I do not like seafood. I don't fish by choice. I do not eat seafood. I won't cook it. I can't even bear the smell of it. I will, very occassionally & only under great duress, go fishing if someone else baits my hook for me. I object to running sharp objects through live animals.
Dearest, having prevailed upon me to buy the lads fishing rods & provide the bait decided we would have a family afternoon down on the point & he would teach his sons the manly art of casting. So off we went. Dearest is an avid fisherman & some of his best memories are of family fishing holidays. Liddy, too small to hold a rod, was seeing how wet she could get while technically remaining out of the water. I took myself a little apart with a small sigh. I was reckoning on about an hour tops before snags had dispossed of all our tackle but the boys were so wild with excitement I held my peace & quietly dropped my line as close to the hole as possible & began to think of other things, totally oblivious to the excitment around me.
In a little while my line began tugging in the gentle way that tells you something is interested in what you have plastered on the end of your line. I'm not much of a fisherman so I jerked without much hope & reeled in a good sized bream. There was an immediate surge of men & equipment my way & lines plonked into the water all about me while Dearest removed my fish with a delighted grin. I removed myself from the crush & dropped my line in the water on the other side of the point. Catching something has never been my goal so I was shocked to find my line getting tugged yet again. In came a small flathead. By this time my sons were eyeing me with a stunned mixture of respect & as if I was the lucky fish charm & waited to see where I dropped my line before moving enmass to join me. I love my sons but the inevitable happened. The next fish to bite made a run for the rock ledge. My line snagged & I lost the only decent hook I had. The boys were tangled around each other in the sort of knot that was going to take time & patience to sort out. I left Dearest to it & walked back up to the house for more bait. I took my time so was absolutely stunned to be met halfway by 3/4 of my household delirious with excitement. 'You've caught a fish', Jossie shouted. I had? Last time I looked I didn't even have a hook let alone a line in the water. 'A cod,' Dino informed me. Well, he would know. 'This big.' He held his hands apart to show me. Wow!
I walked down the track with my overexcited offspring to see if Dearest could make sense of this wild tale. 'You wouldn't believe it,' he said shaking his head. He had replaced my hook, baited the line up & cast it out before dealing with the boys tangled lines but was as surprised as the boys when my line started running out. He reeled in the fish, indeed Dino's cod, to find my best hook embedded in the cod's mouth & the fish snagged through the old line. You wouldn't read about it. I'm still the cleverest fisherman I know. I don't know of another one who has caught a fish when they weren't even there!
1 comment:
My husband Dave is an avid fisherman! His trips to Canada started over 30 years ago when he and his best friend, Charlie would go up to Northern Manitoba and not see another soul for over a week. he & Charlie haven't gone together in a couple of years because Dave has become interested in backpacking trips with his brother. However, Dave & Charlie have another trip in the planning stages. They might even take our son Charles and Charlie's son David. I'm guessing you see the pattern here. They are such great friends that they (we) named our sons after them. They have David Charles while we have Charles David. I'm not a fisherman either. The last time I was out in the canoe, just last year, I managed to flip the canoe costing Dave a new pair of glasses and a very expensive camera that he had to replace!
Connie
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