Guatemala: Mama Said There’ll Be Days Like This

Unlike me, my mother truly has no interest in fishing. She prefers Nordstrom to Ned Rigs, socializing over square bills, and grandchildren over glide baits.

Were it not for the fact that she was present and an integral part of my birth process, you could forgive her for believing that we were not at all related.

That’s why one of the highlights of our recent trip to Guatemala was seeing her in the fighting chair – 90 pounds of woman, just a week short of her 76h birthday, reeling in 90 pounds of spastic sailfish. We had to convince her to take a try, but once she went she wanted to do it again, which means that if you’ve never caught a sail of your own, my mom has now caught TWO more than you.

Guatemala was the perfect venue for this because the numbers of sails present are so ridiculous. On the first day of fishing, when we released an unbelievable 23 of them (out of 32 raised and 28 that bit), she was hesitant, but Hanna and I lost track of whose “turn” it was. By Day Two, we were playing with house money, and my parents both stepped up to bat. I would’ve been thrilled to see mom and dad catch as many as they wanted to reel in.