Hooked by Hannah Geissler

Hooked

By Hannah Geissler -- A High School Senior from Bracebridge, Ontario, a little town two hours north of Toronto.

I am not the sort of person to go fishing. Incredibly girly and unbelievably uncoordinated, I am possibly the last person you would want standing on the dock beside you.

            Or at least I was.

            It turns out, after I tried it, it wasn’t so bad. The girl who loves heels and hates mud, the girl who lives for malls and loathes “roughin’ it”, loved fishing.

            The first day, I was out on the lake from 9:00 in the morning until almost 4:00 – count ‘em, that’s seven hours.

            As my casting got better, my smile got bigger. I started anticipating that tug on the end of the line, not as a break in the monotony but because I was excited to see what I’d caught. So when my grandparents invited my fishing partner, Luke, to the cottage for Labour Day weekend along with the family, it was only natural that I asked him to bring his tackle box and a couple of rods.

            We dragged the cottage’s wobbly canoe out around 11:00 the first day, and flipped it into the water. All the necessary paraphernalia was thrown in and we headed towards the mouth of the bay.

            However, due to the Labour Day traffic, we kept drifting and tipping in a way that definitely threw my concentration. We caught a few decent-sized sunfish, and Luke bagged a crappy, but it got old a lot faster than it had the first time.

            The next day after lunch, once the tent was folded up (the cottage is pretty teeny) and bags were packed, we headed back down to the dock with every intention to clean up the fishing gear and call it a lousy weekend.

            “I’m going to have to throw the worms out,” Luke said.

            “Well, we’ve got time,” I smiled. “Put one on mine too, though.”

            So little wormy hearts were broken and the bits were hooked. I got my line in first, gentleman that he is, so by the time Luke’s was in, I already had a sunfish for him to unhook. I tossed the line back in and bam,another fish. Three later, Luke was laughing at me and my sister had started suggesting that maybe I was just catching the same one over and over again. By the seventh fish, I was unhooking them by myself because Luke was trying to catch up to me. They were a little slimy, but not nearly as bad as my imagination had made them. Fifteen minutes and five fish later, Luke still had only eight. My grandparents had wandered down to the dock, and my mom too, and they were talking about heading out before traffic got too bad. So I started reeling the line in.

            Then it pulled back.

            My first thought was, Great, I’ve caught weeds. It was followed by amazed silenceas my fish jumped, and splashed me, three feet from the end of the dock. Then it started swimming away, and I almost wound up in the lake alongside it. Thankfully, Luke has fishing instincts ingrained.

            “Reel it in! Reel it in!”

            So I reeled. And it pulled it back out. And I reeled. And it pulled. Reel, pull, reel, pull.

            “Keep the tip down, Hannah! Keep it in the water!”

            I splashed half the rod underwater and kept reeling, trying to figure out what on earth I had hooked in our sleepy little bay that was this big. I remember thinking, It must be the Loch Ness monster. But then Luke was shouting more instructions, and my mom went running for gloves and the baby bathtub, and I was screaming, “Don’t let my fish get away!”

            No one was going to believe me.

            Shadows were starting to get longer, and boat traffic was slowing, sure signs that the traffic on the highway was starting to thicken. But for once in my entire memory, my grandparents didn’t say a word.

            My grandpa has a favourite story that he tells all cottage visitors: the time I almost caught a fish. I was about five, and begged him to reel it in, but he told me, “No, you hooked it, you bring it in.”

            A five-year-old versus a seven-pound fish? I didn’t stand a chance.

            Apparently, once it got away, I wiped my forehead and said, “Thank goodness.”

            This time, it was opposite. No way was I letting this thing get away. I had to bring it in. But when it jumped the second time, and Luke said it was almost 30 inches, I told him that there was no way I was touching it.

            The initial verdict was that the thing was a catfish, hence the gloves. But once it got close enough to the dock for Luke to grab, even I could tell it wasn’t. Catfish are bottom-feeders, so they have flat bottoms – this sucker was as round as a tube of Pringles.

            However, where Pringles tubes are hollow, my catch was solid. When Luke finally got it into the baby bathtub, he was panting. I was informed that it was more than seven pounds of pure muscle, and was 30+ inches long. And he had absolutely no idea what it was. Clearly not a catfish, it was like nothing we’d ever seen.

            For one, it was easily the biggest fish I’d ever seen alive. It was round, and had a rounded tail instead of the forked ones you normally picture on fish. Teeny little side fins, and small eyes that made it look really mean. A weird greenish colour, it looked like a Koi huddled on the bottom of the little white tub. A Koi that would eat you.

            As I stood there looking at my fish, which we later identified as a bowfish, I felt something. This is a moment, I realized. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach – butterflies and a little glowing bubble of pure happy. It was shining out my eyes and I’m sure Luke could see it, because he started shining too. When I look at the pictures I can’t help but grin, a stupid, sloppy grin. But it’s real.

            It was a real moment. Or rather, a reel moment.

            It wasn’t just the fish who was hooked.