Wild
Fishing
Paint my
west blue, when the lakes were still clean,
with no
water skiers
when my
father would yell at us to be quiet or
we’d scare the fish and right then drop his new trolling rod into the lake.
If we were
really lucky we could row, or use the 3.3 motor over to the float in time to
pull the rod up, if the tension was right.
Sometimes
not, and the lake was clear enough to see the tiny bit of red sigh right down
past the line of dark, never seen again. At least not by us
and then
his yelling
would
scare all the fish away.
But that
would be before one of us would tangle the spinning reel beyond what a cat with
wool would be proud. So, we’d all wind in our rods while he fixed the mess,
being all out of yelling for a while. He would sigh and we’d all sigh, even my
mother in the helm, from behind her book.
But
sometimes that rod tip would bend like a ballerina bow, like a cartoon
character zipped right off the page and we’d all be yelling “Got one! Got one,”
We’d be wild alright.
My dad
would be yanking the sticky net out of the sludge in the bottom of the boat to
get into the water before the fish got too close, and be scared, as if we were
going actually scare it any further, being yanked toward all that yelling and
that shiny bottomed punt.
“Keep the
tip up, kept the tip up” “Slow, slow, give it time”
And all
four of us kids wanted to lean over the side to see that flashing trout come up
with that hook and my mother who didn’t swim would be yelling now, “You’re
tipping the boat, you’re tipping the boat”. I guess she was a little wild.
But we’d
bring that fish in, proud and breathing at least as fast as the fish its gills
billowing out and in while we checked for the 6” rule, “Just a pan fryer”, my
dad would say, no matter how big or muscle-strong flaking iridescent that
creature might be. Then pushed, a slippery prize, scraping its last wildness
against that old wicker creel, or hit with the bonker while it moved like a
spastic S at the bottom of our boat, scared, no doubt because of our yelling.
Maybe we
all have days in the west like that, hooked, yelling, tipping, breathing hard,
and then, if we lucky, still alive, afloat.
Paint my
west blue, a renaissance of memories, a child in the wild.
Revisted.
Karen Bissenden
KL
Bissenden writes a newspaper column and has been published in anthologies
of non-fiction, fiction and poetry. She won the Joyce Dunn prize for
non-fiction and the M. Manson award, for combining verse and multi-media after
which she attended the University of Victoria, for creative writing.
Tags:
Poetry