The Last Fish

“If you eat fish, you’ve gotta learn to catch fish. And if you catch fish, you’ve gotta learn to clean fish.”

That was my dad’s motto with all three of his little daughters. As soon as we were able to put wax worms on our own hooks, Dad made sure we helped clean the bluegills we caught.

Dad and I have a joke we have shared ever since I first started cleaning fish. Before us is a whole table full of pan fish, fresh from the lake. I scrape the fish scales with a scaler. Dad removes the backbones and skin with surgical precision. I finish by taking out the ribs, rinsing the fillets in cold water from the garden hose, and bagging them up for dinner.

“Ah, that’s my favorite fish,” Dad sighs.

“Which one?” I volunteer, even though I know the answer.

“The Last One!” we chant together.

My dad started fishing off the dock of his family’s lake cabin in Wisconsin. He used crusts of bread for bait in those days. Dad worked hard to instill his fishing obsession in his daughters. Our family vacations to northern Minnesota were always anchored on early morning fishing trips. Bundled in jackets and orange puffy life jackets, my sisters and I gradually awoke with the dawn, huddled on the chilly metal seat of a rented aluminum fishing boat. With a small outboard, we cruised the shorelines for crappies or bass and then headed slowly to open water to troll for northern pike.

Dad kept us motivated with a cooler of grape and orange soda pop and a pocket full of quarters for prizes: the first fish, the biggest fish, and the most fish. Plied with sugar and small change, sunshine and praise from our daddy, we would motor home for lunch with mom, regaling her with the morning’s fishing adventures and wildlife sightings: a snapping turtle, snowy egrets, great blue herons, a bald eagle, a loon. Thanks to Dad and our childhood fishing expeditions, my youngest sister became a serious birder, my other sister became an artist with a keen eye for landscape, and I continue to fish with my two boys, who are avid fishermen, just like their grandpa.

Dad retired and moved to live on a large lake near Minneapolis, where he fished nearly every day. The grandchildren joined him to fish on the weekends. But after more than two decades on the lake, I recently became worried about dad going out fishing on the big lake by himself. His vision was deteriorating, and he couldn’t read his fish finder device or the GPS anymore. Sometimes he lost his balance, like the day he unhitched the boat to put it in the water after its winter respite. He fell and broke three ribs, setting back his fishing season by several months.

And sometimes Dad became forgetful. One early spring morning, my dad took his grandsons out fishing. Motoring home, Dad forgot to pull in the anchor. The anchor rope twisted itself around the propeller, marooning the boat in open water. The propeller cut the anchor rope, sending the 20 lb. anchor to the bottom of the lake.

My dad’s thirteen-year-old grandson jumped into the cold, clear water. The fish finder said the water temperature was 53 degrees. The boy untangled the rope around the propeller, and then he removed his life jacket and, although a little lightheaded, he dove deep to haul up the sunken anchor. When I later heard the heroic tale from the boys, my worries escalated about the dangers to the children and my father out alone on the fishing boat.

Shortly after the anchor incident, my dad headed down to his boat, slowly navigating the slope of the front yard with canes in both hands. He took cautious, pint-sized steps as he walked down the uneven wooden planks of the dock. He lowered himself carefully into the boat and pulled out his tackle box. That’s when he recognized the burglary.

Dad’s large tackle box was completely empty. He looked around, confused. Then he noticed the lines on all his rods had been cut off and the lures nabbed. The burglars took all his lures, the bait, the weights and swivels, the stringers, the pliers, and his jackknife.

As Dad tells me the story later, I hear the weight of the years in his voice. I know he sat in the boat for a long time that morning, just thinking. He remembered that sparking blue Rapala with bite marks all over it from the aggressive northern he caught off Big Island with his little grandson holding the trembling net, his eyes round as pancakes. He imagined holding the red needle-nosed pliers, feeling it nestled in his palm. He recalled his dad teaching him to remove the hook with a twist of the wrist from the greedy sunnies that swallowed the crusts deep. He recalls each of the stolen lures, one by one, the stories they carried in his tackle box: tales of blue skies and rough water and companions who cheered on the catch.

I look into the sadness of my dad’s face. I see what he doesn’t tell me. The tackle is gone, like his dad, his old fishing buddies, his little girls. Even the grandsons are growing up before his eyes with earphones in each ear and wires running into their jeans pockets. Irreplaceable, those lures, those memories. Dad admits to me that, lost in thought sitting in his burgled boat, he had started the engine to head out to fish. But then he noticed the rods one more time, their lines blowing effortless in the breeze. He cut the engine and drifted back to the dock.

Last fall, Dad decided it was time to sell his fishing boat. He turned over all his fishing equipment to his grandsons: the rods and reels, the life jackets, the big musky net. But he kept for himself the super sharp, ultra-thin fillet knives.

He knows he hasn’t seen the last fish.