![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230911a-300x225.jpg\")
Our half day fishing charter was scheduled to leave at 2 PM, with our guide Matt, aboard the Right Hook<\/em>. Matt was not one of the guides that we were told we would have originally. I suspect that the first-string guides balked at taking out a family with young kids, so they called up Matt. He was great though and answered the questions of Those Johnston Kids patiently.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230920a-300x225.jpg\")
The cruise out to the fishing spot on the open Pacific was fun. I suppose regular fisher people don’t get excited about that part, but for us it was a bonus. We looked for whales but didn’t see any. Yet. It was a treat just being out on the water. The coast from a couple of kilometres distance looks wild and unspoilt, and inspired in me rueful fantasies of returning the land to the way it was.<\/p>\n
Matt set the engines to idle when we arrived and quickly rigged a rod with flasher and lure. He dropped it to 97 feet. I think it was American equipment. I was just thankful it wasn’t in fathoms. He hadn’t even finished rigging the second rod when we got a hit. He dropped the second rod unfinished and grabbing the first, showed me how to reel it in. I played the fish a bit and within 5 minutes of starting, we had a 16 pound Chinook salmon in the hatch. I quickly pulled in a couple more, then another, but Mama kept losing her fish. She lost 5 or 6 in a row, which the guide said was just bad luck, but I don’t think that she made the right observances. The sea gods are notoriously ill-tempered and it serves everybody poorly to forget.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230931a-300x225.jpg\")
Fishing, we discovered, is amusing and good for the soul, although our guide did most of the work. The lad laboured like a young titan, rigging and setting lines. When things got busy on deck, I oftentimes took the helm, steering our course straight into the wind. Mama, after losing several fish, and landing only one small one, finally pulled in a keeper of respectable size.<\/p>\n
After a few hours at sea, we had lost a few more fish to bad luck or lax ritual observance, and then we had a long lull in hits. We had 6 fish in the box and we didn’t think we’d get more. Our voyage had almost come to it’s end. Then the wind started to blow and Mama got a bite.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230938a-300x225.jpg\")
The guide jumped on the line and pulled hard. When Mama was ready, he passed her the rod. It was a whale of a fish and it ran out 20 metres of line in seconds. Mama reeled frantically, but the fish took it right back. It refused to approach the ship, and she could only drag it a few feet towards us at a time. After minutes of struggle, her arms started to flag, so the guide took over for a bit. He gave the rod a good pull and reeled in metres of slack. Then Mama took over again and wrestled the beast closer. For a moment, it broke the surface, lunging skyward. The head alone was huge and steely looking, as if a Soviet submarine had erupted from the deep. It twisted once in the air, surf breaking over the massive flanks of the creature in slow rolling waves. The splash as it descended tossed the boat like a toy in surf. Mama was thrown to her knees, but she gripped the rod with the mania of a starving chihuahua on a pork chop. The children screamed and our guide’s face turned white. He muttered something inaudible and crossed himself quickly. I grabbed him by his tattered hemp shirt and demanded to know what he had said. Behind us Mama gasped and growled, her strength waning while the monster’s only grew.<\/p>\n
“For the love of god man!” I screamed at the peasant shiphand, “what is it? What have you awakened?” He shuddered and his eyes rolled so wildly the whites were visible.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t believe the stories,” he cried, “but it’s him, the one they told tales about! It cannot be captured! No man has ever hooked The Mountain and lived!”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230934a-300x225.jpg\")
“You fool! You’ll kill us all!” I shrieked and cast him from me. Those Johnston Kids were wailing a dirge, certain that their short adventurous years were at an end. Mama’s lips were set in a thin violent line, and her entire body shook with the strain, but she held the rod still. It was bent double, curled into an impossibly small arc, and the line hummed with tension as the two implacable foes contested, one above the storm-tossed seas, one below.<\/p>\n
“Papa,” she managed between gritted teeth. “I can’t hold it. I’m done. Poseidon take me, but the creature has broken my heart.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230936a-300x225.jpg\")
“No Mama! Fight on!” I protested. “The monster is played out as well.” It was true. The leviathan was closer to the ship than ever before, and it lurched to the surface. It rolled onto over one massive side, a veritable island of barnacle encrusted flesh, delicious baked or grilled, to glare at us hatefully with an eye like a vast obsidian orb.<\/p>\n
“Take it,” Mama commanded me, strength returning to her voice, “take the rod and bring my fish home!” I was aghast, but my instinct to serve won over my abject fear. I leapt to obey. For a moment, as my hands grasped her quivering rod, Mama’s eyes met mine. “This is my fish,” she snarled. I only bowed my head in compliance and accepted the task.<\/p>\n
We were all dead regardless. The storm howled about us and Those Johnston Kids prepared for the inevitable by stitching makeshift shrouds about themselves from sailcloth.<\/p>\n
I felt the monster’s rage as soon as I had taken the rod. It felt as though my arms would be ripped from their sockets. I staggered against the railing, hoping only for a quick end to this nightmare. There was no outcome I could see accept our untimely end and, for the children’s sake, I prayed that it be quick.<\/p>\n
Still, I thought that I must try, and appear bold even if I was to be overcome. I had no hope of reeling such a giant in, but luckily he lunged at our wounded ship, an easy target with only one of her three masts still standing. I reeled in the slack like a rabid monkey on a bicycle, as if begging the great fish to fall upon us. Still closer the monster swam, while I murmured paeans in as many savage argots as I knew.<\/p>\n
As it drew nearer, Matt came to his senses, perhaps hoping that a penultimate act of bravery before death might excuse his hubris and cowardice.\u00a0He\u00a0threw out the net, 50 fathoms broad, and made of grey hawser, each strand thick as a strong man’s thigh. We could only hope that it would hold. It seemed a spiderweb against the primordial giant that loomed alongside. Those Johnston Kids stood at the rail in their rough-made palls, preparing to cast themselves into the abyss if the ship should be splintered beneath us by our attempt to bring the monster aboard.<\/p>\n
At last the fish, perhaps dazed by its own murderous fury, swam blindly into the net. This was our chance. “Pull!” screamed Matt tearfully, “Pull as if my life depended on it!” We pulled. Slowly, inch by creaking centimetre, the thrashing beast was wrestled into the ship. The force of the monster’s struggles tossed our iron cannons like toys, over and through the gunwales, where they sank like cannons made of iron. We armed ourselves with gaffs, batons, and beaver sticks, any weapon we could reach, and descended like a mob upon the fish to deliver the death beating. Time passed imperceptibly as we laboured, pounding the thing into submission. So great was our terror that mere hours later, it was done, and we fell back bloodied and exhausted. The fish lay dead.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230950a-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And that was how Mama caught a 31 pound salmon on her first fishing trip.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thosejohnstonkids.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/P7230951a-225x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We went fishing yesterday. Our half day fishing charter was scheduled to leave at 2 PM, with our guide Matt, aboard the Right Hook. Matt was not one of the guides that we were told we would have originally. I suspect that the first-string guides balked at taking out a family with young kids, so … Continue reading Call me Ishmael<\/span>