SHB Explores

Growing up in central Iowa, many Midwestern summer vacations centered around fishing. I vividly remember how proud I felt holding my blue and white Zebco Mickey Mouse fishing pole watching the round red and white bobber undulating on the waves. My dad taught my brother and me how to bait our hooks with minnows and worms, how to cast (a real struggle when your hand-eye coordination hasn’t fully developed), and how to reel in our catches, whether walleye, watermilfoil, or each others’ lines. At the time, I couldn’t believe how much luckier us kids were at catching fish; in hindsight, I realize how much of my dad’s “fishing” time consisted of helping us and how much of my mom’s time involved sunscreen application, food and beverage distribution, and argument intervention. Sorry, Mom. 

After more than twenty-five years since our last family fishing trip, my parents and brother visited me in Alexandria this summer and stayed at Berg’s Resort on Lake Le Homme Dieu for a week. There are many resorts and vacation homes which offer boat rental amenities, making it incredibly easy to be out on the water mere minutes from leaving your cabin or house. (However, boat availability may be limited, particularly when a duck has decided to lay her eggs aboard one of the boats like this duck at Berg’s!)

Alexandria’s lakes are well-populated with a variety of fish species and we reeled in- and released- a variety of bluegill, crappie, and large-mouth bass, with my brother taking an early lead as my dad kept an eye on the fish-finder and navigated through the lake. If we had developed a fishing checklist from almost every childhood fishing trip, it would look something like this:

• Accidentally hook Mom
• Accidentally reel in another person’s line thinking you both are reeling in a big fish
• Catch more “lake salad” than actual fish
• Lose a fish only to have the person next to you catch it
• Catch the smallest fish
• Catch the second smallest fish
• Wonder if all of the fish are going to be this small
• Catch the biggest fish (which can only be determined by comparing it to all of the small fish)
• Refer to the Sesame Street “Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!” sketch

If completing this checklist signifies success, this was a pretty darn successful fishing trip; however, did I make the mistake of referring to Mom as a “big catch” instead of a “great catch” when I hooked her? Sure did. Sorry, Mom.

As the sun began to sink behind the tree-lined shores, I realized what I had been missing as a kid that my parents knew all along: it was never about the fish. As we laughed about each others’ fishing misfortunes and talked about our lives, time seemed to stop for an hour or two and there was nothing more than us, the water, an occasional fish, and connection.

And not even an argument. Mom was so proud.