Posted by We were fishing Canada’s great Lake Nipissing during this episode. As usual, we had everyone place a bet on the biggest fish… We were all over 20 years old by now so I believe we really over extended our usually “Henry Frugal” betting practices and went with a $10 wager per person!!!
So my Dad, Fred was on this trip. It was one of the last Canada trips for him and he was in his glory days… where he would constantly say that he had already caught a bigger fish than anyone and that he wasn’t gonna fish until we started catching something.
Well he did put ten bucks in the pot, a pot which was up to about $80. So Dad sits on the porch every night just reading his books while we are all out fishing. He just wanted to listen to the loons and read.
Dad was a great reader! Well the last night comes around and none of us, all who had been either directly or indirectly, taught to “pike fish” by our Great White Father himself, none of us had caught shit! So Fred decides that since none of us remember anything he had taught us, he decides he is going to go out fishing with us this last night, and win the pot!
So I fix him up with one of my really nice spare fishing rigs which I proudly present to him, and we all head out on the lake. So we have three boats, all gathered in the same bay, and Dad, with his old faithful red and white dare devil (actually it was mine cuz Rick and I had split up dads dusty old tackle box years before) Dad ties in to “the big one”! So he’s got his break set a little loose and he is just taking his good old time bringing this winning fish in… as he reels, he’s making sure we all understand what he did right and what we’ve been all doing wrong the entire trip. The other two boats are quietly moving closer to ours to get a good look at The Winner! Right? We take out the net and I notice Dad has his rod uncharacteristically positioned way back over his shoulder and the tip is bent down towards his hat…
I thought nothing of it, and as I put the net in the water, all of the sudden, his line breaks… and, in slow motion, we all watch the winning fish slowly swim away as if it is laughing at us…
Now, in Canada, in the evening, with a beautiful sunset, no other people around other than our group, loons calling and Whippoorwills warming up in the back ground, there is a peace and serenity that is long remembered by those who are blessed enough to witness it. All of the sudden that silence is broken by this very loud bellowing man that echoes off the shores……
“God Dammit, how many times have I told you boys to put new line on your reels every year before you go to Canada”! Then he just stood up and he just gazed straight up to the sky like he had just lost a million bucks and all the bragging rights for the year, and in a very disgusted tone, he said “who’s rod is this anyway???” and as I picked up the end of the broken line and examined it I said, “it’s mine, Dad, and I did put new line on it… and, Dad, I think this line has been melted! I handed the end of the line to him, which was all dark and twisted like a spring at the end… obviously from excess heat… and he looked at the line and he looked at me, and again at the line, and he took his cigarette out of his mouth and as he looked at the cigarette, he said , in an extremely quiet tone, “I’ll be damned”…
You never saw three boats full of guys laughing so hard… Dad was extremely quiet all the way home that next day…
-Scott Henry-