Illustration by Sara Wilde
Take it serious when you take on fishing with the kids or risk being reduced to the laughingstock of the family, and I know this from experience. Jackson was nine and Gloria was seven when their old man demonstrated such a lack of maturity and grace that I’ll admit I may have ruined them.
We were shore fishing from that spot in St. Vital Park known for a mixed bag, reliable bite, and snag-free waters. I whistled the theme from Andy of Mayberry to annoy the kids as we scoured amongst the dogwoods for a stick with a crook where the rod could rest at the ready. Leftovers from the spring flood or a whittled gem from some other enthusiast, our three sticks stood cockeyed in the cracked earth holding our lines taught in the current. The pickerel rig was a baited with half a nightcrawler on each hook and the half-ounce bell sinker held bottom. We all sensed that something big was about to happen.
The Red River drops in the late season exposing steep banks worn loose from erosion. This makes for ten-foot drops into a clay mud that devours shopping carts and BMX bicycles on a regular basis. Not ideal for landing big fish because you risk rod or line breaking while this expanse is negotiated. But the kids talked me into it. And we caught bullheads aplenty, a stonecat and channel cat, and had no issues hoisting them up. I was so proud of how all this was coming off that I became a little righteous, lecturing about catch-and-release rather than the task at hand.
The pretty little catfish slipped from my grasp, and careened over the edge of the bank to the kids’ great surprise and rapturous attention. Like those Duke Boys’ cliffhangers, the fish seemed frozen in mid-air and I could almost hear Waylon Jennings quip about the rarity of such a thing in Hazzard County. When the action continued, that catfish suffered from the softest of landings and remained half buried in the muck below. It was a sorry sight, all flopping there helpless like and from the look in my daughter’s eyes, I knew that Daddy was about to take one for the fishing team.
Trouble found me in a hurry. The bank gave way on my approach and the downhill slide ended mid-thigh in the thick stuff, and that catfish croaking still out of reach. Stopped dead in my tracks. The kids looked down upon me in a panic. If only the mud could swallow my words, because I was unable to stifle the expletives. I soon felt the urge to punch the air with stinging combinations only digging myself deeper. I reimagined Dorf on Fishing and it was a profane adaptation. Shame on me.
Where were the dudes on jet skis that always buzz the shore? Their wake could pull the fish out to safety and I’d gain those precious few inches of water to drown myself. Where were the chatty seniors with Scottie dogs all in matching tartan? Free me from this horror with your cane or leash. How long before a murder of crows descends and pecks away and I am reduced to nothing, man? Never soon enough.
The kids in their wisdom do not hear, speak, or see such evil in times like these because Dad wants these episodes to remain ours to cherish. With this in mind, I seized the opportunity to demonstrate the family’s gift for raw power and blind aggression. Wearing the pained grimace of Han Solo in carbonite, I wretched from the earth my pathetic self. Dirty and broken, my crawl up the bank provided the kids with a visual reference for just how low their father can be.
What makes me even angrier was how long it took for me to find humour in this descent into madness. How many “normal” days of fishing will it take for the family to forget that self-implosion? My wife is keeping count. She’ll let me know when the damage is reversed.
Recognize that these moments make memories, good or bad, but always telling. Laugh at yourself, the sooner the better, for that is the character that fishing brings about. Celebrate the indignities that come from pursuing fish for sport. And as always, do as I say, not as I do.