October 10, 2024

More than two dozen fishing rods were braced against the railing of San Francisco’s Pier 7, their lines dangling into the Bay. People chatted on the benches, shouting in Cantonese and leaping up when one of the rods bent or jiggled.
One after another, the men and women at the end of the pier reeled in striped bass as long as an arm, and even thicker.
But not King Lee, a 72-year-old retired janitor who takes the bus to the pier almost every day. It had been 10 days since he had last caught anything worth eating. “Lucky, lucky, lucky guy,” Lee said, watching an angler reeling in a thrashing fish. “Today, I got nothing. I hope, later, I get one like this.”