Fish Story Friday

When I was about seven, I think, my family spent a week camping in a rented trailer at a lake just north of Kalamazoo. The place was close enough to home so that my father could go to work during the day, then come back in the evening to relax and fish.

I don't have too many distinct memories of this. I know my mother, my sisters and I were stuck in the trailer on several rainy afternoons. We caught some perch, bluegill, amd bullhead, which we ate, though I remember waiting a long time between bites most evenings. We used wigglers for bait, and I think I was scared to touch them at first. One of my sisters came back from swimming with a leech on her leg. Pretty mundane, family-photo-album stuff, except for my father's performing a miracle one evening on the water.

Just before we'd come there, I had been given my first fishing rod, a short, brittle white wand witih green windings and spincasting reel that snarled on about every fourth cast. Not a piece of fine tackle, but it was all I needed then, and I was immensely proud of it.

Understandably then, I was devasted when I dropped it in the lake one night. I don't remember exactly what happened, but one minute the rod was in my hand, and the next it was over the side of the boat. Any happiness I had felt that evening sank along with it. The best toy I had ever owned was gone, and chances were I was about to receive a sharply worded admonition to watch what I was doing. I got a lot of those admonitions growing up.

To my surprise, my father remained silent. He reeled in his own line, cut off the hook he had on it and tied on the largest one he had in his tacke box. After attatching a heavy sinker just above the hook, he dropped his line in the water just over the side of the boat. It couldn't have been more than two minutes before he raised his rod and pulled mine out of the water. His oversize hook had caught it through one of the guides. I couldn't have been more astounded if he'd summoned it up with a spell.

Looking back, it probably wasn't that difficult a trick. The lake was shallow and weedy. My dad probably saw the rod resting on top of a weed bed, or on the lake bottom. But even if I had been aware of these things, I was too relieved, and too grateful to deconstruct his accomplishment. Kids, they say, are inclined to view their parents as near-omnipotent. If I did, who could blame me?

Tag: Fishing; Family