Fishing with the family
It was one of the rare occasions when my family are organized enough for a fishing trip. Fishing doesn’t happen very often, maybe two or three times a year. My mum always seems to get out of them with a pre-planned excuse. “Oh no this is a father and son thing, off you go’’ or, ‘’I’d love to come but I’ve got work to do’’, are just some of the standard reasonings. So, as always it was myself, my partner, two brothers and my dad up for another fishing expedition.
It was about five years ago that dad fulfilled his promise to us of buying a boat. He would always say, ‘’One day I’ll get a boat boys, and we can have a real go at fishing’’. What we have now is no mighty yacht but a small dingy that takes on water every time she sails. It’s always a bit cramped and unbalanced with the paint chipped off and patch works here and there but she gets the job done (that job being keeping us afloat, for now). So, with the boat all hooked up to the back of the car we took off to a lake we’ve fished at a couple of times over the years. Over the few times we have fished at the lake we have caught exactly two fish, one of which we had to toss back because the size was too small.
The lake is always a beautiful place with lots of birds, nature and an absence of people. We launched the boat in and got our rods into the water. The first thing that happened was what always happens, one of us got bored and moody. This time unsurprisingly, it was my eldest brother. He went all quiet and tucked his head into his life jacket with his little bucket hat covering his face. This is how he remained for most of the trip despite our constant poking, prodding and annoying commenting.
It was right at the point when we were all getting a bit tired of fishing. We’d been at it for over an hour without a single bite on any of our rods with dad insisting, ‘’You’re being too loud. You’ll never catch anything like that!’’. Suddenly, when everyone had seemed to have given up despite dads continued lecturing there was an almighty pull on his rod as he exploded into action. With a bit of a fight he pulled up a beautiful big trout. For the first time in a long time we had caught a proper fish. The trip went on for another four hours without another successful catch, or lectures from dad.