On the dock of the bay

Fishing
Admiral Biscuit

Weekends are a time for you. A time to be away from the pressures of work, the endless chores of home, even the company of friends.

Sometimes, you feel guilty about that last one, but for your own sanity, you need time to yourself.

Today’s shaping up to be a lovely day. Clear blue skies, just the right temperature—a perfect day to be outside. And, you know the perfect place to be outside: down at the docks. Like your father and his father before him, you’re going fishing.

You haven't got much for gear, but you don’t need all that much here. Back on Earth, fishing is complicated. It starts with getting a licence, and then you’ve got to go somewhere. A local river’s not good except for fun; any fish you catch isn’t worth eating.

In Equestria, you can just go down to the lake and fish off the dock. Dig up some worms if you haven’t got any bait. No need for fancy lures or other stuff like that.

You do take enough time to pack some sandwiches and beer in your creel.

Stepping outside is like stepping back in time. There’s no front sidewalk, no driveway leading into a paved road, just a swath of grass. Like being back in Tom Sawyer’s day, although with better personal hygiene.

Heck, if there were a wide river flowing through town, you might try building a raft.

•••••

The dock is a proper dock. It’s just high enough above the water so you can dangle your feet over the edge without getting your pants wet. The wood’s worn smooth with decades of passing hooves.

Best of all, it’s just the right amount isolated. Not so far that no one could hear you scream in case of monster attack, and not so close that everypony and her sister are out on the lake.

Especially this early in the morning.

Ponies aren’t morning people, at least when it comes to recreation. You can get a good day’s fishing done and be gone before ponies come to recreate.

Part of the fun of fishing in Equestria is finding worms. The bait shop—oddly enough, under an accountant’s—sells them. A pony named Night Crawler raises them, apparently, but you need to prove you’re a worthy hunter. If you can’t catch worms, you don’t deserve to catch fish.

You push a rock aside and find a few worms in very short order. A couple more rocks, and you’ve found enough for a full day of fishing. They go in the cooler with the beer, well away from the sandwiches.

•••••

Threading a worm onto a hook is a familiar task, and once it’s accomplished you stand at the end of the dock and take a moment to think like a fish. You survey the placid water, judge the sun’s intensity, pick a likely spot, and with practiced ease, flick the hook more or less into the appointed spot.

Some kinds of fishing are lots of work—fly fishing, for example. While you respect the idea, you’re not willing to put forth the effort, although you do occasionally give little twitches to the pole to reassure any fish who might be curious about why there’s a worm where a worm has no right to be.

Whether that improves the results or not, you don’t really know. You’d be more suspicious of a bowl of Lucky Charms if it jerked around to get your attention. Even if it doesn’t help, it makes you feel less lazy. You’re working for your dinner, even if said work only involves occasional spasms on your part. And that only if you feel like it.

•••••

Fish are more than willing to eat worms, twitching or not, and it doesn’t take very long before your creel is starting to fill up with bluegill. Back on Earth, you would have used a five gallon pail, but this feels more pure.

You’re sort of working on autopilot. Get a bite, set the hook, reel the fish in, toss it in the creel, put a new worm on the hook, cast back to a productive spot in the lake, and wait.

You don’t notice the filly, not right away. Your off-focus gaze is over the lake and beyond, not behind you. And to be fair, she doesn’t make a lot of noise as she lands on a pile and just perches there in a manner that no equine should ever stand, and yet which looks perfectly natural for a pegasus.

When you see her, her bright blue eyes are focused on your creel. She watches intently as you slip the hook out of another hapless fish mouth, keeping a firm grip on its body lest it escape back into the lake.

As the fish flops into the wicker basket, she hops off the perch, extending her wings for the short glide down to the dock. One of the many miracles of Equestria that you get to witness up close is the miracle of flight, and the ease with which pegasi accomplish it. You know that it’s a combination of their stubby wings and focused magic, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting to watch.

Somewhere out there is surely a clumsy pegasus, one who would make you question if they all deserve wings, but you haven’t encountered such a pony yet.

She sticks her nose into your creel, then tilts her head, first one way and then the other, then looks up at you with her bright blue eyes. “Hey, mister, can I have a fish?”

That’s an unfair question, because of course you can’t say no. She’s adorable, and besides you’ve got more than you could possibly eat in a day or two.

For a nanosecond or two, you consider how much effort you’d put into catching them, but really it wasn’t much. And the point of sitting on the dock and fishing isn’t entirely about the fish anyway.

“If you want,” you say. “There’s plenty there.”

That last statement was a mistake, although you don’t know that right away.

“Thanks!” She sticks her muzzle in the creel, and an instant later you’re rewarded with the juicy crunching noises of pony teeth nomming a raw fish. Is that barbaric, or is it more pure than gutting and cooking them?

She pauses for a moment to lick a few stray scales off her lips and then flies off and you’re left in solitude as another fish unwisely goes for your bait.

•••••

As a connoisseur of random internet fact, you know that owl feathers are specially arranged to avoid making bird noises, which might clue an innocent mouse into knowing that he’s about to be a dinner. You’d never really thought about what noise non-owl feathers make.

Either pegasi are owl-like, or your human hearing isn’t as acute as a mouse’s, because the next time you turn around, every pile on the dock has a pegasus perched on it. They’re all regarding your creel, and as one, when you turn, their ears and eyes go to you.

This is in no way fair. You simply cannot withstand this level of adorable, so you set your fishing pole down and open the lid on your creel.

As if given a secret sign that only they can see, the entire flock of them descends on your fish like an adorable Mongolian horde. There’s occasional jostling for position and a few feathers fly and by the time the pegasi loft away your creel is completely empty.

They even ate your sandwiches.

You regard your fishing pole and the spiderweb trace of fishing line that spans to the bobber and then down into the depths of the lake, down where a worm has no right to be. You can visualize a fish seeing it, considering it dinner, striking, being reeled in . . . and you can visualise that when your turn with your scaly prize, there’ll be a pegasus sitting on the nearest pile. Just one, because you only have one fish.

And of course you’ll give it the fish.

Maybe you could toss it up in the air, that would be something to see.

The pole twitches—another fish is taking the bait.

You set the hook and turn around behind you and sure enough, another pegasus is spiraling down from the clouds above.

•••••

They’re not animals, and if you had the fortitude to tell them no, they’d respect that.

Just the same, could you ask for any more? You’re sitting on a dock in Equestria. That’s more than enough for any person.

You reel in the line, pull the fish out of the lake. It takes a moment to work the hook out of its mouth and by golly when you really pay attention, you can hear the sound of pegasus feathers.

This one’s a colt, not old enough to have a cutie mark. Yellow-green fur, like a muted fire truck.

You could put the fish down, but you keep it in your hands. He moves forward, and you have to give him a nod of encouragement before he snatches it and practically swallows it whole.

He stretches forward and bumps you lightly with his head; you return the favor by brushing your hand through his mane, and then he turns and flies back into the sky. You watch until he disappears above a cloud. He probably landed on it; pegasi can do that.

Weekends are a time for fishing for your pegasi friends. True, they mostly consume the fruits of your labor, but you don’t mind at all.

Sometimes you remember when there weren’t ponies in your life, when whatever you caught would get fried up and eaten later but this is better.

Isn’t it?

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