Judy P's Tickle Trunk

 A couple of weeks ago I felt a great need for some fresh air so I amalgamated my biking and my fishing  costumes, put a collapsible rod in my backpack, and went trouting. What I discovered fairly early in the adventure was that I really don’t know how to fish. My past experience with trouting consisted of early childhood day trips with my family. Dad would cut an alder, fasten a piece of string to the end and bait for me a perfectly ordinary little hook with a worm. I would stand at the edge of a shallow gravelly brook and call out “I’m hooked on bottom” every time I felt a tug on the line. Dad would come to rescue my hook only to find that I had a trout on the line, my spindly little arms being too weak to haul it in. It made me feel small and inadequate and I never really felt like they were my fish because I had neither baited the hook nor landed it. Later, in my late twenties, I had the pleasure of fishing in the wilderness in Labrador. No way to describe that experience, other than to say that the trout, none of which were under a foot long,  practically invited the hooks into their mouths. I swear they would sniff out the bait in your backpack and wait patiently brookside for you to get on with your fishing. The only challenge there was fitting them into a frying pan and eating them in one meal.

It’s not that I am totally ignorant about fishing. I know that trout dislike noise, fuss and commotion, that they like the heads and tails of pools and to hide behind rocks in streams, but what do they like to eat? And when do they like to eat? I tried to think like a fish, to get inside its tiny head. What would I, if I were a trout, like most for Sunday brunch? Some protein? I had not a worm to my name. I was thinking that their bellies were already full with mayflies so they would only want tiny morsels, little bait tapas, so I put on a small yellow fly. No fresh bait. Apparently young ash saplings are very fond of small yellow flies and it wasn’t but three casts before one claimed mine. I don’t know if a trout even got to see it. I decided to take another tack; I would outshine the mayfly – offer something way more extravagant – and I installed a red devil spinner and baited it with a healthy chunk of salt pork-fat.  That should appeal to all of the trout’s senses but ‘sweet’ (I have heard that they are fond of white miniature marshmallows – some desperate camper must have dropped his can of worms on a portage to discover that one) No trout joined me for brunch. Perhaps I was over-analyzing this, do trout really make choices after all, or even think for that matter? Did I not read somewhere that a goldfish has a six second memory, nine at the most? This would have to be googled later, I thought.

What did come to brunch were nippers. They came like Newfies to a Kenny Rogers concert.  These weren’t your everyday garden variety nippers either, they were as big as kites, and not your standard Dollar Store kites. I’m talking fighter kites like the ones they compete with in Trinidad with glass coated strings. These nippers were little fighting machines. And there I was, wearing the nipper’s favourite colour; blue. I looked to them like the closest McDonalds after the Santa Claus parade and these fellows weren’t just stopping by to use the bathroom, they were looking for a full meal deal and by God, some of them enjoyed one. I felt like the brave little tailor who boasted “I killed seven with one blow” when once I slapped my hand on my thigh and left three little corpses, made three little nipper widows. But for every two that I killed, twenty more sought revenge. I could only hope that the trout were as plentiful.

Yes, it was war with the bugs out there on the brook but I stayed anyway. I fished off the rocks, under the bridge, and in the pool. I would just be thinking that I might as well go home when the line would tickle a little and I’d think “are those nibbles or just the current pulling?” and I’d cast again.

I don’t recall what Lance asked me when I got home but I am certain it wasn’t “Ar’n?” to which I would have responded “Nar’n.” The fish had won this round but I hadn’t arrived home completely empty handed. I had a new collection of visual images to file in my memory; the swollen brook rushing past, a robin eating a worm (I was tempted to steal it for bait, subsequent research has told me that trout loves worms) a beautiful flower growing in the gravel on the edge of the road, a little toddler washing the car with his Grampie, he crouching and mimicking every move his grandfather made. And the muse sent me a new limerick while I was cycling frantically away from the nippers. They couldn’t be outwitted but they could be outrun!

For fishing one must be equipped  

Lady slipper orchid?

With bug spray in which to be dipped

     Else the nippers will dine 

     Seventeen at a time

Til every drop of your blood has been sipped.

(c) Judy Parsons 2013

Nipper – Newfoundland mosquito

A’rn – Newfinese for “Get either one?”

N’arn – “Neither one”