Dueces Wild Trip Essay Critique...

[DementedFish]

All right all of you english majors, I was given an assignment to write a descriptive essay of a previous memory and I chose the expierience we had two summers ago on the Dolphin II. If any of you have the time please read my essay and critque it in any way shape or form. I'm looking for grammatical errors, punctuation errors, run-ons, repeats, etc. Let me know what you guys think! Thanks!




Sean Lara
Professor Fisher
English 1A
9/17/07

The Dolphin II

I remember my journey on the Dolphin II like it was just yesterday. I rushed down to the docks as fast as the tires on my 4-cylinder Honda would carry me; I had to avoid the Friday night traffic. After a painful two and a half hours just to get into San Diego, I finally arrived to Islandia Sportfishing. I grabbed all the gear I could manage to carry at once, slipped on my stiff rubber deck boots, locked my car and walked towards the charter boat. As I got closer to all my friends and clients, the anticipation was too much for me to handle, this had been my first 2-day overnight trip on a fishing boat and I was extremely excited. I knew the weekend was going to be epic; freezers would be full of yellowtail, decks covered in blood from slamming fish coming over the guard rails, sardines flying mid-air onto kelp patties and above all, my favorite smell in the world, the aroma of the salty ocean breeze. I arrived to the stern of the boat where everyone was standing and patiently waited for the captain to fire up the engines of the Dolphin II. We all knew that we were going to experience some of the best fishing we had ever seen, and for me this trip was one of the most memorable experiences and accomplishments of my life.


We stepped onto the rough decks of the boat and scurried to put all our tackle away in an easily accessible location. By the time we were all situated and left the harbor it was about ten in the evening. One of the deckhands started cooking dinner and the recognizable smell of raw, burning meat and cheese instantly grabbed our attention. I hadn’t had anything to eat since that morning so naturally I woofed an entire double cheeseburger down my throat in about sixty seconds. After the burger and organizing my tackle, I decided to grab a bunk and get a few hours of sleep. The next morning I woke up at 6:30 to someone yelling: “Lines out, we hit a school!” Instantly I bounced up out of my warm mattress, ran up to the deck and grabbed my gold-colored Trinidad reel. I reached down in the freezing bait tank and grabbed the first squirming sardine I could get a hold of, threaded the hook through its nose and chucked it out next to the nearest kelp patty. In as little as five seconds I felt line starting to “peel” off from my reel. I put it into gear and without any contemplation let my rod load up with the weight from the fish and jerked on the line. I knew I had “set the hook” deep into the fish’s mouth, and the fight was on. As the fish came up to color I called out a deckhand for a gaffing job and with one swift motion he brought up a twelve-pound yellowtail and slammed it on the deck. Not too impressive of a fish but I wasn’t complaining, it was a hell of a way to start the day. Unfortunately only a few other fish were caught at this spot, so we moved on further south.


When my body had finally woken up a little more I found out we were a good eighty or so miles south of San Diego into Mexican waters. The familiar smell of bacon filled the air and like usual we all knew the crew was cooking up breakfast so we stopped concentrating on when we were going to hit the next school of yellowtail and satisfied our appetites, only for a couple of minutes of course. Soon enough we found another kelp patty and decided to see if “anyone wsas home”. The deckhand hopped up on the top of the bait tank and started chumming about fifty sardines. The captain gave us the “OK” and we tossed out our lines. I look down the rail and literally only about fifteen seconds later and my friend Jonathan is setting the hook on a fish, shortly followed with my friend Chris doing the same exact thing. At this time about half the boat is hooked up with fish. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a yellowtail surfacing out of the water for some of the free-swimming sardines. I reel in my bait and cast on top of it. Soon enough it was my turn and the same thing that I experienced about thirty minutes before happened all over again. I set the hook and started battling the fish; I could tell was much bigger than the last one. He made me chase him up to the bow then back to the stern about three times before I even saw him come close to the boat. When I eventually landed him he turned out to be about twenty pounds, which is a decent sized yellowtail. For about one hour we were all hooking into fish non-stop. Like I predicted, the decks were splattered with warm, fresh blood from all the fish we annihilated thus far. The sight filled my heart with a sense of accomplishment, and I was looking forward to catching even more.


Throughout the day I caught around ten adult yellowtail averaging from fifteen to twenty pounds. So far I was having one of the best if not the best weekend of my life, and it was still not over. That night we had sushi cut fresh from our fish and lasagna as well as cheeseburgers again. In addition, we also took plenty of pictures of our fish and had a poker match. After eating, socializing and cleaning our fish, we were all exhausted and went back to our bunks to prepare for the next day of fishing.


I woke up the next morning to violent thrusting on my shoulders from my friend Tony. I opened my eyes and he told me the captain was reading schools of albacore on the fish meter. Determined to catch an “albie” (as we called them) I managed to lift myself out of my bunk despite my aching arms and soar calves. When I arrived up on deck I noticed everyone else already had their lines in the water. I started fishing and threw out a nice healthy sardine but not much action was going on. Only three albacore were caught at this spot, so we decided to go search for more kelp patties for yellowtail before we had to start heading back home. We found a small patch of floating seaweed a few miles further north, chummed around it and threw out our lines. Another slow spot and only a couple of us were bringing in fish. After about six more hours of slow fishing we decided to hit one more spot before we needed to head back for San Diego. We arrived at the final spot of our trip and for the last time I casted out a meaty sardine. As the bait plopped on the water and made a small splash on the surface, I was immediately caught off guard. For some reason I wasn’t expecting a fish to actually take my bait so quickly, but it did. A huge fish came up and started mauling my bait to shreds. I let it eat my sardine before starting my fight and once it was in his mouth long enough I set the hook without a moment’s hesitation. I pulled as hard and fast as I could, and my bronze Mustad hook impaled the fish’s hard jawbone. Before I could even get my hand on the handle of the reel, my reel starting screaming. A stream of cool, salty ocean mist splattered on my face as my opponent tore down deeper and deeper under the boat. When I was finally able to stop the fish, I cranked up the drag on my reel, stuck my rod in my fighting belt, and gave the fish hell. I chased the fish around the boat, going over and under people’s lines. Three minutes into the fight I was already sweating like a day-laborer in a strawberry patch. As soon as I’d get the beast up where I could see him, he’d just cut down through the water again like a knife slicing through a bar of butter. After an eight-minute battle I brought the biggest yellowtail I had seen on the trip aboard the Dolphin II. As a deckhand hurled him over the rail, his silky skin shimmered in the sunlight. Then…POP! He slammed on the deck, blood poured out of its gills and I had successfully landed one of the biggest on the boat, and my personal best yellowtail at twenty-six pounds.

That fish gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. Ever since I started fishing I wanted to get the opportunity to do be able to participate in something like this and now that I finally was given the chance, now all I want to do is fish even more. When we arrived back to the docks at Islandia Sportfishing we took more pictures, weighed the fish meat and packed it all into coolers for the ride home. After talking to everyone on the trip, I found out I caught the third most fist out of everyone on the boat, which made me extremely proud of myself. At a mere sixteen years of age and this being my first long-range charter for big game fish, this was an extremely fulfilling experience for me. Everyone on the trip told me that I far surpassed everyone’s abilities and talents, and I really proved myself as an angler amongst adults. I can’t wait until I get the chance to go out and fish for yellowtail and hopefully experience the same moments I did on the Dolphin II.

[MOBassman]

Great read Sean!
There are only a couple grammatical errors, that I saw. And a couple misspelled words. It would be much easier to help if I had a pen to mark with, lol.

[spooky007]

First, your intro should contain an attention grabber. You need to get then keep the readers attention. Which you did with a descriptive "I rushed down to the docks as fast as the tires on my 4-cylinder Honda would carry me; I had to avoid the Friday night traffic" not bad. I would get rid of "I remember my journey on the Dolphin II like it was just yesterday" unless that was the required intro. Your first paragraph needs a thesis statement heading into the body, basically giving the reader what is expected in the story. You have a lot going on in just the first paragraph. Your conclusion needs to recap a summary of your story. I'll delve more later. Very good story. Just needs to be re arranged.

Al

[DementedFish]

Originally Posted by spooky007

First, your intro should contain an attention grabber. You need to get then keep the readers attention. Which you did with a descriptive "I rushed down to the docks as fast as the tires on my 4-cylinder Honda would carry me; I had to avoid the Friday night traffic" not bad. I would get rid of "I remember my journey on the Dolphin II like it was just yesterday" unless that was the required intro. Your first paragraph needs a thesis statement heading into the body, basically giving the reader what is expected in the story. You have a lot going on in just the first paragraph. Your conclusion needs to recap a summary of your story. I'll delve more later. Very good story. Just needs to be re arranged.

Al

Hmm thanks for the tips. I'll work on the conclusion a bit more and see what I come up with. As far as the Thesis goes, I do have one which is: "We all knew that we were going to experience some of the best fishing we had ever seen, and for me this trip was one of the most memorable experiences and accomplishments of my life." Maybe it just wasnt very clear.

[spooky007]

Originally Posted by DementedFish

Hmm thanks for the tips. I'll work on the conclusion a bit more and see what I come up with. As far as the Thesis goes, I do have one which is: "We all knew that we were going to experience some of the best fishing we had ever seen, and for me this trip was one of the most memorable experiences and accomplishments of my life." Maybe it just wasnt very clear.

Yea, my bad.

Al

[DementedFish]

Originally Posted by spooky007

Yea, my bad.

Al

Do you think it needs to be changed at all?

[dragonflylures]

If it isn't past due I'll give it a good read tomorrow when I have more time if you haven't already turned it in.

[Wahoo!]

I only have a few minutes, but here's what I can do right now -

Before I even give you specifics, here is a the best advice I could ever give you -

Buy "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr. It's the only book you'll ever need to help you with writing. Also, go easy on the semicolons. I've only read the first paragraph and you've already used 2 of them!!!

1. Revise the first sentence. Grab the reader.

2. I would rewrite the second sentence without a semicolon. It kills the flow of your sentence and it doesn't really fit. It looks like you're trying to use it in place of a "because", which is fine, but I think it could be written better.

3. Change this -
As I got closer to all my friends and clients, the anticipation was too much for me to handle, this had been my first 2-day overnight trip on a fishing boat and I was extremely excited.
To This -
As I got closer to all my friends and clients, the anticipation was too much for me to handle. This would be my first 2-day overnight trip on a fishing boat and I was extremely excited.

4. This sentence -
I knew the weekend was going to be epic; freezers would be full of yellowtail, decks covered in blood from slamming fish coming over the guard rails, sardines flying mid-air onto kelp patties and above all, my favorite smell in the world, the aroma of the salty ocean breeze.
I like it. It's very descriptive, but the flow is a little off. Ditch the semicolon and improve the language to improve the flow and structure it correctly.

5. This sentence -
We all knew that we were going to experience some of the best fishing we had ever seen, and for me this trip was one of the most memorable experiences and accomplishments of my life.
I'm torn with what to do with this one. Part of me would like to see a stronger break than the comma to really demonstrate the importance you're trying to convey. You could potentially add another comma to ",and for me," from the rest of the sentence, but I still feel like it's too weak. Try revising this last sentence and focus on the impact you want it to have on the reader. Also, if this is your main point, you need to make sure to support it in each of the subsequent paragraphs. When done correctly, it will really pull the whole story together and engage the reader.

One more thing, try to use the paragraph as a unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.

Anyway, that's all I can do right now. I have to finish up some work before I go to bed. I'll give you some more input when I've got some more time.

[cashe]

Drop the bloody deck,remember that teachers, and classmates, are not all into the killing of fish. Use spell check.

[MouthfulOfGrass]

Third paragraph "anyone wsas home" (spelling)

Wahoo & I must have had the same High School English teacher. (I'll try not to say the same things).

If you're writing to fisherman, it's one thing. But if you're writing to people who don't fish you might want to explain things like "fish came to color". I know what that means, but most people don't. You might want to add a parenthesis (when you can first see the fish) to add description to your jargon.

"decks covered in blood from slamming fish coming over the guard rails,"
Are you describing the fish with the word "slamming" ? If not, then lose the "coming" . Either you're "slamming fish over the guard rails" or you have "fish coming over the guard rails".

Otherwise, it's ok to end sentences (thoughts) with a period. And then start another sentence (thought), without having so many commas.

Semi-colons are kind of a specialty use punctuation mark. You don't see too many of them in normal writing, articles, stories, etc. Better to use periods & commas where necessary.