A fishy weekend.

Yesterday was a red letter day. I didn't say SCARLET letter, in that case, no it wasn't. By red letter I mean it was a notable day in a good way.

For as long as I can remember our family has not been good at fishing. We catch fish, but if we were reduced to hunter/gatherers we would be gathering hunters and begging from them. I have more trouble than I like admitting when trying to move the pet fish out of her bowl with a net.

This may have helped my Ichthyophobia, it may have been the cause. Either way, there are no trophy fish in our house, which is fine with me. Taxidermy has always been a little odd to me.

Who was the first to decide that they didn't want to try to use the whole animal, but instead scoop out it's insides, dry it out, and then rig it up as a morbid mummy/animal icon? I worry enough about the ghosts of the things I kill (flocks of partridges chase me in my dreams) than to have them prepared to kill me with a coronary on a dark night when I've been reading Stephen King novels. I could see it as a passive home security system. Have enough trophies to cover the major phobias and you're good. Just have the police carry away the prospective thief away while he's still in the fetal position.

So my older daughter has been fishing about 10 times now, no fish yet. This is especially pathetic considering people travel great distances to fish around where we live because of the abundance of fish.

My fishing trips with my daughters are near religious experiences. We tend to go Sunday mornings, we go through hell and back, and there are a lot of calls for God, especially when I get hit with rods, hooks, the kids step on rods, the boat hits submerged logs, and the kids whine after 5 minutes of being in the water after 20 minutes of putting the boat together.

So in desperation I made a phone call to a friend yesterday asking for advice, and I received a good tip. I then dragged my father, older daughter, my Dad's uninflated zodiac and fishing tackle 40 km away. We were brutally attacked by black flies to the degree that my daughter looked like she had a re-currence of the pox. We trolled out for about an hour in the fading light, only to loose 2 lures and almost run aground a few times.

Finally, on the turning point, the last cast before returning home defeated, my daughter got her fish. It was a nice speckled trout. It was about 3 lbs, 18 inches. (I think I know more details of that fish than the second kid at birth). It was too short to keep, and for some silly reason we forgot to bring a camera.

Still, she got to have the chance to reel in a fish, see her grandfather and father fumble around the boat trying to hold the fish, and then see her hard work tossed back into the water. It's kind of the feeling I get in a usual day of work. She was stoic though, and quickly remembered that I had bribed the fishing troupe with "passion flakies" if we caught a fish.

So the dearth of fishing has been broken. I hope she can keep her expectations at a suitably low level. By my estimations she won't get another fish until she's about 10.