First Salmon

It was an afterthought really, we hadn’t even intended to take the boat out, yet go fishing. it had been a lazy day, Jeffy just playing x-box and me lumbering around the complex. We did play some guitar together---working on new chords and church music as Jeffy is going to start playing guitar for the praise team at church soon. In any case, the Great Lake laid down its wind and it was warm and sunny and I asked Jeffy if he wanted to take a quick boat ride. “Sure”, he said in his usual verbose, teenage boy fashion (actually, sometimes he’ll talk like crazy but when he’s x-boxing it’s one word answers). “We gonna fish Dad?” Oh, “I don’t know I said”, I was just planning on a quick ride, but “ok, we can take the rods”. Thus it was the U.S.S. Minnow was outfitted for the quick boat ride, with fishing gear just in case.

We opened her up and Jeffy took control and we zipped around the Naubinway Light and headed out towards Lansing Shoals and then zipped back towards the river mouth. We saw an unusual sight in front of the river, not one but TWO boats trolling for fish. Now, understand, seeing ANY boat at all in MY Bay is unusual, yet to have two at once. We kind of figured then something must be happening in the fishing department. So, he throttled down and out came the rods. I rigged up two Cabela’s gold fishing rods with trolling spoons. One was on a lead core line and the other just spider wire. We were in depths of 12 to 30 feet of water and really didn’t need the dipsy divers. I also put two smaller rods out, one with a hot in tot and one with a Swedish pimple. This way we could pick up a variety of fish, salmon or trout with the spoons and bass or pike with the others. The trolling began with about 2 hours of daylight left with the sun in the western sky, just gorgeous.

I called my friend Dan on the cell phone, but he wasn’t available. I wanted to gloat a bit about being out on the water, it didn’t matter that we hadn’t caught anything. I checked the lines and re-adjusted depths and went back to the cell phone as Jeffer steered a southwest course at 2.6 miles per hour with the very quiet 4 stroke Mercury. I told him to choose the direction, go where it feels best I told him, so he did. Back to the cell phone, I’ll try to reach Ed. Shoot, nobody home, voice mail. So I started to leave a voice mail when the rod next to Jeffer on the starboard side started to SCREAM and jerk. I grabbed the rod and set the hook and Jeffer took over. I had forgotton about the cell phone as in my haste I just threw it into the tray near the throttle. Now, to say I was excited was an understatement as we both watched a very silver fish of at least 15 pounds jump into the air about 100 feet from the boat as Jeffy did all he could to hang on for dear life. I’m screaming at him to keep the rod tip up, keep pressure on and a tight line, but don’t horse him. Ok, that’s fine, let her run when she wants and take out line. I’m doing all this while I am trying to reel in the other 3 lines and lines and lures are getting tangled and there’s a birds nest of line all over the boat and Jeffy isn’t making much headway on the fish. So, I achieved a reasonable amount of order and grabbed the rod and showed him how to pull back and crank down. Always the quick learned and bright boy he is, he figured that out quickly and soon had the fish near the boat after SIX very long, line screaming runs and multiple jumps.

I was so incredibly excited because nobody ever caught a salmon on this boat, a legacy inherited from one of my all time fishing buddies, my father-in-law Lyle. In addition, the new Cabela’s gold reels and trolling rods had never caught fish. Finally, I was with my son, fishing out in front of my house, watching him catch the biggest fish of his life. In addition, this was all entirely a BONUS, we hadn’t even planned to go fishing! He brought the fish near the boat but it took out some more line and I couldn’t net it. One more attempt and soon Jeff’s 31 inch Lake Michigan Salmon was in the boat. Lots of high fives and back slaps later, she was in the live well, completely filling it with head and tail pressing against both ends of it.

Back at the ranch it was a Chinese fire drill. We didn’t have the fish cleaning table out, no lights or water to it, no ice to ice the fish down, etc. Consequently there was a flurry of activity and out came the table, halogen lights, hose, power, electric fillet knives and before you knew it there were beautiful pink, thick, salmon fillets in the refrigerator. I didn’t think much of it when the phone rang and I heard Jeffy talking. “How did you know I caught a fish?” He asked the caller. “Oh, WOW, really?” “Who is that Jeff?” I asked. “It’s Uncle Ed, he said that he checked his voice mail and heard the entire audio of the catch, you had left the cell phone on!!!!” Eddy heard the whole thing, pulling in lines, hearing the rods screaming and the fish netted. He thought at first we were staging it, making it up until he heard the lines screaming. He said that would be pretty hard to recreate that. Oh yes, indeed.

Anyway, I am always overwhelmed, humbled and thankful for the miracles of life that occur in between the aches, pains, tragedies and turmoil of it. This, was total serendipity. We weren’t even going to go, was it coincidence that the fish hit while I was on the cell with Eddy? Was it rather fate that such conditions and variables would merge together into a few glorious moments with my son, both my Dad’s watching from above, and Uncle Ed hearing it all a thousand miles away? Yes, it was meant to be. My son was rather excited and proud and thankful as any thirteen-year old boy could be. However, I think I was even more excited than he, it was like my First Salmon. When you experience such an event with your own son, it’s even better than when you caught your big fish with your Dad. Spending time with my son is always an adventure, you never know what will happen. So much of it is a first, every day a “First Salmon.”