The Fish That Didn’t Get Away

If there is one certainty in fishing, it is that there is no certainty. 

This past summer, on the Wisconsin lake I know best, I stumbled onto a new fishing strategy.  Instead of fishing with everyone else from six in the evening until sunset, I began to venture out later,  when the sky was already getting dark.  Although I’d catch fewer fish at that time, the ones I did catch would be bigger.    

Fishing in the dark poses more than one new challenge.  If the fish are bigger, they’re bigger because they’re smarter.  Over a seven-day period, I had a feisty smallmouth bass on my line at least four times.  Each time, however, I made a small error, but those errors were enough for the bass to remind me, by breaking the line or spitting the hook, that I had much to learn.    

Then one night, I paddled my kayak out, hoping for one more chance with the bass.  That was when something big, really big, hit my lure.    

After ten minutes of bringing the fish closer to my kayak, I recognized the shape of a sizable northern pike.  I was surprised because even a small pike can bite through fish line and be off in a second.  The pike I’d hooked had apparently tried to swallow my bass lure whole and, in the process, my fish line was wedged between his razor-sharp teeth like a piece of dental floss. 

That was when I realized my first problem.  I’d failed to bring a fishing net with me.  That meant that if I intended to land the pike, I’d have to reach into the water and hope I could gingerly insert my fingers into one of his gills and haul him in.  But the pike would likely have other ideas, one being to take a chunk out of my fingers.

Immediately, problem number two presented itself.  If I did manage to lift the fish into the kayak, the only space for the fish was currently being occupied by my legs.  I didn’t like to think of what an angry big pike could do in retaliation.

Still stubbornly believing that every problem has a solution, I saw my two options.  I could cut the line and hope the pike would manage to disgorge the lure and not die, or I could keep the pike on the line, holding the fishing pole with one hand while paddling back to the cabin with the other hand.   

I opted to try paddling back to the cabin, knowing that the pike could at any moment veto my plan and bite through the line.  That’s when I encountered my third problem.  Kayaking back to the cabin with only one usable hand turned a normally ten-minute paddle into a thirty-minute one.  As I was weaving back and forth like a drunken kayaker, my only consolation was that the pike seemed happy to be along for the ride.

Finally arriving near the pier, I met problem number four.  If I paddled too close to the shore and piers, the pike was sure to wrap himself around the posts and be off.  My only option was to stay clear of the piers and yell up the hill to my wife in the cabin—sixty feet away.     

I suppose that was when I started to talk to Mr. Pikey, as I now called him.  I explained that my wife couldn’t hear me yelling because, on this chilly evening, the cabin windows were shut tight.  Not to worry, I told my new friend.  Any moment now, my wife would begin to worry and come down to the pier to look for me.  That’s when I would call to her to bring a flashlight and a net.  She’d take a picture of the two of us, and then I’d let my friend go.  Mr. Pikey seemed agreeable, swimming lazily a foot away from my kayak.

That’s when problem number five showed up.  Apparently, I’d waxed so eloquently to my wife about my new strategy of fishing in the dark that, bless her heart, she believed me.  “Any minute now” became an hour and a quarter. 

In that hour, I began to have the strange sensation that it wasn’t I who’d hooked Mr. Pikey, but the other way round.  Mr. Pikey had decided that it was a perfect night to view the Milky Way with someone, and he’d chosen me. 

Now, you might accuse me of anthropomorphizing, of giving a fish human desires and feelings, but I swear, after pictures were taken and I put him back into the lake, Mr. Pikey looked up at me and winked.