That's My Story

DON”T RUB YOUR EYES OR SCRATCH YOURSELF AFTER USING!

Originally Published in Western Outdoor News the Week of Oct. 16

OK, don’t start sending me e-mails and letters telling me I’m Mr. Bad Guy or calling me an animal hater. Especially since you’re the one reading this column in a huting and fishing newspaper.

However, like a lot of fishermen, I have a problem with pelicans, seagulls, sealions and other critters that take my bait and my fish.

Yes, even here in Mexico, they are a pain in the nalgas. It’s even worse when they start to take the baits and fish from my fishing clients. Personally, I can tolerate the banditos most of the time and can fish around them, but when they start hammering my clients, it becomes a personal thing!

By golly and por los santos, we can’t let that happen!

Lest you think otherwise, I grew up like any other kid of my day. Dirty face and fingernails; pants torn at the knees; and a wrinkled t-shirt were the uniform de jure in my neighborhood and I was never far from my pile of rocks and dirt clods; BB-gun or slingshot.

There’s something comforting in having your hand rest on the plastic feux-wooden stock of a Daisy Rough Rider BB-gun and having a tube of fresh BB’s in your pocket or a handy-dandy wristrocket slingshot and some marbles in a bag.

I will admit too that I took deadly aim at pretty much anything that moved. Fortunately, I was better at shooting immobile targets than living things. Although I did hit an occasional crow, but most projectiles just bounce off those tough birds and the crows just look at you.

Later on, I did learn to do some hunting, but looking back as a youngster, I probably shouldn’t have been shooting at neighborhood wildlife that was merely minding it’s own business. But, especially 50 years ago, that’s what little boys did and I was every bit a little boy like many of you reading this.

But, fast forward to my fishing days and there are certain critters out there that do NOT mind their own business. It’s one thing to be a little sparrow sitting in my backyard harming no one.

It’ quite another to be a sealion that steals a tuna and then has the nerve to wave it in my face and toss it in the air with glee! It’s another thing to be a pelican or seagull and repeatedly dive bomb my precious bait.

The hunter-gatherer returns!

In the day, I rarely left on a fishing trip without a hunting slingshot and some ball bearings ready to beat away the marauding hordes! Again, it’s fortunate I have bad eyes and never actually hit anything, but at least I felt armed and I could shake my fist at the little buggers and rage against their dastardly habits.

In truth, I never really wanted to hurt them. It just felt better shooting something in their vicinity like a warship firing a warning shot across the bow! I just wanted them to go away. I wanted them to leave my fishing alone and go bother someone else’s boat!

It was one of those days when a kindly and remarkable captain in San Jose del Cabo showed me a secret many many years ago. I say “remarkable” because most captains you run into, especially years ago, would just as soon kill anything that became a pest.

I had fished with Captain Jesus before and he knows that I always carry some pretty potent hot sauce with me in my tackle box or ice chest. A couple of drops of habanero sauce could do wonders for fruit, potato chips, ham sandwiches and boxed-lunch burritos!

On this particular day it was the Battle of the Gordo Banks. We were being hit from above and below. Birds everywhere. A sealion seemed to shadow us no matter where we moved. Our baits barely hit the water before a horde of squawking seabirds descended on it.

Captain Jesus took out my little bottle of fire salsa. He took some dead sardines and coated several of them with the green condiment and tossed them as he would dead chum. The birds did what birds do. They couldn’t gobble them down fast enough!

I have to admit it was pretty entertaining to watch them shimmy and shake and flutter as the spice hit them. Some just sat in the water quivering not sure what to do! Some tried to take off with a bait but half-way in the air nose dived into the water. Some did what some people do. They stopped and pooped…massively! Most of them backed off!

Next came the sealion. Captain Jesus took a slab off a discarded bonito he kept on the deck. Again, a generous coating of super-duper habanero sauce! Nex time Mr. Sealion came by, the bonito slab was tossed. The big dog immediately turned and gobbled it as it lay on the surface.

It didn’t take long!

Fire in! Fire out! It came flying up yelping and flipping around the ocean and porpoising through the waves and as far away from our panga as it could get. That’ll learn ya! No more problem!

And it surely beat using more drastic measures with no one getting permanently hurt. No guns. No nets. No slingshots. No sealbombs. No poison. Just a 75 cent bottle of Mexico’s best habanero sauce!

That’s my story. If you ever want to reach me, my e-mail is riplipboy@aol.com.