Fishing Articles (Adventure Story)
First Fish
I pulled it out of the water and flopped it on the
ground next to me and screamed a very loud "WAHOO"!
Timothy Kusherets
Was it destiny that saw fit that I become a fisherman? I don't know.
But if you go back to the first time that I went fishing as a young
boy you might begin to wonder what life had in store for me. I was seven
years old and my sister was six. We were at the Grand Cooley Dam in
Eastern Washington. My sister and I had been fishing at the base of
it for most of the morning. I know now that we should not have been
there, but what did we know, we were children on a camping trip having
a good time. My sister and I had to share a rod if we both wanted to
fish. Since she was a girl, she was allowed to fish first until she
either caught a fish or she gave the rod to me. Pete, the man who took
us, placed the two of us in front of some water that was pristine clear
and dropped down about thirty feet. About midway down into the water
we could see many rainbow trout just hovering in the same place doing
absolutely nothing. Patience lowered her hook into the water and put
it right in the middle of them and waited. When the fish didn’t
take her salmon egg right away I could see that there was going to be
a problem. I was certain that based on the behavior of the fish that
it could be quite a while before I was going to get a hold of the rod
to do some fishing of my own. I got an idea.
“Patience, since I'm not doing anything, would you like me to
go and get you a soda?” “Okay, but you better ask Pete first
or you could get into some trouble.”
“I'll be right back.”
I ran to the van and asked Pete for a soda and got back as soon as I
could. I wanted to be there the second she got a fish so that I could
get one myself. I gave her the soda and sat down to watch the fish mill
around some more. I thought that they were beautiful and I never tired
of watching them. Patience sat there too. She was determined to catch
a fish and equally determined not to give me the pole until she did.
Some time went by when I asked her if she wanted another soda, she said
yes and reminded me to ask Pete again. I came back with it and sat down.
My frustration was building the longer we sat there. Watching those
fish without a rod in my hand was killing me. The bright morning turned
into early afternoon. With the sun beating down on us, I asked her if
she wanted another soda. Again she said yes and I repeated the trip
that had been made twice before. Not long after she had finished that
last soda she began to squirm and dance around, just a little. It was
what I had been waiting for; that or a fish on the hook. Squirming around
doing the pee-pee dance she was determined not to give me the rod. She
was not at all patient, but rather, filled with a ferocious will not
to give me the rod at whatever cost, and that meant, at that point,
disregarding the fact that she needed to go to the bathroom very badly.
I pretended that I didn't notice and a little while later I asked her
for the fourth time if she wanted another soda. She looked over at me
with a pinched and flustered face that told me she would relent soon,
and that was the point to all of those sodas.
“Tim! I have to go to the bathroom! I'm going to let you hold
my rod for me, but the second that I come back I want it back! If you
don't give it to me I'm going to tell on you!”
She was smaller than me, and I knew that I could have just taken the
rod from her, but she was like a stick of dynamite. You didn’t
want to shake or throw it around, instead, you want to treat it gently
because if you treated it right you could get it to do what you wanted
it to do, but if you mistreated it, you’d be sorry. That was the
exact same thing that I thought about my sister. I knew that she could
make a lot of trouble for me if I didn’t behave like a good little
gentleman, and she knew it.
“Okay, but if I catch a fish before you get back can I have it?”
“Yes you can, but you know that you aren't going to get anything!”
“Yeah, I know, but just in case I do, you promise that I can keep
it?”
“Stop behaving like that, I said you could and I meant it!”
She leaned over to me to give me the rod and I was ready for it. I can
see it play back in my mind in slow motion. Just as she was handing
me the rod, I mean the exact moment that it was free from her hand and
into mine and as my fingers closed around the butt of the pole, I felt
the tug of a fish.
“Fish on!”
I was ecstatic! I had hooked my very first fish and it was a rainbow
trout! I didn't mess around at all and reeled in the fish as though
I was working on a meat grinder. I pulled it out of the water and flopped
it on the ground next to me and screamed WAHOO! My sister suddenly didn't
need to go to the bathroom. She was screaming too, but not the words
that I was hoping for. No, instead she was screaming that it was her
fish and not mine, which of course drew the attention of Pete. He came
over and exonerated me and the fish was deemed to be mine based on the
conditions of the agreement that Patience and I had made.
I never did tell anyone that I had gotten my sister the sodas with an
ulterior motive; she, after all, wanted the sodas and I was happy to
get them for her. Having to go to pee was a consequence of drinking
them all. It wasn't my fault that she gave me the rod when she did,
but I was glad that she had.
So, back to the original question; do I believe in fate or destiny?
Whenever I get down and want to believe in something I think about things
like that day becoming re-inspired that not everything is in our control,
but some things are.
© Timothy Kusherets, 2004/09 |
