At Long Last, a Good Night For Fishin'!
You might've thought I was dead and so did I but I SURE AM ALIVE AND KICKIN'! Not kickin' buckets for ol' Chocolatine, no siree. I may have been down, but I certainly wasn't out! I don't have any kinda real excuse for the lack of big catches, but I think it was probably do to my pockets being full of bate and spoils. Lots and lots of spoils. Lots of spoils that had spoiled after being in my pockets so long, too. I was hanging out at the Limsa docks with some of the other local fishers who told me that I didn't need half of the bait I was holdin' on to! And wouldn't ya believe it, I also ran into that guy I pay to be a retainer, and passed him an armful of big fish to hang on to which lightened my load a TON! He wasn't too happy about it but someone's gotta hold on to it for the day I eventually have housing and can show 'em off.
Today I caught not one, but TWO big fish from some of my least favourite spots in the First. A real big Celestial from Il Mheg, and that damn elusive Ambling Caltrop from sand pits in Amh Araeng.
To catch a Celestial, you've gotta climb your way all the up this huge rock face next to a tiny waterfall in a THUNDERSTORM so that you can be there after it passes and the sun comes out. Real beautiful spot. Real painful climb. Apparently this fish used to be related to royalty or something...? It sure does look pretty, but I'm neither a history buff for a fish appraiser. I just catch em.
Those ambling caltrops are a finicky fish to catch, but I did some research and it turns out it's a lot easier to catch when you know when to look! Really dial it in with yer fish eyes and they're in the pits hanging out a lot more often than when you're only looking at the surface. Took a couple of rounds of filling my pockets with sand geckos till I could just see what looked like a caltop writhing around under the sand, but I got one! These things are HUGE I honestly have no idea how I even lifted it all way up out of the canyon, but now I understand why they made criminals wear this thing's hide as a punishment. For legal reasons: I have never committed a crime(!!!) but if I did, there's no way you'd get me in one of these things. I'd simply walk out.
The last thing I have to mention is that after what feels like billions of years, I finally caught sea butt BUT SHE FUCKING SLIPPED!! I don't wanna talk about it. Here's me having lopoceras elegans slip on me again. My lil duck is saying "don't give up, skeleton!" and I don't know what that means but it's better than "ya fucked up again, butterfingers!" which feels like the more appropriate response.
Honestly now that I reflect on it, a single ocean fish that's so unremarkable that I forgot to even mention it plus only 2 big fish doesn't exactly sound like "a good night for fishin'!" but with so few left on my log, I guess progress is progress is progress. One of these days the world will once again call out for a hero to save it, and I will once again be in a convenient place at a convenient time to answer the call and forge onwards to new fishing holes. A dawn of trails to fishing holes, one might even say. Only time will tell.