He arrives at somewhere between 5 and 5:30 in the morning, rolling his cart across the Bethany Beach sand complete with tackle box, four rods and reels, and a cooler full of bait. You can tell it’s Bob’s regular spot by looking down the beach from the Bay Road ramp at his American flag posted on a short metal pole that’s fixed into the corner of his cart.

Like most anglers of fresh or saltwater, Bob belongs to an unofficial brotherhood of line casters, a friendly sort who meet and greet anyone who might pass them by along this beach. That’s how I met him one morning while I was on vacation last year.

One might think that how this Maryland man fishes by casting a bait into the water and then waiting for a bite that may never come is an act of futility, but the truth is he conducts his ritual with an attention to detail to give himself pretty good odds of catching fish. He goes through the same routine he’s set for the past 12 years every day for two weeks in early July. The rod holder tubes are jammed into the sand with enough space apart to avoid the four lines from tangling. A calculated weight is attached to the end of each line that not only provides distance for the cast, but will wedge itself into the sand below the water to keep the bait from sinking into the bottom. He runs a wire leader into a piece of fish bait from the front through the back to where he attaches a large silver hook.

His cast is a step-by-step manual of practiced precision. Bob walks the baited rod into the surf where he waits for the precise time when the tide rolls out. With two hands placed an equal distance apart on the rod handle and the bail of the spinning reel in the open position, he lifts the fiberglass rod over his shoulder and he catapults the bait forward into the softer water beyond the turbulence of the surf. Then he walks the rod back to the holder where he tightens the line with a handle turn of the reel. Once the ritual is performed three more times, what appears to the casual eye to be nothing happening at all is when he puts what he does into a perspective.

“Fishing isn’t just about catching fish,” he says. “It’s about possibilities.”

He admits that nothing else he does in life causes him to have as much patience because there is virtually no probability of catching a fish with every cast. “There’s always anticipation, but you have to wait for the possibility that a fish will take the bait,” he says.

After some more words between Bob and me, I realized that what he was saying was not just about fishing; he was speaking about life. Oftentimes, we must temper our anticipation with patience and wait for a good thing to happen.

“Life is all about possibilities and when they don’t bring the outcomes you want,” says Bob, “you move on to another day. Just like when you don’t catch fish, you try again tomorrow.”

His philosophy made sense to me. You can’t catch fish unless you cast your line into the water just like you can’t avail yourself to life’s plethora of possibilities unless you go fishing for them. In Arthur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman,” Willy Loman gives his aimless son the same message. Willy says, “The world is an oyster, but you don’t crack it open on a mattress!”

On one particular morning, while we chatted about everything and nothing at the same time, a school of bunker floated by us in the back roil of the surf. Bob’s eyes opened wide. The hundreds of little fish swimming at the surface would likely draw in predators, he said. We spotted a dolphin beyond the bunker chasing them closer to the surf. A moment later, Bob’s longest rod bent nearly in half. He had hooked something so large that it pulled him down the shoreline with anglers and beach walkers following him with their cellphones. Thirty minutes later, he landed a butterfly ray, estimated to weigh about 65 pounds.

After its release, Bob was exhausted from his man vs. beast battle, but he expressed no more joy about winning that epic struggle than he did a day later when he reeled in an 8-inch kingfish. For him, fishing is not always about the size of the catch but as he had said, it’s about the unexpected outcome of possibility that brings us both big and small rewards.

Author Monica Murphy said, “Funny how someone can come into your life for such a brief time but leaves such a lasting impression.” Like collecting seashells swept upon the beach from the ocean tide, my friendship with Bob has been gathered from the charms of the sea. We have already marked the dates to meet again next year and this time, upon his request, I will come as a player instead of a spectator.

I will traipse across the pre-dawn sand with my rod and reel in hand to where I will find his American flag waving in the ocean breeze. After a welcoming handshake, we will cast out our lines, sit back in our chairs, and wait for the possibilities.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.