Full Measure by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781466852990
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At sunrise Glorietta Bay was a silver mirror and Fatta the Lan’ glided confidently upon it. Patrick swung into the bay and looked out to the Coronado Bridge arching from mainland to peninsula, the night lights still on, traffic steady. The eastern sky was indigo over orange. He gunned the Mercury, felt the propeller bite and the bow lift.

Ted stood on the foredeck, legs braced on the railings, a fly rod at the ready. “This thing rides sweet!” he called back to his brother.

“We’ll see how it does offshore!”

“Are we going outside the harbor?”

“After we fish the bay. You’re good with that?”

Ted turned his big body and looked back at Patrick. “Guess I better get my sea feet.”

“We’ll take it easy.”

Frowning, Ted turned and squared himself against the railing. Patrick brought the boat west and anchored almost under the bridge. He logged his coordinates on the GPU then into a small notebook he planned to keep in a plastic bag near the radio. It felt good to be inventing a future. Cars thrummed high overhead.

Ted cast out a perch fly and Patrick watched the sinking line slide deeper and deeper out of sight near one of the bridge caissons. Sea bass were ambushers and tended to cruise structure, so the caissons were a good bet. There were halibut, perch, corvina, mackerel, barracuda, occasional bonefish and sharks, and the lesser skates, rays, dogfish, lizardfish. The bigger game fish were mostly offshore and not commercially accessible in Patrick’s seventeen-foot skiff. His business plan called for a new boat, double the size and range of this one, by his twenty-seventh birthday, five years from now. He planned to keep the Mako so that a partner, or even an employee of his, could continue with the bay clientele. The offshore sharks, dorado, and tuna promised tougher fishing and bigger money, but the client base was smaller. The bay was where he’d find clients, run up some numbers, build a base and a reputation.

“I just got bumped,” said Ted.

“Bring him back.”

Ted stripped in his fly, paused, then stripped in again and the line tightened straight. “Oh, yeah … come to Theodore!”

Ted set the hook, then let the fish take line. Down in the blue Patrick watched the animal flash and be gone. “Trophy, Pat?”

“Monstrous. A Web site fish!”

“Yeah, baby!” Ted looked over at Patrick, his face merry. The tip of his uplifted rod dipped with the strength of the little fish. He was up on the balls of his substandard feet, back straight, his left arm tucked formally behind him, his right arm raised like a conductor. Patrick smiled at the simple pleasure a fish can bring. Gift from a hidden world, he thought. A fish on the line keeps the demons gone, and that’s what he would offer his clients. It was a mystery to him why all people did not fish.

Ted let the bass take the line for a sound, then brought him up in long, firm strips. Patrick looked down at the animal still trying to break free, gills pumping, its freedom cut down to inches.

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