“Look at those googans!” My buddy and I had just gotten to the beach when he made his observation. We’d hoped to find a few terns wheeling and diving over surfside bonito, but I was more optimistic about our chances with a keeper fluke or two on the incoming tide. Despite the summer heat, my friend donned a set of breathable waders cinched at his waist by a belt laden with titanium tools hanging down like a soldier’s bandolier. His rod was custom graphite with leading edge components, the watertight reel made from the finest T6 tempered aluminum.
He glared towards where a father and son were standing in the wet sand in nothing but board shorts, each holding white-tipped, two-piece rods, the likes of which we all had growing up. A bucket rested along the bluff just above the tide line, beside an old two-hinged plastic tackle box that looked like one you’d find stashed away in your grandfather’s attic.
It was hot, and I too was wearing baggies, along with a tattered fishing t-shirt and beat up fishing cap pulled tight to block out the morning sun. I looked my buddy over from head to toe, figuring he must’ve been geared to the tune of $2,000 or $3,000. Granted, I also had a few hundred dollars’ worth of bucktails and Gulp tucked in an old backpack, a rod and reel in my hand worth another two bills – all things being relative at that point.
“Googan,” I asked. “What exactly is a googan?”
As he affixed an $8 epoxy jig to the clip at the end of his leader, he pointed his chin towards the father and son anglers, answering with authority. “Those are googans, just look at ‘em.”
I looked at the father and son again; then I looked at my friend as he waddled to the waterline, the gentle summer surf making a light swishing sound as it slid back and forth, hardly the angry fall surf worthy of the most hardcore gearing accoutrements. The young boy shrieked with laughter as he plucked a chunky kingfish out of the wash, which he promptly marched up the slope and deposited into the bucket.
“Good fish,” I shouted.
“That’s our eighth one,” the boy excitedly responded as his dad sliced off another small sliver of frozen clam.
I slid a Gulp along the hook of a small jighead and walked down to where my friend was now casting. His face was deadpan as he methodically surveyed the water from 10 to 2, intently concentrating on every rip and wrinkle in the calm ocean before us. “New reel,” I asked, tossing my jig into the trough.
“Birthday gift from the girlfriend,” my buddy replied as he blasted cast after cast at the horizon, his hand sliding the manual bail across the spool of the pricey reel at each precise moment that the metal sliced the ocean surface.
As I slowly reeled in my jig, I laughed at the ridiculousness of angling self-awareness, thinking to myself of what another buddy once said – “in the evolutionary progress of the modern day surfcaster, if you have a girlfriend and a birthday, you’ll never be a googan again.
