Being thankful: A fish story
I was making a comment about worms in fish guts in the topic about redfish, and it reminded me of something that happened a quarter of a century ago, but I doubt if the conditions have changed drastically since then.
Back in '87 I was fortunate to be invited on a marlin fishing trip to Ecuador and the fishing was so good I don't talk about it much for fear of being called a liar, but aside from that, it was evident that we weren't in the U.S. any more. The poverty of the general population was most evident.
At the end of one fishing day, we were standing around waiting for our marlin to be brought up on the beach (no docks) and one of the boats had caught at 450-500 lb. black marlin. It was hauled up onto the sand and weighed, then laid out with the rest of the boat's catch. A bunch of little kids, six to ten years old, ran up and started throwing sand into the marlin's mouth. This was puzzling, so I asked the head man of the fishing operation who spoke English, what they were doing. He said, "Oh they're throwing sand in there so they can get a better grip on the stomach. They're going to pull it out and take it home to eat it for supper."
Now, what was it I was complaining about this morning?
