Honolulu Lite
Dad goes angling
for quality time(Charles Memminger is on vacation. He left behind a few columns he calls "Honolulu Lite Classics from the Early Years." This one ran on Nov. 17, 1992.) It seemed like a pretty simple idea: Pop down to Heeia Kea pier, buy a cheapo bamboo fishing pole and let my 4-year-old daughter pretend she is fishing. I'd sit there on the pier having a Coke and savor a special "Daddy 'n' Daughter Kodak Moment." But when we got to the tackle shop, I decided, what the heck, we might as well try to catch an actual fish.
I was scanning the heavy fishing line and the big hooks when the counter guy came up. He said that to catch fish around the pier, you had to use really light line and tiny hooks.
He sold me fishing line light enough to catch a guppy. A very small guppy. Then he showed me a plastic baggie allegedly containing hooks. He said, "Think you can thread a line on one of these?"
I said, "Buddy, I can't even see the damn things."
For bait he suggested using bread balls, so I ended up buying an entire loaf of white bread.
So we left the shop with our bamboo pole, invisible fishing line, baby hooks and enough bread to catch Jaws.
My daughter was excited about going fishing. At first. By the time I had managed to rig the fishing pole, she was ready to move on to the next phase of her life.
"Why don't we just feed the fish, Daddy?" she said, chucking french fries into the water.
"Because we are going fishing, hon," I said.
I must have attached too much line to the pole because it soon became tangled with the bobber, lead weights, a pickup truck, a guy named Billy, a moped and the Coast Guard Auxiliary. I managed to untangle most of the auxiliary but snagged a couple of guys paddling by on kayaks.
"Let's eat lunch," my little darling suggested.
Once I got the Japanese tourists untangled, I was actually able to drop the hook in the water. I took a satisfied breath and patted my sweetie on the head.
"Now we're fishing," I said.
That was when the line came undone from the pole and the bobber, hook and bread ball floated away.
"Where's the floaty thing going?" asked my little angel.
"On that heading, probably Tahiti."
While I re-rigged the pole, my honeybunch dumped the entire bag of bread into the water, setting off an Amazon piranha-type feeding frenzy among the pier fish.
"Look, Daddy, they're hungry," my precious said.
That pretty much ended the fishing expedition. I did get a picture of my angel holding the bamboo pole at the end of the pier, just so, after a few years, when the aggravation wears off, I'll be able to remember our first fishing trip together with something like love.
"So, how were the fish?" my wife asked when we got home.
"Full," I said.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com