from journal
July 9
2005
Réserve
Faunique Mastigouche
Lac de la Tête
Revised
April 26 2008
I was
called irresistibly out of the cabin to the neighbouring dock and lake
by the approaching sunset. There was no point trying to go back to the
cabin after just a few minutes this time, it was too quiet and
beautiful, I let it take me.
I sat
on the dock an hour or more, soaking up the peacefulness that was so
silent it was loud in my ears, and the warm waning sun on my face and
arms and legs, and the few subdued animal noises that emphasize rather
than break the quiet, and the play of light of the tiny rippling waves
with their spears of gold and green.
I
watched the loon out on the lake through the binoculars, big black head
and silvery grey sides, so incredibly silent and alone, and I saw him
catch a shimmering fish in his beak, tilting his head back and shaking
to swallow. Hardly three seconds passed between the time the fish swam
carefree in the water and the time it slid headfirst down the dark
tunnel of the loon’s throat.
I had
brought a small collapsible fishing rod with me to the cabin, not for
sport but more or less as survival gear to be used in the event of an
emergency. But it had been so many years since I had cast a lure into
the mystery surface of an evening lake. As a boy I was an avid
fisherman, and I wanted to try it now, just a few casts, to remember the
feeling. Just for a few minutes, because I really didn’t want to catch a
fish.
Casting the lure far into the lake felt as good as I knew
it would, the line sings and the lure flies as if shot from a bow,
rising and falling in a long gentle arc. I guess I still know how to
cast.
After
casting once or twice I noticed that two or three little fishes were
pursuing my lure back into shore, swimming excitedly on either side.
These little fish were way too small to take the lure which was nearly
as big as they were, and they looked for all the world like they were
playing, like kittens chasing a ball of yarn. The lure was so brightly
coloured, and they darted in towards it and away from it again, as if
the game was to test their own
courage.
I
thought I would try one last cast, and close into shore I caught a
little fish. It couldn’t give me a very hard fight, it was only about
five or six inches long, and when I took it out of the water I saw that
it hadn’t taken the lure in its mouth, rather the hook had caught in its
back.
I had
hooked a playful little fish in the back.
I wet
my hands and tried to extract the hook as gingerly as I could, but with
such a sharply barbed hook and such a little grey fish this was nearly
impossible. I was holding the hook between the fingers of my right hand
and the fish as gently as possible in my left. The fish was flipping
from time to time with surprising strength in my palm, but when I
finally had to pull the hook hard to dislodge it the flips turned into a
sustained vibrating shudder, a quiver of intense life and sensitivity,
communicated to my hand by the fish’s soft but amazingly strong and
muscular body. I suppose that by pulling the hook so hard I was causing
great pain.
Just
as I finally dislodged the barb the little fish managed to flip right
out of my hand, and before I could react it fell onto the dock instead
of into the water, where it flipped valiantly on the wooden planks, and
before I could pick it back up, as it kept changing trajectory, it
finally flipped back into the infinite relief of the lake, where with
one strong dart it immediately
disappeared.
I had
certainly injured the little fish. I had torn a little hole in its back,
and whether the hole will mend or the fish will die, I can’t say. But I
think that’s enough fishing for now, I won’t likely cast a lure again on
this trip unless I really need to, if I were lost in the woods or
something and had no more food.