El Grande’ Pescado!

Even though my fishing buddy George has been out of work since late last year, we still haven’t been able to go fishing as much as we’d like. A lot of it is weather related. But it seems like George has picked up a whole new outlook on things and he is trying to bring a new cultural diversity to our outdoor adventures. I figure it would be good for all of us to know, so I’m sharing what I’ve learned with you.

Earlier this week, I called to see if he could go fishing.

“El Grande’ Pescado!”, he exclaimed.  What?

“It means ‘the big fish’ in Spanish,” he explained. Oh. I recall that George has gone bass fishing a couple of times down in Mexico.

So we headed to the lake, looking for the big fish.  We fished for a while. It was cold and George started fidgeting and said, “Banos…Banos” and pointed toward the bank. I looked, but I did not see anything. Finally, he started squirming rather dramatically and said it again, much louder, pointing to a big pine tree.

“You need to go to the bathroom?” I asked.  “Se,” he said.

A cold front had just passed through and we didn’t have any luck. Or either we were fishing in a school of fish that didn’t have Spanish class yet, because we didn’t get but one bite. It was a grande pescado all right, but we didn’t get it in the boat. After George hooked it, he started screaming, ” Conseguir la neta! Conseguir la neta!”.

By the time I figured out that he meant “get the net” it was too late. The El Grande Pescado had gotten “afuera” (away).

George wouldn’t speak to me in English or Spanish for about 30 minutes, but finally he turned toward me and said, “Amigo, let’s go get some nachos and enchiladas and take a siesta”.

Now that’s my kind of Spanish. Trip over.

(If you are new to the site and want to see more adventures of George and I, check out some of our early blogs on the “archives” part of this page – Oct. 9, Oct. 18, Nov. 27 for example…)