![]() ![]() I’ll hook-up with Grandpa’s reel - someday maybe - before I run out of somedays. So I cleaned the reel, put new line on it, got a new rod and have trolled for tuna from my 18-foot Sea Ox, yet to no avail. The rod is long-gone, the roller guides having seized with mossy green corrosion more than 40 years ago. I’ve still got his tuna reel, a Penn Senator 9/0. His first boat was a 16-foot Bristol and he’d tow it to P-Town every Sunday and go trolling for tuna until he finally caught one on a lure they used to call Japanese feathers. We loved the story of how he caught a bluefin tuna off Provincetown. His faith was as deep as the ocean he fished and he would cast off on Sunday mornings at 6 a.m. It had to be blowing a gale for him to stay tied up at the dock when he had plans to go fishing. He was fearless and had the heart of a lion. Small craft warnings were for small crafts so he bought a bigger boat. He was sweet and kind and used to say that he had to be nice, “because I can’t fight and I can’t run.” Our sister, Annie, thought they were even grosser, especially when we exercised our brotherly duty and chased her around the yard with it.Īt 5 ½ feet tall, Gramps wasn’t a big, tall man, but he was sturdy and strong, and still had muscles into his 80s. On occasion, there would be a tape worm, which we thought were pretty gross. ![]() For the cod with good taste, we’d find small lobsters and crabs. There were usually half-digested fish of all kinds, even spiny sea robins. When a big cod’s stomach was full, we’d beg Gramps to cut it open to see what it had been eating. ![]() “You should always have a sharp knife in your pocket,” he’d say, sage advice that I live by. Gramps was a stickler for sharp knives and showed us to sharpen a blade, both on a whetstone and on a steel. Prior to the first cut, he’d sharpen his knife to a razor’s edge on a steel with the blade flashing along with the slick sound of steel on steel. After one of his successful cod-fishing trips, there would be a galvanized tub under the big maple tree, brimming with cod, waiting to be filleted. While he cleaned fish on a homemade wooden fish-cleaning table, it also served as our indoctrination into the fascinating world of forensics. Gramps taught me and my brother, Tony, how to clean and fillet fish. I taught my kids how to tie it the same way. And it went like this, “the rabbit comes up through the hole, around the tree and back in the hole.” Every time I tie that knot, I think of Gramps. I remember being a boy and he stood behind me on the piazza, took my hands in his leathery paws and with a rope, he instructed me to make a loop (the hole) in the line with my left hand while holding the end of the line (the rabbit) in my right hand. He taught me how to tie a bowline knot, one of the more useful knots. He was confident in his boating and seamanship skills, not one of those nervous Nellies who yells and screams at everybody when they’re anchoring or tying up at the dock. Even on those rare occasions when we didn’t catch anything, it was always fun being on the boat with him. Whether it was sinker-bouncing for cod, tautog or fluke or trolling for bluefish or mackerel, we almost always caught fish. There isn’t a day when I’m on the water that something doesn’t remind me of my grandfather, the late Arthur Folco. They’ve stuck with me for more than a half century and more often than not, they’re right on the money. “When the wind blows west, the fish bite the best - when the wind blows east, the fish bite the least,” is an old saying I first heard from Gramps, along with, “red sky at night, sailor's delight - red sky in morning, sailors take warning.” ![]()
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