The Mast-Head: No Time Under Heaven

It’s fishing season once again, but for one reason or another I have yet to give it a try. Such is the state of things in the spring; pre-high season work demands a lot of attention, and with a house renovation under way, weekends seem to be taken up with arguing about tile choices and the like. 

I have not even laid eyes on my boat yet this year, even though I have an indication that it has been put in the water because the first boatyard bill of 2016 arrived the other day.

Not being able to fish made for an especially grumpy Saturday morning, when I noticed that there were a bunch of boats in Cherry Harbor. About now, people anchor up and catch big porgies there, I know, and I was not happy that my living room window was as close as I was going to get. 

Friends are beginning to report back with their catches or stories of early morning bass busting water in an inlet here or there just out of reach. I can tell from the cormorants, gulls, and osprey that there is something interesting swimming around in the business end of the fish trap near our place. It would be maddening, if I were not so preoccupied with other things.

Such is the general problem with spring. I ran into East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. outside Goldberg’s Bagels on Pantigo Road the other day, and he asked how things were. I could tell he was ready to head back to Village Hall by the time I began pantomiming a wave about to crash on my head andcomplained that I didn’t have anywhere near enough time to get anything done.

The truth is that by about the Fourth of July, things always drop back to a low simmer — just about the time the fish begin their midsummer torpor and refuse to bite. So it goes. There’s always the fall.