Our boat was tied up to the commercial dock at Half Moon Bay where I sat on the engine room hatch-cover tying trolling-gear. Looking up from my work I saw a seagull trailing a wing in the water just off our stern.
I’d seen it earlier stealing baits off dock-fishermen’s lines. During one of his line-larceny swoops, his wing got entangled in mono filament line, and in his fight to free himself, several wraps got wound tightly around the elbow of his right wing. New to commercial fishing, I was still influenced by my East-Coast sensibilities and took pity on the poor creature: I stuck an anchovy on a small three-ganged hook, flicked it over by the gull and hooked him. He was furious, as well one might expect — first the wing, now this. He gave a pretty good fight for a bird that didn’t have a wing to fly on.
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