Fishing was the best part of my childhood. By the time I was eight, I could tie and bait my own hook, fillet and clean my own catch and fry it up (with adult supervision, of course).
This one time, I think I was maybe six? seven?, I decided I was going to wake up early and go fishing off the dock. Now, I need to preface this by telling you that nobody had caught anything off this dock in ten years (except for the pair of men's boxers I'd caught the year previous). So, in the dark, I wake up and get dressed and creep out to the dock.
I cast over and over. Nothing. And just as the sun is rising, I get a tug. I get the fish all the way up to the dock! But my rod is a child's rod, with a light line on it, and I can't get it out of the water. As I'm standing there with the line wrapped around my tiny child fist, my baby sister comes down to see how it's going. So I tell her to go get dad. Her, being four, panics dad by telling him that I'm trouble and need help. He gets down there, takes one look at me and cracks up. My dad brings me a net and all is well.
Clover comes down to see what the fuss is all about and starts hollering so much about me catching a fish off the dock, her neighbours come over to see what the fuss is about. And they start laughing. And their dog starts yapping at me. I don't know why everybody freaked out, the fish wasn't that big. I mean, it was big to me, but grand scheme of things, only about a foot long. Small mouth bass. I cleaned it and cooked it and dad wouldn't let me share, made me eat it all for breakfast.And that's my favourite childhood story.
P.S. Those men's boxers? Turns out they belonged to a friend of Clover's who had "lost them while swimming". She stitched up the fish hook hole and gave them back to him, teasing him mercilessly the whole time.
P.P.S. Check out those pants in my pic. Apparently I was expecting to wade out into the water?
