Christmas Fish
Bucky was born to fish. His dad talked Grandma into sewing a couple of sleepers out of camo cloth, and she sewed a Bass Pro Shop fish patch onto a woolen hat she made for him, so he was geared to the outdoors from the moment he got home from the hospital.
By the time he was 14 months old, he would often squeal with glee as he watched his dad, who was an adept fisherman, hook crappie while they sat in the johnboat on warm summer afternoons. Bucky would see the rod bend and, though wrapped cocoon-like in his mini floatation vest and portable carrier, he would flail his arms and legs in the way all babies do when they get excited, and he would smile and giggle as dad would bring the fish up to his face.
A look at the family photo album will reveal that, by his second birthday, Bucky was already handling a short rod and closed faced Zebco reel. Images captured in time include a sequence of shots showing the toddler casting a bobber with a grub on a hook, then a shot from behind as Bucky can be seen holding the rod while obviously watching the bobber, then a bent rod, and finally a huge grin and a Sunfish held high for all to see.
Growing up, Bucky was a good kid. His only shortcoming was, and he did not see it as an issue, the endless pursuit of what swims. As soon as he was old enough to ride a bike, it was off to the bass and catfish pond behind Miller’s Truck Stop. He would spend most of his summer days honing his skills and trying new things. While Teddy, his best friend, would get bored with fishing and soon divert his attention chasing grasshoppers and crickets, Buddy would put Teddy’s catch on a hook and wait for a resident large mouth bass to want to engage in a contest of tug-o-war. Once Bucky spent the better part of a day trying to get a bass to take the small field mouse he captured. If Teddy found a snake, Bucky would be cool with it, but his interest would soon return to the rod, reel and creel that were never far from his side.
He could be found during the summer evenings of his pre-teen years, chasing bullfrogs with his hand-made gig stick. Though the gig stick was a way to earn a merit badge for all the other boys in his troop, for Bucky it was much more. He carved detail of three frogs in almost scrimshaw-quality up the shaft of the spear, and attached pheasant feathers at the top. Nothing Bucky did, as a kid, was ordinary.
During the days he was venturing further on his bike, sometimes going so far as to make the 15 mile round trip to Hotel Falls on the Endolok River, to fish for the holdover trout planted downstream the season before. His mother had no idea he was traveling so far, or she would have been horrified and would never have approved it. Instead, when Bucky brought home the stringers of plump, fine-eating fish, he would merely point off in the direction of the river and answer, “Out there, mom,” when she asked where he caught them.
When Bucky turned 16, he, like so many other boys, became interested in two other things – Cars and girls. So it fit that his first girlfriend, Rhonda, came from a family of boys and she too liked to fish. Her dad owned a used car business and sold Bucky his first rig, a 4X4 Nissan Pickup. As it turned out, she dumped him, because he liked to spend less time on Friday nights taking the truck and her to the local Drive In, and more time tying up leaders and such, as he prepared for an early Saturday morning trip to chase steelhead. The truth was he missed her more as a fishing partner than anything else.
It took him until he was 20 to realize that fishing had consumed him in a way that everyone else who knew him could so plainly see, but he had been so self-consumed that he had missed what he had become.
He was home on Christmas break from attending Redmond State, and of course all he wanted to do was catch his 30th steelhead of the month. This would be an impressive total for almost anyone, but considering he had only fished for nine days during the month truly exposed his prowess. He caught many more fish than he kept, but since he had neglected all shopping malls, catalogs and the internet, he decided he needed to catch a couple of keeper steelies. He would filet and vacuum-seal the meat and give hunks to friends and family.
The plan made perfect sense until he fished on the 22nd, and caught nothing. The East fork of the Sweenish usually was a sure bet, but he flung everything in his vest at the fish, beating the water to a froth, all to no avail. Worse, he saw several fish taken, including some caught by some dough-boy flatlanders that didn’t even belong on the river. He had to admit defeat as darkness fell in the canyon, but he knew that was the daily battle, and the war was not over yet.
But on the 23rd, virtually the same thing happened. He had never felt so shaken as it seemed almost everyone he saw had fish on. Yet he could not even coax a nibble. He lost an inordinate amount of gear while he drift fished, he lost a bobber and jig rig to a tree on a careless back-cast, he lost multiple spinners, including his most prized Red Dart that had caught over 50 fish. He came home that day feeling defeated and deflated.
That left one final option. The 24th. Bucky had a decision to make. Would he break down, head to the local big-box department store and gather up last minute items, or would he put in one more day in the pursuit of the fish gift? An obvious choice at first glance was muddled because he needed to entertain Bradley, his 8 year old nephew, as his sister and her husband were volunteering to work at a local soup kitchen.
Brad wasn’t a bad kid, but it was not duty that Bucky would have ever volunteered for. He loved the youngster in the way of an uncle, but watching over him for the entire day was not what he wanted to do. His mother had shamed him into it, as she pointed out that the relatives had come in from out of town, yet were spending valuable time helping the needy. And he wanted to fish, she asked? He finally compromised by suggesting Bradley could accompany him to the river while he spent a few hours catching his Christmas gifts. No one was happy with the compromise except Bradley, but sis got him bundled up against the December chill, filled a thermos with hot chocolate, made a lunch and he was ready to go when Bucky showed up in the pre-dawn darkness to take the boy with him.
They got to the riverbank and found that several fishermen were already flogging the prime stretch of water. Bucky grumbled under his breath, as the obligation of driving over to mom’s to pick up the boy had taken too long and now had messed up his fishing. They walked to the end of the run, then Bucky ordered Bradley to “Stay right there,” on the bank behind him, then he leaned his spare rod into a bush on the bank, waded out into the stream and started his routine of casting and retrieving.
Soon he was lost in thought and aggravation both, as he saw two anglers just upstream, in the prime end of the hole, simultaneously hooking and fighting a couple of lively, mint-bright fish. A few minutes later he saw another angler do the same. It must have been more than half an hour before he realized his feet were getting cold from standing in the near-freezing water and, despite his neoprenes and insulated wading boots, he needed to take a break.
So Bucky waded back to shore and came to the disconcerting realization that his nephew was not where he left him. In fact, he was nowhere to be found. Bucky called out his name. No response. He walked upstream. No sign of Brad. Downstream was the same. His disgruntlement slowly started to turn to concern, as he came to understand that he was solely responsible for his nephew’s well-being, yet he had been so consumed with his need to fish that he totally ignored his duty. Bucky got raised-eyebrow looks from the other anglers as he asked if they had seen his nephew, but no one had.
After a good 15 minutes of searching, Bucky was almost crazy. He no longer was worried about catching a fish – He needed to catch Bradley. It was as he retraced his steps for the umpteenth time that he became cognizant that his spare rod was also missing. Great, he thought, someone had nabbed both his nephew and his gear.
Bucky walked back to the parking lot, expecting to ask if anyone had seen an 8 year-old boy being loaded into a van or something, when a flash of blue coat caught his eye. It was clear across the grassy picnic area on the park grounds, where Dairy Creek meandered through before meeting the main river at the far end of the park. He walked across the meadow-like park, unused this time of year, and as he got near the edge of the feeder stream he slowed, then stopped and watched silently, as he observed an 8 year-old boy, in a blue coat with a red stocking cap and rubberized black knee boots, using Bucky’s spinning rod, tossing the pre-tied bobber and jig rig into a small pool at the boy’s feet.
The little fisherman would cast, let the bobber hit at the top of the small pool, let it float slowly to the bottom, then reel up and do it again. Bucky was somewhat mesmerized by the scene, and though he was inclined to intercede to both scold his sister’s kid for running off and to admonish him for fishing where there were surely no fish, he didn’t for some reason.
On the fifth cast an amazing thing happened.
The bobber disappeared and Bradley set the hook almost instantly. And the fight was on. Bucky bounced down the bank and almost grabbed the rod out of the boy’s hands until he realized that the kid seemed to know what he was doing. The boy leaned the rod out and upstream, and the fish responded favorably by staying in the pool. Bradley, in fact, soon had the fish close to the bank and when Bucky got a good look at it, he was astounded. The fish, as it turned out, was a beautiful 16 pound buck steelhead. It had a classic rainbow stripe down the side, a hooked jaw, and a feathered jig in the corner of its mouth.
“Wow! Bucky exclaimed, “You did a great job on that fish, kiddo! I have half a mind to slap your backside big-time for disobeying my direct order to stay put, but the other half wants to slap you on the back and congratulate you on that fine display of angling. Where the heck did you learn to fish like that?”
“From you, Uncle Bucky,” Bradley said. “I have been watching you forever. When I was a little boy you took me crappie fishing, remember? You taught me how to cast and hold my rod.”
Bucky was stunned. He didn’t even remember the lesson he gave his nephew. It came to him that he had spent huge amounts of time so self-absorbed in his pursuit of fish that he was missing the world all around him. Even something as important as appreciating that his young blood relation was taking to the same passion as he had.
As Bucky came to his senses, he realized that not only was his nephew not in possession of a salmon tag but that the feeder creek he was fishing in was closed to steelhead angling. The fish would have to be returned. He explained it to Bradley, who didn’t seem all that upset about it, and Bucky unhooked the fish and gently released it back to the water where they both watched it return and settle right back into the deep pool.
With that the trip was over. Bucky decided that he had something that he could share with his family that would outlast any store-bought gift, or a delicious meal of sea-going trout. He would write the story of how his 8 year-old nephew was the best fisherman he had ever seen, he would give a copy to Bradley’s grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and it would be a present in the form of a memory that would last a lifetime.
Merry Christmas to all,
Hogmaster
[ 12-25-2003, 07:06 AM: Message edited by: Hogmaster ]
Christmas fish
Private-Aye-Fish
Team Parker Boats
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