Pressure
You are standing on your line. You can feel it coiled between the last little piggies of your left foot and the blistering hot surface of the casting deck. And now, after hours of endless waiting, squinting into the glare and cooking your brain under the broiling sun, a fish has materialized way out on the edge of your vision. Is it a dream? A mirage shimmering in the humid air? The torpedo shape, ghostly in its chrome translucence, gliding ever closer, begins to take form.
Somewhere in the hazy background you are vaguely aware of your guide yelling something, but it's fuzzy and you can't make out the words. You are afraid to take your eyes off the fish, feeling that somehow if you blink, it might be gone when you open your eyes. A drop of sweat runs down the inside of your arm. You may someday see another fish this big, but you'll never get a second chance like this one. There is no shade on a flats skiff, and no hiding from failure. Do you dare look away from the fish of a lifetime to glance at the line that is surely tangled beneath your foot? Do you dare not to?
Somewhere in the hazy background you are vaguely aware of your guide yelling something, but it's fuzzy and you can't make out the words. You are afraid to take your eyes off the fish, feeling that somehow if you blink, it might be gone when you open your eyes. A drop of sweat runs down the inside of your arm. You may someday see another fish this big, but you'll never get a second chance like this one. There is no shade on a flats skiff, and no hiding from failure. Do you dare look away from the fish of a lifetime to glance at the line that is surely tangled beneath your foot? Do you dare not to?
