ANGLING STORIES

We made it back. Barely.

Georgetown Hole-proud to say my brother and I were the first to fish it. This was way before depth finders and advanced navigation. Instead, we had a sash weight on a knotted cord for reading the depth, and a six transistor radio to make it sure we made it back to our families. A compass wouldn't do it because it was impossible to factor in the drift. Fortunately, we had WTMA, the strongest broadcasting radio station from Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach. So when it was time to come home, point the radio in the direction that brought back the clearest reception, and that was the pathway home. Of course, you had to make sure you weren't picking up The Ape instead-WAPE in Jacksonville. Fortunately, when your life depends on it, distinguishing one vinyl jockey from the next becomes second nature.

This was the 60's, and the boats were not as they are today-they trudged rather than planed. To get where the two shelves meet at Georgetown Hole, it was essentially a twenty-four hour affair-six to get there in the dead of night, however much fishing you could handle in between, and then six more to get back, maybe more after a good day where you were hauling back some fish. This was not a good day. Once at the hole, the conditions were unforgivable: waves rolling over the fly bridge, rough to the point where every man aboard had a number in his head-the odds of us making it back alive. Seasickness coupled with insurmountable fear overcame every stomach but my own.

The fishing abandoned, we scratched our way back to an inlet near Five Fathom Creek, the sudden appearance of a familiar lighthouse cause for celebration aboard the 31-foot Egg Harbor. As the vessel slowed into safer waters, our fates unsealed, a can suddenly rolled its way from beneath a storage bin, coming to perfect stop on the middle of the deck. It was a can of Crisco. I took one look at it, could think of nothing but grease, and

-Avram