We had promised each other a peaceful day on the water—just the hum of the boat, a cooler full of snacks, and the open blue stretch of the Gulf of America shimmering under a forgiving sun. The plan sounded simple enough back at the dock in Destin: head out about 15 miles, drop a few lines, and come back with fish stories that might—or might not—be exaggerated depending on who told them first.
Ronnie, naturally, insisted he knew exactly where the fish would be with the help of GPS. He said that David taught him how to use.
“They’ve got schedules,” he said, squinting at the horizon like he was reading invisible ocean handwriting. “Fish don’t just roam around aimlessly.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting, because I’ve never seen a fish punch a timecard.”
“That's because you're not looking hard enough.”
“Or because they're fish.”
Still, I stayed quiet and let him navigate.
About halfway out, Ronnie proudly announced, “We’re basically on top of them now.” He pointed at a patch of water that looked identical to every other patch of water.
I leaned over the side. “All I see is sunscreen glare reflecting at me.”
“You have to trust the technology.”
“The technology or the guy operating it?”
Ronnie ignored that question completely.
We dropped our lines. For a while, nothing happened except Ronnie insisting that “no news is good news” and me reminding him that in fishing, no news is usually just… no fish.
After another twenty minutes, I opened a bag of chips.
Ronnie sighed. “The crunching scares them away.”
“The fish?”
“Yes.”
“So the fish can hear my chips from 150 feet below the surface?”
“Absolutely.”
“Interesting. Yet somehow they can't hear your nonstop talking.”
Then the rod bent.
Ronnie jumped up and quickly declared, “That’s a monster!” he shouted, grabbing the rod.
The boat erupted into controlled chaos. Drag screamed. Ronnie shouted instructions he didn’t fully understand himself. I held the net and tried not to laugh at how serious he suddenly looked, like he was negotiating a hostage situation.
“Easy! Easy!” Ronnie yelled.
“To who?” I asked. “The fish?”
“Both of you!”
After a surprisingly dramatic fight—during which Ronnie declared the fish was “definitely rethinking its life choices”—he finally brought it alongside the boat.
It was… not a monster.
It was a respectable fish. A decent fish. A “you can brag about this, but only if you stand far away from people who know fishing” kind of fish.
Ronnie stared at it. The fish kind of stared back with calm indifference.
“…I think it’s small because it fought so hard,” Ronnie said.
I nodded thoughtfully. “Or maybe it fought so hard because it knew what was coming and wanted to delay the inevitable embarrassment.”
We both paused.
Then Ronnie laughed. “Okay, babe, that one hurt a little.”
“Not as much as your ego.”
By the time we headed back toward Destin, the cooler wasn’t exactly overflowing with fish, but the mood was. Ronnie insisted on recounting “the battle” at least four times, each version slightly more heroic than the last.
By version three, the fish had apparently pulled the boat sideways.
By version four, he was “seconds away” from being dragged overboard.
I contributed helpful corrections like, “You screamed at the fish,” and “You almost dropped the rod when it twitched.”
“That’s called tactical repositioning,” Ronnie argued.
“That’s called fumbling.”
Still, as the sun dipped lower over the Gulf, the water turning the color of molten glass, Ronnie leaned back and said, “Same time next week?”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Of course.”
Because at the end of the day, the fish were optional. The laughs, the stories, and Ronnie’s increasingly impossible version of events were the real catch.