August Break 2011 – Day 3

When I was a young girl, about my eldest son’s age, I remember going fishing for my very first time. I was spending another glorious summer with my grandparents, and we had gone to visit some of their friends who had a cabin on a lake… somewhere. After a big picnic lunch and a game of lawn darts (ah, the 70s), my grandfather set up my rod and showed me the basics of casting and reeling. The weather turned cloudy later in the afternoon, and all the adults scurried away inside (to down a few scotch and sodas with the left over picnic desserts, no doubt… ;)). There I was… all alone on the end of this rickety old wooden dock… a wee Len Thompson spoon and red-and-white bobber on my line… my thin red and white windbreaker barely keeping me warm… loathe to give up. And so very Canadian.

It was so quiet. So calm. Cast and reel… cast and reel… cast and reel. It started to rain. Not hard really – just enough to make the fish think that bugs were landing on the water. Soon, they started surfacing everywhere, their little ripples merging into each other. And before I knew it, I had hooked myself one. I reeled faster than I ever had before and gave a girlish squeal as I lifted a tiny flopping trout out of the water. But then the solitude of my situation sunk in and I started to panic. What now??? I kept yelling for a grown up… “Hey, I caught a fish! Somebody come help me! HEEEYYY!!!”, but to no avail. Eventually I found my way back to the right cabin, the poor fish suffocating during my to-the-skin soaking search, which I suppose saved my grandfather having to dispatch him. And maybe it was just the scotch talking, but everybody seemed so proud of me.

The next day, my grandmother cooked up that trout, and it was the tastiest fish I have ever had. Thus began my love affair with fishing. One that I hope to pass down to my boys, when the time is right. Which may have been today. I took Monkeyboy Junior out for his first spin, and as beginner’s luck would have it, he didn’t go home empty handed. Now, if there had been any photos of my first fishing experience, I imagine they might have looked something like this…

Minus the “Old Navy” hoodie, of course. 😉

Processed at http://pixlr.com/o-matic/ using the “Amber” filter, “focal” texture, and “dirt” frame.