Early Morning Fishing

This morning we went fishing at 5am. The fishing part was his idea and my idea was to see the sunrise and be on the water in the early morning, which I hadn't done in a while. We brought mugs of steaming coffee, the dog, five fishing poles, and two tackle boxes. I'm not sure yet how I feel about fishing, but here is what I do know:
I like being on the water.
The sunrise was beautiful.
I like to eat fish.
We didn't catch any fish.
We never catch any fish, or if we do we throw them back...something about being too small.
I don't like to catch fish, and then not eat them, it does not make sense to me.
Perhaps in the future a more conclusive opinion about the act of fishing will develop, but for now it's sort of a gray area for me. My husband on the other hand has a strange attraction to fishing that I can't decipher. The thrill of the hunt? When I was a child, my dad and I would go hunting for rabbit. We usually caught one and we always ate it. It was delicious and it was the only meat we would eat, store bought meat rarely crossed our table. I understood hunting with my dad, it was exciting, and there was an end result you could eat. But this fishing obsession I am struggling with.

Anyhow, we motored about the Piscattaqua River, through the back channel, past the old Wentworth Hotel and back up the mouth of the river. I stopped casting after about an hour mumbling something about my arm hurting. Just as I was settling onto a cushioned seat with the dog and my coffee, I was asked to take the wheel and "just hold us here for a few minutes". Well a few minutes turned into 45 and then the constant barrage of directions on how to "just hold us here" made it seem even longer. So much for my coffee. A few sighs and eye rolls finally got me relieved of my helm duties and we headed out of the protected harbor and onto the ocean. The sun was above the horizon but behind clouds, still low in the sky and the colors of a new day were drawn out a few minutes longer. We sped up and rode through the swells, all annoyance of the past 45 minutes lost with the first deep breath of salt air. How many people have written about this exact feeling, the flushing of salt air as if cleansing every cell in your body. I don't need to concentrate on a deep yoga breath, the sweetness of the air forces me to drink it in slowly, turn my head into the wind and let each hair be resulted just slightly so as to create a tingling feeling on my scalp. Nose up slightly to catch even more of the wind in my nostrils, slow grin on my face and all the while watching the colors of the sky, listening to the sound of the water rushing by, smelling and tasting the sweet salt air and feeling cleansed like a first baptism. But this isn't the first time I've felt this, and it's far from the last. I will go early morning fishing anytime.