I was a twenty six year old journeyman mechanic at Honda of Santa Ana back in the very early nineteen eighties. My soon to be wife, also worked at the same dealership as a service writer. This didn’t bode well for me with the other line mechanics working at the dealership and I was treated with a lot of distain. There were some other factors that could be thrown in to why the guys didn’t particularly accept me but I wanted to be one of the guys and had to pay my dues. It was tough going for a long time but a couple of the mechanics were serious bass fisherman. Ed was one of the good old boys of the group as was Mike his best pal. They often fished together on Ed’s Bass Tracker boat the local lakes especially Irvine Lake.
I was just getting into bass fishing back then and often found myself on lunch breaks down the street at what was the first location of Angler’s Marine on Main Street in South Santa Ana. I would be buying crankbaits, plastic worms and on Thursdays, my supply of live crawdads to fish down at Lake Hodges on the weekends. My folks lived in Rancho Bernardo a short drive from the lake so I had a place to stay at Friday-Saturday nights during bass season. Word got out to Ed and Mike that I was trying my hand at bass fishing and was immediately questioned as to my knowledge on bass fishing. They drilled me questions testing my knowledge like it was a rite of passage amongst all bass fishermen. I tried my best to talk the talk with these two good old boys but I could tell that I was not getting into their clan.
Mike was a nice sort of guy that knew that I was having a tough time fitting in with the other mechanics and told me that unless I could catch a Brown Eyed Grouper fish that I wasn’t a serious fisherman. The look on his face was serious as all hell. Ed meandered over to the coffee machine and must have heard a little of the conversation and looked at me and said” You ain’t shit till you caught a Brown Eyed Grouper fish bud.” Now I never heard of a Brown Eye Grouper fish before and quired “Just where am I going to catch one of these fish?”
“You can catch em in Irvine Lake dummy, and you think you're a good fisherman huh?” Ed stated, like it was a challenge for me to catch one. I had no idea what a Brown Eyed Grouper fish looked like nor how to fish for one either and pretty much ignored both.
A few weeks went by, and I came into work and I saw Ed and Mike and a few other techs looking at me walking into the shop like they were expecting me. I looked at my hoist and hanging from it was a 4 foot Blue Shark. Pinned to it was a hand written sign. Brown Eyed Grouper caught by Dave Finkelstein. New Irvine Lake record. The whole shop broke out in laughter at my reaction to seeing the fish.
Sometimes in life, you just have to take a punch in the face to be accepted. It was the day I had a good laugh too and was accepted as one of the guys.