I've written a few memoirish, coming of age stories about fishing along with some fiction and poetry. I had this one published in the monthly CC Times Poetry contest. I found an old copy of the Canterbury Tales in my folks' basement and thought, hey, Chaucer forgot to write an Angler's Tale. So, and limited to 35 lines, I wrote it.

Prologue to the Angler’s Tale
Our Host checked his hourglass, glanced to the west, the gold orb was setting, for time they were pressed.
“Pray quick with your yarn you old fisher of men, regale us to wit for this day’s nigh at end.”

The Angler’s Tale
One day in the harbor ‘twas a tug on my net.
‘Til then I’d caught nothing, but was anxious to get

Whatever I’d snared o’er the side; in the hold.
I struggled a might being less young than was old.

I cursed, “Fie on thee ya’ scaly, finned brute,
You’ll not escape from this gray bearded coot.”

And struggle we did forth and back for a while.
‘Til o’er the gunnel I pulled in Herculean style.

I thought, are ya’ dreamin’? when I saw on the deck
Floppin’ ‘round, closed my eyes and then opened to check.

From her waist to where her feet shoulda’ been was a fish’s tail of a silvery sheen.
And the top half of her body bade the features of a beauteous maid.

Struck dumb was I, quite unable to speak, but she commenced in a loud, high-pitch squeak,

“My father, Poseidon, is waiting for me to return from my journ to the top of the ocean.
In lieu of my freedom one wish I will grant. State thy desire, quick, quick what’s thy notion?”

“Mer-woman,” ‘gan I, “I’ve just been a-thinking,
The wish you shall grant,” I eyed her and winking,

“Is that you join this old angler in a wedded bliss.”
She asked, “To be sure, wed another ‘ll be the end of this?”

I nodded confirming my nuptial pact.
The mermaid just smiled and winked at her tact.

“Oh fisherman today you’ve just met your match.
A scheme to woo me, ye’ thought to unhatch.

The offer I made let me back ‘neath the sea,
By deceit you’d have made a kept wife of me.

But your words, which were not well thought or well said,
The wish I have granted includes not me, instead,

Since you only expressed want for someone to wed
Ashore find an espoused old wench in your bed.”

The old angler then turned to the traveling group
He sighed, sadly smirked and said to the troupe,

“The lesson I learned and the end of that day,
Don’t trifle with mermaids you catch in the bay.”

Not a fan of poetry but this was very well done and must have required a lot on work on your part.

Hey thanks. I graduated with an AB in English then spent the next forty years working in satellites and technology. So I've been waiting a long time for the opportunity to just write whenever I feel like it. Don't like poetry, how about some fiction. My group challenged me to write a Halloween story.
The Lure of All Hallows
By Jim Barker

The ‘All Hallows Lure’ as it came to be known was a folklorish tale to some, to others, a potentially evil and cursed talisman, and still others thought it an object having such “mojo” as to make great fishers of those inept few who would endeavor to possess it. I know this to be true because that lure, with its supposed, mystical power came to my own misguided hand on the cusp of the Pagan ritual of All Hallows.
In my sixteenth year and following the horrid deaths of my parents by ‘the pox’ I made my way to Billings Gate, a small fishing village on the bayside outskirts of Wylfleet. My parents’ untimely deaths left me an orphan but for a sole aunt who I was told lived alone in a shanty in the village. I didn’t know how she was related, I didn’t even know if she was, and I had nothing to go on but the name, Goody Diedre. I should have known when I got off the packet at the deepwater pier at Chequesnett and began asking the whereabouts of Goody Diedre, most shook their heads, nodded and quickly moved on, but a grizzled old seafarer heard my inquiry and told me to follow the cartpath south to Jeremiah Point, and shortly thereafter find Billings Gate Village where I’d finally meet my Auntie Diedre. “Lad don’t be expecting too much in hospitality, she’s a queer one, she is, keeps to ‘erself mostly. Claims to be a seamstress and a healer, shell fishes as is the life there. There’s rumors she’s…ah never mind, lad. Get on yer way, it’s a half day’s walk ye got.”
When I finally arrived at the crude main street, I was immediately enamored with Billings Gate; the village was all about the fishing trade and nets and traps and glass blown floats, harpoons and whale bones adorned every home and hovel. Again, I inquired as to Goody Diedre’s shanty and I received the same gruff and silent responses and pointing the direction I was to head. Soon, clearly out of dry land to walk I came to the old shanty, no sign of life, just a whisper of smoke emanating from the cobblestone chimney. A small mountain of shells in the yard to one side of the front door, which appeared to be no more than an old ship’s rudder cut to fill the hole and attached to the house with leather strops. There was no garden, no flower box, no beauty at all to the grounds as the other homes I’d passed on my way there. I started to fear I’d made a mistake by trying to come here to a person I’d never known. As I stood on the slab of granite that served as the front porch step, about to knock a raspy voice from inside fairly bellowed, “Who ye be? What’s yer business here?”
“My name is Alden Dayle and I’ve been told yer my aunt, but we never met. My Ma ‘n Pa ha’ passed by the pox a fortnight ago and I have nowhere else in this world to go ‘cept the almshouse unless you’ll take me in.”
“Dayle? You George and Prudy’s boy? From Cambridge? Ye say yer Alden, that seems right.”
“Yes ma’am. That’s correct.”
“Well, OK, then, come in and let’s see what we can do fer ye, lad. I’m not set up to care for a young’un, but mebby we can muddle something out. I owe yer Ma ‘n Pa that much.”
I wasn’t prepared for the sight when the door cracked open just far enough for me to squeeze myself and my weathered valise of worldly possessions into the dank interior of the old shanty. A lone candle the only light and the smell of the dried peat slowly burning in the fireplace was overwhelming. The room was devoid of furniture except for a chair and small table, a four-poster bed in a corner covered by a pile of old blankets heaped on top. A cauldron steamed some equally foul-smelling concoction I assumed I’d be offered a sampling of; it made no difference what it was, I was starving and exhausted having not eaten nor slept in almost a whole day’s time.
Auntie Diedre and I came to abide each other. She relied on me for chores and errands while I counted on her for the stews and chowders she made in the large pot that swung on an iron rod toward and away from the fireplace. I had found a burlap sack that had been discarded at the pier I filled with salt hay making a crude but utterly comfortable mattress I placed by the fireplace. My forays into the village for goods also allowed me to spend time by the docks alee of the cold October breezes where the greybeards gathered to mend their weir nets and rickety crab pots, and tend the pounds, but most of all to listen to the yarns they spun of whaling, of massive fish strenuously hauled over the side of their meager dories by line and angle, and culling oysters the size of a small boy’s head. Occasionally, as the ale jug passed ‘round there was mention of the ‘Goody Diedre’ and her midnight bonfires on the beach, as she gestured and chanted, drawing in the blue crab, or her moonlight dances with the large sea clams she coaxed from the sand with a mere ‘come ‘ere’ gesture of her finger. Usually, in my presence, the old fisher making the claim was shushed and browbeaten by his fellows until he ceased his rambling. I didn’t consider the rumors anything more than that. My aunt never gave me the impression she consorted or conjured or anything of the like, though I was quite naïve and probably wouldn’t have known it if she did.
One day, out of the blue she asked me, “Alden, what’s it in yer heart to make of yerself? What do ye desire to be now that ye’ll not be apprenticed with your departed father?”
It was a question I’d been asking myself and one waiting to be asked of me. “Auntie, I desire to go to sea.”
“Not a whaler, I presume. Oho, I’ll tell ye, you’ve not the stature for a whaling life…”
I cut her off forthright. “…No Ma’am, a dory-man pursuing the wrasse they call ‘strypers’ here-abouts. There’s now pole and line fishing from boats launched into the bay. The danger is not that of the whaler, but the reward I’m told is as great if’n ye supply a Boston bound packet with a good catch. First off, I’ll have to fish from shore until I can have a boat built, but…”
…My aunt was silent, pondering my comments, then spoke, “You, I’m sure, will find this pole of which ye speak, and I can weave and braid a line of strong thread…”
“…I can harvest a cherry sapling of six feet or so, stripped of bark for the pole. And to it I shall make a large thimble for the line and attach it to my pole with the blacksmith’s penny nail. All I’ll need is bait and…”
My Aunt Diedre suddenly grimaced and gnarled her already gnarled face and said to me, “Alden, there’s many a masterful fisherman in Billings Gate, ye’ll need an angle beside the angle to make ye’self a name ‘round the docks. I’m a-going to make fer ye a bit of an advantage, lad. I’ll be goin’ away to find the root-ball from a mature Irish Weeping-Beech. Yer not to breathe a word o’ this to anyone, ya hear boy!”
Since I’d been utterly surprised by this behavior I could only nod in agreement. “OK, Auntie, OK.” I didn’t really know where her diatribe would lead, but I was not averse to my own future gain by it. While she was away, I eagerly constructed my pole and angle.
She returned two days later, a dirty, beleaguered most haggard looking woman, my aunt. “I thought you’d left me fer good, Auntie, are ya OK?”
“I’m above the sod, boy, that’s enough. Take the beech root I brought ye’. Augur it thru-n-thru and run a length o’ blacksmith’s metal thread thru and twist yer hook on the end. She handed me the odd, blood-orange and black colored stub of a stick she’d whittled. “The root of the Irish beech alone has special powers, tho’ I placed a spell on the wood to make it bounteous to the one in whose hands it lies.” I pretended I hadn’t heard her last words. The lure sharply tingled in my hand and I briefly wondered if indeed she’d done something to enchant a mere piece of wood, and more importantly, I questioned, would the fishes take to it.
That evening Diedre worked her spinning wheel, braiding the fine flaxen threads she’d threshed into a line roughly two chains in length and then she dropped on her bed and commenced to snoring and rambling in strange tongues as she often did in her dreams.
I awoke early the next morning to the creak of the front door closing. I got up and looked out through a crack in the door. In the light from the remains of the waning moon and the sun just under the horizon I could see my aunt departing, her black, hooded cowl billowing in the breeze, a black cloth sack in one hand and leading herself along with the knotty old staff she sometimes used. Several paces from the house she stopped, turned and stared as if she was taking a last glimpse, then turned back and continued on her way. As it was All Hallows Day I assumed she was on her way somewhere to pay homage to the dead and departed. I gave a fleeting remembrance to my own parents and then focused my attention on preparing for my first foray into the realm of the wrasse called Stryper.
As my aunt left in a northerly direction, I took to the south, to the bay. It was relatively calm and with the late October breeze at my back blowing gently offshore I told myself, “A following wind is perfect for casting my lure out.” Holding the line pinched against the pole I reared back then brought the pole forward with some force, pointing the pole out at the bay, letting go the lne. I watched as the lure arched out a good twenty or thirty paces offshore. As I began to retrieve line I was amazed at how realistic the lure looked as it swam a zig-zag pattern back to the shore. In my second try I put a more throwing motion into the cast, aiming to land it close to a partially submerged boulder I had noticed breaking the surface as the waves of the bay passed over it. I thought to myself, if I were a styiper I should rest in the calm behind a seaweed covered rock waiting for a finned morsel to swim by. Unknowingly, I had taught myself an invaluable lesson on the habits of fish, for seconds after it splashed into the water a swirl appeared and then a large tail slapped at the lure sending it skittering across the surface. The great fish immediately disappeared and just as fast came up under the lure, erupting from the water, taking it in its gaping maw.
I was frozen in astonishment at the spectacle unfolding before me and almost let the pole escape my grip as the big stryper felt the bite of my hook in the corner of its jaw and dove in an attempt to escape its pending fate. The line burned my fingers as I came to my senses and tried to gain control before instinct prevailed and I was able to fight the determined fish, my aching arms and stiff pole working in concert to bring it close by the shore. I jumped knee deep in the water and grabbed the tiring fish by the lower jaw and dragged it up onto the sand.
The old sow didn’t have the strength to continue to try and throw the hook and with several feeble flips of the great tail ceased to fight, its gills gasping their last, the big, iridescent eye staring up at me defiantly. It was at that moment I realized my direction in life would be fishing. I briefly considered casting my line back in hopes of another stryper, but looking back at the great fish I realized it was at least as long as I was tall and with a girth so large it likely weighed half what I did; I still had to get it back to the village fish monger before the meat spoiled.
I’m sure I looked a bit of a spectacle as I walked back into Billings Gate, the same route as I had originally taken when I had first come to the village. Now people came out to see the orphan boy who’d proved his mettle and become a man, bearing a fish bent over my shoulder, my arm through the gills and out the huge mouth, the tail like a broom sweeping the dusty street as I passed by. No one questioned if sorcery played a role, no, this time the nods were of acceptance as a member of a community rather than scorn and doubt I had once received.
My Aunt Diedre never returned to Billings Gate and I never learned her fate. But for the fact that she was the catalyst that began my life as a fisherman and ultimately a respected graybeard, there really was no history, of which I knew, that I should be perpetually saddened by the void of her departure. I remained curious for several years if the All Hallows lure had alluring or mystical powers and finally couldn’t resist searching out an Irish Beech and making my own replica of Diedre’s lure. Not surprisingly, my copy worked as well or better than the original and no spells were cast in the making. I created more copies and sold them to anglers who were only too happy to drop a few of their precious coppers in my pocket in the hope they’d land large fish and become great fishermen. If they only knew that there is no luck in lures or angling, success only comes from the time, dedication and passion one puts in to one’s pursuits...like fishing.

Great read. I haven't heard the word "greybeards" in a long time.