We blew the dinghy up with a foot pump, then he’d screw a 6-horsepower outboard engine onto its hard plastic stern. He gave us lines with shimmering bells attached, and hooks that got stuck in the skin on our fingers. If we cast them off properly, they wouldn’t knot together.
You know you’ve got a mackerel when the line jerks in your hand, against the way it wrestles with the wake. You yank the line to the sky, digging the hook into the mackerel’s cheek, and haul the whole thing in. Carefully, though, that’s when the hooks will get you.