Getting by with a little help from my friend….

July 24, 2013 - Posted by Steve Dall For those in life that say they have “a lot” of best friends, I have to tell you….quit fooling yourself. I’m sure you have some good friends, but hardly anyone I know has a ton of TRUE “best friends”. I could write for days about my 3 best friends: My wife Emily and my childhood buddies Mike and Bill, but I am going to tell you a tale about two best friends who share many things in life, one of which is the passion for fishing. Buds, chums, besties, comrades, inside jokesters, sidekicks, BFF’s, cohorts, partners in crime…. One of the many things that make being a fishing guide so rewarding, is seeing best friends partake in a fishing charter. I have had the pleasure of fishing a few good sets of friends now, but two guys, Charlie and Chris, take the proverbial cake. I have fished several times now with Charlie, a great client of mine and this year he switched it up a little and had his best friend Chris down from Missouri for a few days out on the water with me and let me tell you, they were an absolute riot. As people grow up, they realize it becomes less important to have more friends, and more important to have real ones. Charlie and Chris. If they were female, they would have been on prime time in the 80’s with Rose, Blanche, Sophia and Dorothy singing, “thank you for being a friend”. They could have replaced Pete Best as the infamous 5th (and 6th) Beatle because they always seem to get by with a little help from their friend or maybe they commissioned Nickelback to write “Photograph” for them. I am not sure if they would go to the measures that Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari did for each other in the sitcom “Bosom Buddies”, but with these two, nothing would shock me. There comes a point in your life when you realize who really matters, who never did, and who always will. We had three days of fun in the sun while chasing sharks and tarpon and you know you are in the company of two best friends when one of two things happen. The inside jokes never stop. It is like an undiscovered foreign language with these two as they had a comment for everything. For all I know they were lighting me up like a Christmas tree with jabs. A good friend helps you up when you fall. A best friend pees their pants laughing, trips you again, and calls you an asshole. I remember at one point in the 3 days that we spent together fishing where the three of us got into a lively conversation about their long-standing friendship and in retrospect is probably the reason I am sharing it today. I also think it may have been the only serious moment of the trip. It amazed me how close these guys are and how much they’ve been there for each other throughout their lives. I remember telling them, “Wanna see who your real friends are? Screw up and see who's still there." They both just nodded in agreement while casting and from the looks of them, they both knew exactly what I was talking about and could relate. A friend is someone who can see the truth and pain in you even when you are fooling everyone else. The other thing is that when you put two good fishermen in the same boat, being best friends, the courtesy goes out the window, because the best of comrades are super competitive. They wanted the big fish, the first fish, the most fish, but you know what, in the end, they would have been just as happy for the other guy. At one point, we were back in a bay that we had been working all week for tarpon and a stud of a silver king ate Chris’ River2Sea Bottom Walker some 5 feet from the boat. The goliath erupted out of the water, sprayed the boat and had that piercing audible of a gill-rattling poon and was gone as fast as it happened. After the moans, the sound of silence echoed the 10,000 islands and in best friend fashion, Charlie said not a word. You just don’t go there. Chris said he was ok, but Charlie knew the pain….as a fisherman and more importantly as a friend. Generosity is giving more than you can to a friend and pride is taking less than you need. With all fish tales, there is either heartbreak, satisfaction or elation, but for Chris, redemption, if not revenge, was his mantra as we sat in a back bay, staked out soaking chunks of ladyfish for some monster sharks. Not a boat in sight, Charlie and Chris gazing at the rod tips and then the scream of the baitrunner. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. It doesn’t matter what was on the other end of that line, it was on a mission. Now, the telltale sign of a fishing friendship….whose rod is it? There would be no back and forth “You take it” today…..Charlie silently gave way to Chris and as he took hold of that rod, it was game on. Chris fought this fish for nearly 40 minutes which involved us having to fire up the big motor and run it down….twice! Chris fought it like a champ, all the while Charlie encouraged him from the back of the boat taking some Spielberg-esque video footage that may not have been editable due to language. A the end of the fight, the beast was tamed…all 7 feet and several hundred pound of pure muscled bull shark. I have a lot of folks that want pictures with sharks, but it is usually with me holding them or with the fish on the deck of the boat. Not today. Chris bear-hugged that girl like he just won one of those monster teddy bears from the carnival. Charlie beamed with congratulatory pride for his friend. So it is time to take your best bud fishing, because if anything it is therapeutic for your souls. As friends, as fisherman and simply to enjoy a day on the water as friends without a worry in the world. I treasure the time I spend with my fishing buddies Ivan, Brett, Earl, Kevin, Taylor and John to name just a few, because with all the ball-busting friend stuff aside, maybe in the fishing realm of friendship, catch and release and selective harvest is antiquated. Maybe we all should keep our “catch” folks, because as we all know as fishermen, the bonds that Charlie and Chris have as friends just don’t bite every day. Tight lines and take your best friend fishing…..