With my line in the water, I sat silently in the small aluminum boat with my dad as we slowly puttered around the lake.
“This is it?” I asked.
Aside from deep-sea fishing with my river-rafting co-workers a couple of times, this was my first time fishing.
Then, the fish didn’t stop biting. Here? Not a nibble.
“This is it,” my dad told a 22-year-old impatient me.
After what felt like hours, we pulled back into the family camp — which one of the five Munro cousins has every five weeks — in Guysborough County. My mom warned me before I went: There’s no power, no running water, no cellphone service.
But my older brother had made the trip plenty of times with our dad and grandfather, who passed down his share of the camp when he passed away, so I wanted to see why everyone counted down the days to their turn at the camp.
That Sunday morning, my dad woke me up early and dragged me out in the rain. He, my brother and uncle had all caught at least one trout, but I had nothing to show.
After about an hour or so, I hooked my first trout. I remember yelling, laughing and reeling the fish in all at the same time, as my dad waited to scoop it up with the net.
The rush of a hooked fish. It all made sense now.
I would return to the camp with my dad every summer after that, but for the last three summers, my luck had run out. And let me tell you, I didn’t hear the end of it.
The “fishing king,” as my dad dubbed himself, made sure to let everyone know we would all starve if the family was to survive off my catchings — or lack thereof.
Frustrated with trout fishing, I decided to join my dad as he fished for striped bass near our cottage in Colchester County last summer.
I hooked the only fish out of the two of us that day, but reeled my borrowed rod the wrong way and ended up disconnecting the reel from the rod. “Sounds like a fisherman’s tale,” my family told me back at the cottage.
But the rush was back, so I’d head out with my dad almost every weekend. We’d hook a few each trip, but they weren’t big enough (at least 68 centimetres) to be a keeper.
As stubborn and competitive as I am, I was determined to land a big one that season.
Catching a keeper
So early on the morning of Oct. 24, 2019, I packed my rod, tackle box and cooler of bait into my Jeep and made my way down to our spot alone. My dad voted it was too early for him.
I showed up an hour later than I should have, as I struggle with early mornings, and set up between one man to my left and two men to my right.
My bait flew off into the ocean with my first cast. On my second cast, my hook got caught on the blanket I was sitting on while I waited, and on my third cast I knocked over my coffee and reeled in two empty hooks. Meanwhile, buddies next to me were catching and releasing non-stop.
But on my fourth cast, something took my hook and yanked on my line hard.
I wrestled with it for what felt like forever as I talked myself through what my dad had taught me: adjust the line’s tension and let the fish tire itself out.
As I saw its head flip out of the water near the shore, I grabbed my line and dragged the fish out of the water. My arms felt like noodles and I was out of breath.
I just stared at the striped bass at my feet on the shore. I had never caught anything that big before, nor had my dad, and I didn’t know what to do.
No bucket. My cooler was tiny. I showed up ill-prepared for a keeper.
Either way, the fish was coming with me.
“Well, do you have a garbage bag in the Jeep to put it in?” my dad asked when I called.
Right. One of those things you question your parents for making you keep in your vehicle but later comes in handy. I wrapped the fish in a large clear plastic bag, packed my stuff back in the Jeep and headed to my parents’ house in Truro.
When I pulled the fish out of the back of my vehicle to show my dad, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Holy,” he said. “It didn’t look that big in the photo.”
We laid it down on the tailgate of his truck and recorded it as 80 centimetres long. Then my dad, dressed in some sort of rainsuit getup, descaled and gutted it as I watched.
From there, I took it to my grandfather, a chef, to slice into sections for my family, my grandparents and my boyfriend’s family.
The self-proclaimed fishing king remained silent in the months to come.
But the comments started back up again recently as we headed into the long weekend, with fishing being one of the few things you’re allowed to do outside during the pandemic.
“Bet you can’t catch another like that again,” my dad teased me.
I know where I’ll find myself on Sunday morning: Chasing the rush.
