5 minute freewrite 2601 prompt few or many

This is my post for #freewriters 2601 prompt few or many hosted by @mariannewest.

We were pompano fishing. I did not care for catching pompano in a gillnet, we pulled a lot of net for only a few fish and the ocean had to be slick calm because you wanted to throw the end of your net as close to the beach as you could safely get it and run it offshore from there. Boats have been lost by getting too close and a rogue wave hits or they hit bottom and a small wave flips their boat. My husband has had to pull his net off the beach when it got washed ashore, he said people were walking by, looking at the fish in it, but he has never sunk his boat.

It was New Year's Eve 1990 or thereabout. My husband and I were in the ocean barely offshore of Wabasso Beach. We were picking up our empty net and the fireworks started, people on the beach were yelling Happy New Year, and we each had a pompano in our hands, holding what the fishermen call Gold, that was a good feeling, from there to the end of the net we caught a total of 15 fish for pulling 600 yards of net and my husband was happy.

It was hard for me to understand his happiness because I was used to pulling in the net filled with fish, and he was happy with 15. That is when I found out that when you are pompano fishing, if you catch a few or many, you had a good day. The price is so much higher than for other fish.

We caught Spanish mackerel, spots, croakers, weakfish, bluefish, whiting, and others. We got a dollar a pound on the whiting but the other fish we got anywhere from 10 cents to 25 cents a pound, but for pompano we could get up to 5.75 a pound.

This was our best day, it happened last August and we caught them on rod and reels, I do not know how many we each caught because we weighed them together. We had a little over 400 pounds. That was a lot of reeling and fighting, pompano gives you a run for your money when you hook one, they do not come in easily, most of the time going around the boat a few times. That would not be bad if there were not 5 other lines in the water, many times I have been tangled in the other lines, sometimes losing the fish.
photos are mine