Fishing

I fail to see the attraction of fishing. In today's photo, you can see that there are a number of fishermen on the floating dock on Mill Lake. The lake is stocked with trout, but I have yet to see anybody ever catch a fish there. If they do snag one, do they take it home and eat it? There are signs everywhere warning would be swimmers about the poor water quality. Does this make the fish more palatable?

When I was kid, I went fishing with my dad, and it was more about spending time with him than it was about fishing. I enjoyed eating the freshly caught Northern Pike, fried in butter over an open fire on the beach, but catching them was another matter. I always secretly hoped that a fish would not bite my lure.

On one fishing trip, we were walking along the rocky shore of Long Lake in Saskatchewan, searching out a good place to cast our lines. That would be a place where the weeds were not so bad as to tangle the hooks and leaders to the point that you had to cut the fishing line. We came across a large Pickerel, half in and half out of the water, bloated to the point of bursting, but still barely alive. As we got closer, we saw the cause of its distress. Its mouth was gaping open and sticking out was the tail of another fish, about half its size. With his rubber boots on, my father walked into the water and stepped on the bloated fish with his heel on the tail and the toe of his boot near its head. As he put downward pressure on the fish, the dinner of the greedy Pickerel slithered out, half digested. Then to our amazement, the Pickerel rallied and after a minute or so, wagged its tail at us and swam rapidly out to deeper water, wisely leaving his dinner behind.

After witnessing that, as a small child, perhaps that is the reason I am not a fisherman.