Trout climbed onto the boat with surprising agility for a man built like a professional basketball player. Although he was six foot eight, he moved with a catlike grace that came from years of experience on boats at the side of his fisherman father. He punched the starter button on the console. The inboard engine came to life with a throaty grumble and a puff of blue exhaust.

“No brag. When you’re born into an old Cape Cod family that’s caught tons of fish over the decades, you expect an off day once in a while.” He stuck his nose in the air like a bloodhound. “That grand-daddy striper is waiting in his honey hole for me to hook him.”

“Now I know why fishermen have a reputation for telling tall tales.” Gamay cast off the mooring line.

Trout gave the throttle a light touch and steered the boat at a slow speed across Eel Pond toward the Water Street drawbridge. They passed a bar whose deck overlooked the pond, and Trout smacked his lips. “I can taste that cold frosty beer.”

“Let’s jack up the ante,” Gamay said. “Loser buys dinner too.”

“It’s a bet,” Trout said without hesitation. “Fried clams go great with beer.”

The boat proceeded slowly under the drawbridge and out into the harbor, past the Martha’s Vineyard ferry terminal and the research vessel Atlantis, which was tied up to the dock of the world-famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where Trout’s interest in oceanography had been stimulated when he was still a boy.

The boat cleared the harbor and Trout goosed the throttle. The bow angled up on plane and he steered toward the ElizabethIslands, an archipelago that lay in a string southwest of Cape Cod. Gamay puttered about the deck, readying fishing gear.

There were few things better in Trout’s opinion than racing over the waves with the salty breeze in his face and the prospects of a full day of fishing. All he needed to make the outing a perfect ten would be to catch a bigger fish than Gamay. He was used to friendly competition with his wife, but he had been quietly annoyed that she had outfished him over the last two days.

As a young girl growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, Gamay was no slouch when it came to boats and fishing. Although she had grown into an attractive woman, she retained a hint of the tomboy she had once been. Her good-natured taunts at Trout’s lack of success ran counter to his understated New England persona. He gritted his teeth. Today damn well better be the day or he would never live it down.