, reels and tackle of varying size and strength. My own outfit included two fiberglass rods. Even my strongest pike rod was lighter than anything else on the boat. When my neighbor opened his tackle box, I saw 3- to 8-ounce sinkers that seemed huge to me. I remember thinking it was overkill.
Once the multi-hook rig was baited, I dropped my line in the water. Almost immediately, the current swept it into the lines of five or six anglers fishing next to me. Another two messes like this drove home the understanding that a ½-ounce weight was not enough. I switched to a 4-ounce pyramid, which bent my stoutest rod significantly.
Finally, pieces of clam were on the bottom waiting for a bite. When I set the hook that first time, the fight felt unusual. It was because I had three hooks and there was a fish on each one. The largest weighed less than a pound, but it was still incredible to a 12-year-old boy. As the morning passed, I landed fish after fish, all of them new to me. Goggle eyes, big sardines, flounder, cuttlefish, gurnard… I caught 14 species that day.
When I got home that evening, I wrote down each of the species I caught and decided to keep track of it for the rest of my life. Today, that number stands at 776 different species.
That early discovery of saltwater fishing drove me to travel the world in search of new species to catch in both fresh and saltwater. The pursuit has been a cornerstone of my life.
My friend Roy Leyva wrote: “Some do it for its glory and the recognition. I do it for the love and the passion. It’s a lifestyle, not an addiction or a quest. But the person I’ve become and who I was born to be. Fishing is life and life is fishing. You have to embody it to understand its power. It does not tire me, nor does it take from my time on this earth. Instead it lets me live life to the fullest.”
I couldn’t have said it better.