Lines in the water
Most of fishing is waiting. That’s the point of it.
The lines go out early, the boat settles into a long slow pattern, and for an hour nothing happens. Someone reads. Someone sleeps. The youngest checks the rods every few minutes, as if watching will help.
Then the reel screams and everything is different. There is a right way to do this and a wrong way, and the right way is calm: harness, butt in the gimbal, lift and wind, lift and wind. Somebody older stands close enough to help and far enough not to.
When the fish shows itself, a long way off, clear of the water for a second and gone again, nobody says anything. There’s nothing to say.
What gets remembered isn’t the size of it. It’s the hands on the rod, and the person standing just behind.