Chinook
by George Hosier II  - August 1, 2008

‘Til Fish do us Part

My wife caught me rummaging around in my fishing gear the other day. It was a tense moment. She accused me of planning a fishing trip before the garage was cleaned. I protested as convincingly as possible. I even allowed my voice to slide up an octave to simulate the heartbroken lilt of a child who has been falsely accused of eating chocolate before dinner, based on the flimsy circumstantial evidence of a ring of chocolate smeared around his mouth. I even opened my eyes as wide as possible and let my lower lip quiver, figuring that would generate a fetching look of innocence that my wife would not be able to resist.

Sadly it had the opposite effect. She demanded in the name of all that was odorless and scale free that I stop whining. She also stated that she was disappointed to inform me that I was clearly so obsessed with fishing that I was even starting to act like a fish; bugging out my eyes, and wiggling my lip like a bottom feeder probing for scum. At least that’s what I’m sure her burst of laughter would have meant if she had put it into words.

Like the sad tale of many relationships gone sour, I don’t know exactly when we started to drift apart. Before we were married, I tried to be very honest about my enthusiasm for fishing. She seemed to understand, and even indicated that she shared my enthusiasm. As life wore on, however, what I had thought was a spark of mutual interest seemed to smolder into a smoky inferno of seething black resentment.

Looking back over our history, I realize now that the earliest signs of the gathering storm began to appear before we tied the knot. I should have recognized them then, but, alas, I was transfixed by the oblivion of young love. It started with little things—the way she pursed her lips when the dinner and movie date I had promised her evolved into Skipper’s Chowder House takeout eaten on my sofa as we watched “Monster Crankbait Bass VII”, a raised eyebrow and a faint sigh when I insisted that the groomsmen at our wedding all wear hip waders and inner tubes, or her unwillingness to make eye contact when I announced that I had been able to schedule our entire honeymoon week aboard a halibut charter boat.

After we were married, it seemed at first like a dream come true. Life would be so much better now. At last I had a fishing partner who wouldn’t feel compelled to brag that he could out-fish me! No longer would I have to divide my angling time between baiting, catching and cleaning. Instead, my beloved helpmeet could bait the lines for me and clean the fish that I caught, leaving me with all of my fishing time free to devote to the important testosterone-laced work of bringing in the bacon, or in my case, the salmon.

Little did I dream that my wife would fancy herself to be one of these liberated types. On our first trip to the lake after we had been united in matrimony, she began to openly manifest her darker tendencies. It turned out she had some pretty independent ideas about a woman’s role in the fishing boat. Among other things, she expected me to bait my own line and clean my own fish. I patiently tried to explain to her how silly that was. Why, she wouldn’t have anything to do except sit there looking pretty and admiring my fishing prowess! Not that she couldn’t do both exceptionally well, but I would hate to see her bored.

Well, I nearly fell off of my cooler when she informed me in no uncertain terms that she was “just as capable of participating in all aspects of the fishing experience as any…any…old…husband! Humph!” I found myself bewildered and deeply wounded by this unfair and bizarre outburst. You know, at a moment like that, when one finds oneself suddenly confronted with the inescapable evidence that your spouse may not be the person you thought you married, one can become overwhelmed...driven mad, even. Sometimes one can do irrational things.

A red fog seemed to rise up before my eyes. I began to hear my pulse pounding in my ears, hammering louder and louder until it swelled into a deafening roar. Honestly, I don’t remember exactly what happened next. In fact, I have absolutely no recollection of a good thirty minutes of that fishing trip.

When I again became aware of my surroundings, I was cold and wet and my arms and legs seemed to be paralyzed. I was blind, too. In terror, I squalled out for help. Suddenly, my sight returned as my wife lifted the bait bucket that had been covering my head.

“Are you calmed down yet?” She asked.

I blinked groggily and tried to orient myself. She seemed to be peering down at me from behind some sort of short aluminum wall. She was holding a fishing pole in her hand kind of like a rapier, its tip hovering in front of my face. Then I noticed that I was bobbing. Upon investigation, I discovered that I was bobbing because I had a necklace of fishing bobbers tied around my neck. I blinked and shook my head. It was the oddest thing! The bobber necklace appeared to be attached to a stringer that was hooked to the side of my boat…the outside of my boat. That must mean that I was floating in the lake, while my wife was in the boat! What in the world? I again tried to move my arms and leg. No luck.

“It’s no use.” My blushing bride waggled the fishing pole admonishingly. “Your arms and legs are immobilized with several wraps of 30 lb. monofilament line cinched with an Albright Knot. Sorry about that, but your neck veins were bulging out like summer sausages, and I was afraid you were going to bust a gasket. I needed to get your body temperature lowered as soon as possible. Are you calmed down yet?”

I bellowed at her to get me out of this ridiculous predicament before one of my fishing buddies saw me. Somehow she misinterpreted this well-reasoned argument as a confession that I had not calmed down yet. She shrugged and demurely cast her lure on the opposite side of the boat. Within five minutes, I watched her pull in a 15” rainbow trout and then a trophy silver salmon, followed in quick succession by a beautiful dolly varden and a massive lunker of a burbot. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

An uncontrollable shiver engulfed my body systems as they initiated the automatic shutdown sequence indicative of the final stages of hypothermia. I began to toy with the idea of groveling, but it’s difficult to assume a groveling position when you’re bound hand and foot, and floating on the end of a steel stringer in a lake full of liquid nitrogen.

Then something bumped my foot. I instantly felt a profound empathy for all of those millions of worms and frogs and grubs that I had dangled in a thousand lakes all across North America. In spite of the temperature, my neck veins began to bulge again as I imagined a monster northern pike lurking just below me, razor-toothed jaws gaping wide as it reared back for the voracious lunge that would vivisect my torso.

Somehow the resultant adrenaline rush activated muscles I didn’t know I possessed. Spinning my feet like a propeller, I dolphined up out of the lake in a graceful arc. Water sprayed from my gyrating body to form a rainbow in the sunlight. For brief moment, I must have been a majestic and breathtaking sight! Then I reached the end of my tether as the steel stringer reached out, snatched me by the bobber collar and jerked me out of the sky! I impacted the bottom of the boat and flopped around like a blue marlin until my wife was able to affectionately gaff me.

She dragged me to the gunwale and started to roll me back into the lake. It was at that point that I succumbed to my groveling urge. Fortunately, I was so drenched that I don’t think my wife could distinguish between lake water, tears and slobber. I began to plead my case with impassioned eloquence—“blubbering”, I believe my wife jokingly called it. Clearly awed by my powerful oratorical skills, she paused, impaling me with the gaff to the brink of the gunwale as she frowned thoughtfully.

“I don’t know. You still seem a little worked up to me.”

“What? Who? M-m-m-me? Oh, heh, heh! N-n-n-n-not at all! I’m as c-c-c-cool as a c-c-c-c-cuc-c-cumber. Hear my t-t-teeth ch-ch-ch-chattering? C-c-can I have my f-f-f-fishing p-pole b-b-b-back n-now?”

It was a long and delicate negotiation process. A less masterful diplomat would surely have ended up back in the lake. In spite of my physical and emotional duress, I was able to stay in command, deftly steering the dialogue to my advantage. By the time I had administered the coup-de-grace, my wife had humbly recognized her rightful place in my household’s food chain.

Deeply regretful for any discomfort she may have caused me, she agreed to let me bait her hook for her from this day forth and even forevermore. Acknowledging my legendary skill with the fillet knife, she also relinquished her right to clean any and all of the fish either one of us might catch for the duration of our marriage. Finally, she sweetened the deal by giving me the carte blanche to spend all day long fishing any time I choose as long as I have the disposable cash on hand, I don’t use any vacation time, all the projects around the house are caught up, I faithfully take her to a fancy restaurant twice a week and I never wear my fishing clothes in the house.

That seemed fair enough, but as time has gone by, somehow insidious little stipulations have crept in to sully that original agreement. They are silly little nitpicky rules that only a woman could dream up: “No slimy, scale-clogged fillet knives in the dishwasher. Put your gear away within fourteen days of your return from a fishing trip. Don’t stand on the back deck and toss your fish offal in the general direction of the tree line. NEVER stash salmon roe in an old coffee can behind the dryer in the laundry room. It doesn’t matter how late you get in, a stringer full of live grayling does not belong in the bathtub. Leave the car and credit cards with me while you’re gone.”

On and on it goes. I don’t know how much more I can endure. It’s gotten to where I’ve had to stop taking her fishing with me. She simply has no clue about fishing protocol. She talks constantly, rocks the boat, uses all the wrong lures and refuses to catch fewer fish than I do. She’s even taken to telling fishing jokes at my expense. I overheard her on the telephone last week telling someone that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you get rid of him for the whole weekend.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on her though. What I probably ought to do is give her another chance to redeem herself. One of these days I think I’ll go see if I can get a nice new rod and reel for her. I’m just not sure if Sportsman’s Warehouse will accept trades.
 

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