Fishing with Uncle Ned

When I was a young boy, my Uncle Ned would take me fishing with him. I would paddle the boat gently around the famous lake, and Uncle Ned would fish. Sometimes he would tell me stories about his youth.

One summer day the fish where not biting, things got slow, and Uncle Ned told me this story.

When I was a young boy, my Uncle Fred would take me fishing with him. I would paddle the boat gently around the famous lake, and we would fish. Sometimes we would have fishing contests - who could catch the most fish, the biggest fish, the fish with the most teeth, the fish with the longest fur, and so on. But mostly we would try to catch the biggest fish. As the summers went by I grew up, and we kept fishing. We got very serious about the biggest fish contest. We never did catch a fish with any fur, but some of the GarFish had big teeth. But mostly we fished for big fish. We made our own fish hooks, floats, and sinkers because we could not buy any as big as we wanted. We used ski rope for fishing line because it would stretch when the fish pulled.

When I was fourteen, I caught a fish SO BIG that when I pulled it out of the water, you could see the lake level go down a whole inch. When we got it to shore, we had to cut it up and load it into pickup trucks to take it home. When mother saw it, she called all her church friends over and had a big fish fry. Everyone had a great time but Uncle Fred.

Uncle Fred was feeling mad because I had hooked such a big fish. Tasty too. It looked like he had gone plum mad, and was chewing on the bumper of his pickup truck. I felt responsible, so I walked over to see if he needed help. He did. He wanted me to get him a wrench. He was taking the bumper off his truck. This didn't make any sense to me, but it was much better than chewing on it. So I was glad to get the wrench. No sooner was it off than he took it over to the blacksmiths' bench and started to beat on it. I figured he was crazy. Again. But pretty soon I knew what he was up to. He was making a fish hook. A BIG fish hook. I went back for more fried fish. I was sure I had just caught the biggest fish in the famous lake, and he would have to wait till a smaller fish grew bigger. No Problem.

The next day it was pouring down rain. The sky was dark, and the wind was blowing. Uncle Freds' pickup horn was blowing too. He was in the driveway, ready to fish. I was ready to stay in bed, but I knew how much this meant to Uncle Fred, so I pulled on yesterdays clothes and went.

Uncle Fred and I paddled the the center of the lake. He pulled the cloth off of his new tackle. There was about 200 feet of logging chain with his truck bumper fish hook on the end, and a whole side of beef tied to the hook with an old piece of garden hose. I told Uncle Fred that I didn't think there was any fish that could take that hook, and if there was, I didn't want to know about it. But I helped him roll the side of beef over the edge of the boat. When the noise stopped, I asked Uncle Fred why he had not put a float on the chain. He told me that the boat was the float. And gave me a life jacket. "Jus in case the float goes under" he said. I started to worry. I put on the jacket.

Suddenly the boat jerked. I continued to worry. Uncle Fred had locked the chain to the bow of the boat, and something was dragging us all over the lake. At speeds normally used for water sking. After the first hour we slowed down. Uncle Fred got out a come-along, and started to pull the chain back in to the boat inch by inch. After three more hours, you could see the fish under the boat. Fred was the happiest I had ever known him.

But we had a problem. The fish was too big to drag thru the shallow water near shore, so we would have to get it in the boat to bring it in. We started by throwing everything overboard, and taking the seats out of the boat. This made a lot more room. Then we started working to get the fish in the boat. When we did get it in, the lake level went down so far that the boat was grounded on mud. We were two miles from shore, and could not move the boat an inch. In the end Uncle Fred had to throw the fish back in, just so we could get home.

The odd thing was folks did not believe in Uncle Freds' fish. But he was happy, because he knew I believed.

Uncle Ned smiled gently as he finished this story, and I believed every word of it.

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